Parts Unknown (DP--Disassociated Press): Week #3 of the 13th annual Bookie Challenge competition didn't see many handicappers from the Challenge field excel in their respective outings over the past weekend, but for the two main participants who did weather the storm, their respective handicapping performances were critical game-changers to their respective starts to the inchoate BC season. Leading the way this past weekend was dbucc, aka the Joker, who landed his first 6-point parlay hit of the season and also added a one-point exact score winner to register a 7-point outing, of which the scoring total was good enough to edge out rookie Hall of Fame City Kid for a critical week-won. Speaking of the aforementioned greenhorn, the newcomer finally got off the schneid and scored his first points of his Bookie Challenge debut after he connected on his first-ever 6-point parlay winner to finish his weekend with six total points. The parlay hits by both dbucc and HOF City Kid boosted each handicapper into contention for the battle to win one of the four-top seeds in the point standings at this year's all-important divisional seeding. In the case of dbucc, who this past weekend tallied his 8th overall points for the season, he ended his weekend tied with DIRTYBIRDS for the last top-seed slot in the standings, but the Joker technically finished the weekend in fifth place after losing the first regular-season tiebreaker edge of the competition to the Birdman (most best-bet wins--2 vs 1). As it pertains to the "Colt .45 Shooter", as HOF City Kid is known by his coined Bookie Challenge moniker, the rookie, with six total points accrued for the season, concluded his weekend in sixth place overall and just two points behind fifth-place dbucc. The only other handicapper of note who had a respectable outing this past weekend was Blitzkrieg, who connected on both of his best bets to finish his outing with four total points on the season and in seventh place in the Challenge point standings. As it concerned the rest of the participants from the Challenge field over the past weekend, just like kissing one's red-headed stepsister, they all had break-even outings after each split their respective best bets. The lone exception was moemonie, who goosed egged his outing. Of the 10 overall handicappers who each respectively eked out one point for their respective outings this past weekend, catman23 was one of them. However, the Tomcat from Handicapping Alley, despite failing to set an all-time record for nailing down the most 6-point parlay winners to start off a Challenge competition, he nonetheless maintained his four-point lead atop this year's early point standings. All in all, after this past weekend's handicapping action played out, the top-four front-runners presently in the standings are catman23 (14 pts), TCU (10 pts), DawgPound (9 pts) and officially DIRTYBIRDS (8 pts).

Of course, the big winners over the weekend were dbucc and HOF City Kid, both of whom easily stole the show by recording season-turning 6-pt parlay hits. But in what turned out to be a statistical anamoly, both handicappers were this past weekend's top scorers despite both ending the weekend with the worst best-bet records in the league, with dbucc finishing the weekend with a combined best-bet tally of 1-4-1 (.200 win %) for the season, while the City Kid concluded his outing with a horrific best-bet record of 0-5-1 (.000 win %) to start off his three-week greenhorn season. For dbucc, his poor best-bet start to this season is disturbingly out of character. Case in point, the Joker, now handicapping his 10th Bookie Challenge season, did not have a losing regular-season best-bet outing for his initial eight seasons, but that impressive streak was snapped in last year's regular season after he posted an 18-19-1 best-bet tally, which factored out to a subpar .486 winning percentage. For the majority of his Challenge career, dbucc's bread-and-butter handicapping regimen was his outstanding ability to consistently connect on best-bet winners, but that prowess has since lost its handicapping efficacy over the span of last year's competition and through the start of the first-three weeks of this year's handicapping campaign. To his credit, however, the Joker still entered this year's competition as the all-time leader for the league's top best-bet winning percentages for the regular season (.598), for the postseason (.536), and for the regular season and postseason combined (.578). But despite his lowly best-bet marks to start off this season, dbucc connected on a crucial 6-point parlay hit this past weekend, his 13th all-time for regular-season handicapping, and the parlay winner signified the earliest dbucc has ever registered a 6-point parlay hit throughout his 10 years in the competition. Previously, dbucc's earliest parlay winner to start off a competition was the 5th weekend of a contest, of which he accomplished twice before (Challenge yrs' #12 and #11). Not for nothing, but if dbucc resurrects his best-bet mojo and manages to connect on a few more 6-point parlay hits, the Challenge field had better watch out because when the Joker is on his handiccaping A-game it's no laughing matter. Lest anyone forgets, dbucc took it to the house just two seasons ago, in Challenge year #11, of which he had a storybook season that saw him take down his first-ever Bookie Challenge championship.

