Welcome to the Loser Challenge. We have 11 entrants, for a split of $35 and $20 to first and second. (Apparently I had to compete against a bunch of bracket pools and suffered losses as a few regulars jetted off to give their money to Las Vegas instead of here.)
In any case, picks in general were more aggressive than I thought they would be. Daniel of the Sun is our pre-tip leader. That is, if his picks all lose, he wins. Granted Dan the Man picked 41 teams (out of a maximum of 48). In fact, as a group we picked 45% of all the teams in the tournament even though just 1 slip up would kick us out. On the other end of the spectrum is Brokeback Alex, who would need to have all his picks lose AS WELL as have all other 10 contestants be eliminated. Hmmm. This is indeed a tough pool, I say.
Note that there are 4 teams that are charity bombs. That is, if they make the sweet 16, we all lose because we all picked them. Morehead St., Cal St. Northridge, E. Tennessee St., and Binghamton. Suggestions are still being accepted for where the charity $ would go.
By the way, for those of you gung-ho enough to pick #7,10, and 15 seeds in the same box - assuming that the #2 will make the sweet 16: just wanted to let you know that over the past 10 years, onlt 50% of #2 seeds made the sweet 16. Have a nice day.
I’m a fan of the bracket pool. I really am. But the Poolmaster, in addition to referring to himself in the 3rd person, also refrains from running March Madness bracket pools. While fun, there are 2 things about brackets that aren’t perfect:
1. Most of the excitement is in the first weekend, but bracket pools are decided by picking Kansas, Duke, or UNC in the finals. What if there was a pool for just the first weekend?
2. All this picking of winning teams gets a bit repetitive. What if there was a pool for losing teams?
You know that gritty 13 seed that wins their first game with a buzzer beater, and is up by 8 at halftime of their second round game, only to go on and lose by 5 as their star player with a 3.9 GPA in biomedical engineering fouls out and cries on the bench? This pool is for those guys!
Welcome to the first annual Sweet 16 Loser Challenge!
Your goal is to pick teams that will not make it to the sweet 16. The better the team, the greater their value if you pick them. (#16 seeds are only worth 1 point, but #1 seeds are worth 16 points, for example). Pick as many loser teams as you like, but be warned: if any of your loser teams actually make it to the Sweet 16, you are eliminated!
The player left standing with the most points is the winner. US$5 or CAN$6 entry fee, multiple entries are encouraged. Tiebreaker question is to pick the team that will allow the most points over the first weekend of the tournament.
What will be your strategy? Go whole hog with about 40 teams and hope the brackets go chalk the first 2 days? Pick your spots with some #5 and #6 seeds and stay away from the curse of the #12 seed? Or go with the Price is Right $1 bid strategy and take only Radford and hope everyone else flames out? Perhaps you plunk down $15 and do all 3? Perhaps I'm thinking about this too much?
Picks of course are due before The Ball Is Tipped 12:25 eastern on Thursday.
(Note: this is meant as a supplement to your regular diet of bracket pools, not a replacement. None of the products in this infomercial contain sufficient nourishment for all of March.)
Leave it to slumdog millionaire to trot out everyone who worked on the project on stage. That was what pushed Ukari Figgs into second place over Sissy Sara...
Final scores:
rank name points 1 halfpoint 27.00 2 ukari figgs 22.97 3 sissy sara 21.99 4 louis louis 21.00 5 sneakey peakey 20.99 6 lisa McWhoareyouwearing 19.99 7 bloody marie 19.99 8 dental hygenius 19.98 9 full monte 19.97 10 alex d'amour 19.97 11 poolmaster 18.98 12 benger dosbert 16.99 13 2 dog might 16.98 14 Mr. Sprigg's BBQueen 15.99 15 bijou 15.98 16 swartz the quartz 15.97 17 daniel steele 15.00 18 dr. norway 12.00 19 watkins glen 11.97 20 last minute derek 9.99
Louis Louis is a victim of the black-gray controversy, but that dress is most definitely gray...
Last Minute Derek goes wire to wire in last to keep his entry fee. Nice work Derek!
I`ll have to pull the tape, but i think Robert helped the kiss selection be a winner! halfpoint comes out the winner, with a sister fight for second. ukari vs. sissy
why do you steal away freida from dev? i mean, he spent the whole movie going through all that bad stuff, only for the Jedi mind tricks of Qui-Gon Jinn to whisk her away. ukari figgs and halfpoint will solidify their lead thanks to the split of the slumdog couple.
where we ask the musical question: who the heck is joel gray?
(also, this format of same-sex awarding for the major acting awards leads me to think we won`t get a peck on the cheek later on from the best actor winner...)
UPDATE: It is Joel Grey and he is best known for being the father of Jennifer Grey, of Dirty Dancing. Thank you wikipedia for this oscar moment... now back to your daily dose of will smith trying to convince you how cool sound mixing is.
ukari figgs now joins halfpoint in the lead. alex dàmour and bloody marie 1 point back
penelope, how hard is it to say god or agent? even darfur? come on...
also, dude that won for adapted screenplay - you know, if you`re up for an award and plan on mentioning the leading actress in your speech, maybge you should, you know, learn HER NAME beforehand... because just calling her by the film character is a bit bush league.
oh, and if you`re keeping score, angelina jolie: nominated for an award and sitting next to brad pitt. jennifer aniston: giving out cartoon awards next to jack black. (enjoy those Friends royalties, jen)
crap, she`s wearing black! so much for MY entry...
I will try to run a live blog, but be prepared that i will need to multitask putting some kids to bed with my oscar watching at least for the first hour. when the good awards are out, i`ll be here commenting on them. enjoy!
A bleak mid-winter? Ms. Rossetti, you don't know the half of it. We cannot yet smell a hint of tightly mown grass or the fresh vial of androstendione for baseball spring, yet the trailing residue of football tailgate bratwurst has surely faded from even the least-frequently-washed jeans. In mid-February, what are we then to do? Basketball can wait until March, hockey even longer, and curling is, frankly the nuclear option. We need something else to watch and gamble on. Perhaps something with Nazis, backwardly aging people, Indian gangs, and Sean Penn…
Welcome to the first annual Poolmaster Academy Awards Challenge!
Wait, I know what you’re thinking. Don't worry, I won’t ask you to try to tell the difference between art direction, cinematography, and costume design. This isn’t some high-minded indie critic type of ironic pool. The Poolmaster wouldn’t do that to you.
Attached is the entry form where you pick the winners of the major categories as well as some … um … bonus questions to spice things up a bit. Entry fee is $5 US or $6 CAN. Please pay your local poolmaster representative as usual.
Please fill out the form and return it to me by Sunday Feb 22, sometime before any of the red carpet shows begin. Winner will get 67%, second place 33%, and last place their money back. Please forward this on to any friends and enemies.
Hopefully this will tide us all over until selection Sunday!
Also, updates and snarky comments will be posted on the Poolmaster blog website here. There is an outside possibility I will be live-blogging the show! But there is also a possibility I will forget and watch the rerun of Mythbusters where they try to slice a pig in two with a snapping high-tension cable.
Posts
