Bettin’ Or Braggin’: Easy come, easy go

It took six weeks to play out, but big bets finally led to big trouble in the world of Bettin’ or Braggin’.

Three of our four unanimous picks crashed in flames, with only St. Louis eking out a win by a half-point. And two of those games took four-figure-sized chunks out of Bettin’ or Braggin’ players’ bankrolls.

All three losses looked bleak from the outset.

Oakland fought tough against Atlanta, leading at halftime before losing by just three.

Baltimore’s defense lost Ray Lewis and Lardarius Webb while allowing Dallas to steamroll them for 29 points Sunday. Dallas could have won if not for a botched two-point conversion. I put 2,000 SFBay Bucks on Baltimore to cover 3-1/2 points. Wrong.

And San Francisco? Their humiliating defeat told the entire football world they’re not as good as they think they are. We all took a bath on this one, with SFBay reader ParksideGreg blowing 5,000 SFBay Bucks on the home team. ParkSideGreg still leads SFBay readers with 10,900 SFBay Bucks.

Chelena’s slow-and-steady strategy is looking savvier by the day, as a $500 loss still leaves her plenty of breathing room.

Ali, meanwhile, rode Week Six right down the middle. He went 3-3 and ends up the week even.

We’re not big fans of Thursday football, but are rushing this Bettin’ or Braggin’ out the door early because San Francisco hosts Seattle in yet another iteration of the What’s Your Deal Bowl. Forget Jim Schwartz, we predict the Jim Harbaugh-Pete Carroll postgame handshake remains one of the iciest — and most anticipated — in the game.

As for the number, well, these western conference games can be wacky, and defenses stingy. We’re split toward Seattle in this one, with only Chelena siding with the home team.

We’re also split on Jacksonville-Oakland, with Chelena siding with the road team. Small bets all around mean we still can’t trust Oakland with much of anything.

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	11,500	-2,300
Chelena	9,200	-500
Ali	9,000	+0

Week Seven

Game	Ali	Chelena	Jesse
Seattle  at San Francisco (-7)	SEA 100	SF 100	SEA 200
Jacksonville at Oakland (-4)	OAK 100	JAX 100	OAK 200
Arizona at Minnesota (-6)	MIN 200	MIN 100	MIN 200
Washington at New York (N) (-6 1/2)	WAS 200	WAS 100	NY 300
Tennessee at Buffalo (-3)	TEN 200	BUF 100	TEN 200
Cleveland at Indianapolis (-3)	IND 300	IND 100	IND 1000

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.