It should be needless to say that the Hall of Fame City Kid, or the second rookie entrant in this year's competition, has yet to prove he has the handicapping acumen to challenge the battle-tested veterans of the Bookie Challenge competition. In fact, after his hapless first-two weeks of handicapping his first-ever Challenge contest, his successive goose eggs to begin his rookie debut demonstrated the complete opposite, as in he appeared to be an unsettled handicapper whose handicapping game was a discombobulated nightmare. Entering this past weekend, and after going scoreless in the previous two weeks, he was at the ignominious brink of becoming the first rookie in the history of the Bookie Challenge to not register a point to start out the first-three weeks of a competition. And after the HOF City Kid missed both of his best bets in the early slate of games on this past Sunday--Vikings (+1) vs Chargers and the over in the game between the Titans and Browns (O40)--it looked as if he indeed was going to go down in history for having the worst three-week start to a rookie campaign. However, in that earlier slate of games from Sunday, the Kid did manage to connect on two of his three parlay selections--the Lions (-3) over the Falcons and the Browns (-3) over the Titans--and headed into Sunday night's game just needing the Steelers (+3) to cover against the Raiders to dodge a horrendous three-week fate. Subsequently, and to the delight of the City Kid, the Steelers' outright victory over the Raiders, in one fell swoop, transformed his start to his first Bookie Challenge competition from an inauspicious handicapping disaster into a conspicuous handicapping revival. However, even though the "Colt .45 Shooter" averted the worst all-tme start to a rookie season, he did manage to still set an all-time dreadful record but to a lesser degree, and one that comes with an ambiguous asterisk, so to speak. Specifically, although the HOF City Kid nailed down a 6-point parlay winner to snap his two-week goose-egg streak, he nonetheless became the first handicapper in the history of the competition, whether a veteran or rookie, to connect on a first and early-season 6-point parlay winner but without having recorded a best-bet winner on the season (the Kid ended past weekend with BB record of 0-5-1 with win% of .000).

Regardless of the paradoxical twist to the City Kid's outing from this past weekend, what's more important is the praise-worthy handicapping magnanimity that he exhibited, meaning he showed some grit and resilency after he rebounded from his deplorable two-week start to the season. In comparison, there has been a handful of past Bookie Challenge rookies who lacked the intestinal fortitude to stay the course after having atrocious starts to their respective seasons. For example, just last season, rookie braves72492, who scored one point in week #1 of his rookie debut, then went AWOL for weeks' #2 and #3, and subsequently followed that two-week hiatus with a goose egg in week #4 and a golden goose egg in week #5. Shamefully he bailed from the competition in week #6, and worse yet, he didn't even have the scrupulous dignity to honor his ante for the season. But the Hall of Fame City Kid has proven he has that Rudy Ruettiger-esque resolve, that bend-but-don't-break spirit that is a critical mind-set needed to compete in the Bookie Challenge competition, of which is an attribute that the majority of the handicappers from the Challenge field possess. That special characteristic is undoubtedly what the City Kid brings to the table, to the competition, and this past weekend he reaped the benefits of that never-say-die mentality. More to the point, after finally getting on the board this past weekend, the Colt .45 Shooter vacated the cellar of the point standings and leap-frogged over eight handicappers. Similiarly, dbucc did the same thing this past weekend by going from third-to-last in the standings and jumping over seven handicappers to finish the his weekend in a virtual tie for the fourth and final top seed. And don't look now, but the rookie upstart, that is to mean, the Hall of Fame City Kid, is presently in a better place in the point standings than some of the league's historically top-notch handicappers, the likes of the Biased Nihilist, Driveline, jcvike28, Blitzkrieg, and moemonie. If anything, if there is one takeaway from this past weekend that concerns the HOF City Kid, it is that from all appearances--the Bookie Challenge looks as if it has found a keeper, one that is almost certain to make some waves in his future of handicapping the Challenge competition.

