Bettin’ or Braggin’: Bankroll go boom

How does the saying go? The higher the risk, the higher the reward?

It’s true in business, and yes, it’s true in the world of Bettin’ or Braggin’.

As the pro football season stampedes into its second half, many of us have stepped our bets up a notch or three. And why we may hit an occasional big winner, a stinker week with big bets can sink your battleship. Yikes.

All Bettin’ or Braggin’ players had losing tallies in Week 10. SFBay reader ParksideGreg dropped $3,400 SFBay bucks while traveling in Japan. I guess it’s true, everything is really expensive there.

All of us SFBay staffers suffered the same fate: $500 losses. My two big cover hopes — San Francisco and New England — sputtered mightily. Mighty Houston, on the other hand, covered against overrated Chicago, saving my bacon.

Ali T. lost big on New England but balanced his losses with winning bets on Baltimore and Denver, while Chelena G. got swept, save her wise pick of Baltimore against Oakland.

This week presents a few home dogs and some pretty ugly numbers. My against-the-grain lock is Indianapolis against New England. I’m picking them to win outright, so covering the nine shouldn’t be a problem.

Also, with New Orleans and Oakland moving in (predictably) opposite directions, 4-1/2 shouldn’t be too tough for New Orleans to cover.

As with all things gambling, though, there are no guarantees. Lay down your bets and enjoy the action.

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	12,600	-500
Chelena	9,500	-500
Ali	8,800	-500

Week 11

Game	Ali	Chelena	Jesse
Chicago at San Francisco (-5 1/2)	SF 200	SF 100	SF 600
New Orleans (-4 1/2) at Oakland	NO 1000	NO 200	NO 800
San Diego at Denver (-8)	SD 200	DEN 100	DEN 200
Indianapolis at New England (-9)	IND 200	IND 100	IND 1000
New York (A) at St. Louis (- 3 1/2)	STL 200	STL 100	NY 200
Baltimore (-3 1/2) Pittsburgh	BAL 500	BAL 100	PIT 500

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 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.