Bettin’ or Braggin’: Week three blues

Well, well, well. This betting thing. Not as easy as it looks, eh?

I can’t complain. I’ve had two solid weeks betting pro football to take the lead, up 1,100 SFBay bucks after 12 picked games. I tweaked my strategy to bet more on games I was more confident with. It mostly paid off.

Ali Thanawalla, though, continues to struggle, with a second-straight 1-5 week. Poor guy might be washing SFBay dishes if he runs out of SFBay bucks too quickly. Ali is down 900 bucks after two weeks, with just 9,100 in the bank.

Chelena Goldman continues her steady approach, going 4-2 to pick up 200 bucks.

SFBay reader ParksideGreg got five picks in before the deadline Sunday. He went 3-2 in his debut and is up 200 bucks.

This week we’re changing up our picked games quite a bit. Get the New York Rex Ryans out of here. They are reliably unreliable, always seeming to go against your pick.

We’ll take our chances this week outside of the Big Apple.

Want to join the gambling misery!? There’s still time. Check out the rules below, then get your picks into the comments of this story before 10 a.m. this Sunday.

Fair warning: We’re not touts, sharks or bookies. We don’t splash action around the web or line up bets in back alleys. We’re just a few local writers picking games without much of a clue. So using these picks for your own gambling is probably a very bad idea.

Leaderboard

Name	Bankroll	Last week
Jesse	11,100	+900
Chelena	10,200	+200
Ali	9,100	-400

Week Three

Game	Ali	Chelena	Jesse
San Francisco (-7)  at Minnesota	SF 200	SF 100	SF 300
Pittsburgh (-4) at Oakland	PIT 300	PIT 100	OAK 200
Jacksonville at Indianapolis (-3)	IND 100	IND 300	IND 200
Tampa Bay at Dallas (-7)	DAL 100	DAL 100	DAL 200
Green Bay (-3) at Seattle	GB 200	GB 200	SEA 200
New England at Baltimore (-3)	BAL 100	BAL 100	NE 200

To refresh anyone’s memory on how point spreads function, the team with the “minus points” is the favored team, and has the “point spread” deducted from their score at the end of the game. The final score adjusted by the point spread determines the winner of the bet.

If a team is favored by three points, they must win by more than three points to win a point spread bet.

You Can Win!

Of course you can play along with Bettin’ or Braggin! What kind of pro football picking game would Bettin’ or Braggin’ be if you couldn’t play?

You can win prizes! (We can’t. All SFBay staff can win are bragging rights over each other. In other words, priceless.)

But first, some rules:

• You’ll need to to pick at least six of the 17 weeks of the pro football season to be eligible to win a prize.
• We will pick all San Francisco and Oakland games in the regular season. All other games selected are at the sole discretion of SFBay.
• You play the game by posting your picks to the pre-selected pro football games in the comment thread of the SFBay Bettin’ or Braggin’ post each week. Your pick should consist of a city and a dollar amount for all six games. All your picks must be posted in a single comment.
• The deadline for entering Bettin’ or Braggin’ is Sunday, September 30 at 11:59 p.m. The deadline for submitting your picks is 10 a.m. Sunday (Pacific Time) each week. We won’t be picking Thursday games because Thursday pro football is bullshit.*
• The winner is the player who ends up with the most SFBay Bucks at the end of the pro football regular season. Sorry, SFBay Bucks have absolutely no cash value or equivalent.

* – Actually, we will be picking two Thursday games, the Seattle-San Francisco game Oct. 26 and the Denver-Oakland game Dec. 6. On those weeks, the deadline for weekly picks will be Thursday at 5 p.m. See why we don’t like Thursday games? Too complicated.

Fabulous Prizes

Third-place: SFBay black fleece hoodie, high quality. Nice stuff. $50 value.

Second-place: Limited-edition, authentic SFBay Golden Gate FC soccer shirt, customized with your name. $120 value.

First place: A green Joe Montana Notre Dame Adidas jersey, “True School Authentics,” Size 56. Very high quality retro-authentic heavy mesh. Brand-new, never-worn condition. All tags attached. Very collectible. $250 value.