In sum, only three weekends of this young Bookie Challenge competition are in the books. Therefore, as many veterans of the competition already know, the Bookie Challenge is a long and ardous competition and that on any given weekend the fortunes of ANY handicapper can quickly change, so imagine if a handicapper gets hot for two or three weekends? With that in mind, this season is barely underway and all handicappers in the league, especially those presently at the bottom tier of the standings, still have chances to impose their respectives wills in this year's competition and go on to produce some spectacular performances. In other words, "it ain't over until it's over."

• IN A DECISIVE NEAR-MISS OF A PARLAY WINNER, DALLAS DENIES CATMAN FROM SETTING AN ALL-TIME RECORD AND TYING ANOTHER ONE: The NFL in week #3 had its handful of usual upsets, but a few of them were shockers that ultimately doomed the parlay hopes of several handicappers in the Bookie Challenge competition. Additionally, the fans of the NFL were treated to a nearly record-setting devastation of a team after the Dolphins (7 pt favorites on the parlay line) totally dismantled the Broncos in stunning fashion after they embarrassed them to the tune of an unbelievable 70-20 slaughter. But as it concerned outright upsets over the weekend, the Texans (+9) defeated the Jaguars 37-17 and the Cardinals (+13) soundly trounced the Cowboys by a 28-16 final. In tandem with the two aforementioned outright upsets by the Texans and Cardinals, several other teams were complicit this past weekend in obliterating the parlay combinations of six overall Bookie Challenge handicappers. The Vikings' inexcusable play calls and time management in the waning minutes of their game against the Chargers cost jcvike28 a much-needed parlay hit and also screwed Blitzkrieg's bid to produce this year's first PERFECTA outing. In the case of jcvike, a die hard Vikings fan, he got to experience the Vikings' dispiriting loss first hand, as he was in Minnesota and attended the back-and-forth thriller. In other near-misses of parlay combos, the Jaguars loss derailed DIRTYBIRDS' combo, the Packers failure to cover its 2-point spread as favorites versus the Saints ruined moemonie's shot to hit a parlay, and the Seahawks' late 4th-quarter offensive explosion eliminated the Biased Nihilist's chance for a parlay trifecta. But none of the aforementioned near-misses came close to the importance of the near-miss suffered by catman. His near-miss had a significantly pivotal effect as to who would become the clear-cut favorite to capture the number-one overall top seed at this year's divisional seeding.

  For starters, it has to be a given that the Tomcat from Handicapping Alley was smiling like a Cheshire cat after knocking down two of his three parlay picks in the early slate of games on this past Sunday. In absolute laughers, his picks of the Dolphins to cover against the Broncos and his selection of the Chiefs to beat the spread over a sickly Bears team were runaway winners that had him ready to smoke another victory cigar. All the catman needed was a Cowboys pointspread victory over the Cardinals in Sunday's second slate of games to secure a third-consecutive 6-point parlay hit to open this season, and in the process, set the all-time record for becoming not only the first handicapper in the history of the competition to start off a regular season with three-straight 6-point winners but also he would have tied Theopholis' all-time record for nailing down three 6-point parlay hits in a row. More importantly for thr Tomcat, another parlay winner would have given him an undisputable lead in the Challenge point standings, a double-digit lead to be exact, and would have also given him an insuperable lead in the chase to seize the number-one overall top seed at this year's divisional seeding. Instead, all those high hopes were dashed after the Cowboys' lackluster outing demolished his dreams of taking total control of this year's competition, or at least for a good portion of the upcoming weeks. Fortunately for a reinvented catman, he was still able to at least maintain his 4-point lead atop the of the point standing after his nearest persuers in the standings--TCU, DawgPound, and DIRTYBIRDS--all failed to connect on their respective 6-point parlay combinations also.



• WEEKLY TICKER......Blitzkrieg ends weekend with league-leading best-best record of 4-1-1, good for a phenomenal .800 win percentage! A notoriously slow starter to his starts of annual competitions, with the exception of Challenge year #10, the 3-week best-bet start to this season is Blitzkrieg's best ever.....The 10 overall break-even 1-1-0 best-bet tallies from the Challenge field this past weekend were a season high so far for this year's competition.....RIDDLE ME THIS, BATMAN: It's downright incomprehensible that all handicappers from the Challenge field have not posted their exact-score selections for the Thursday night games, especially when seeing that the new exact-score rules now in effect for this season have more possibilities to score extra points. After having 10 handicappers each submit 10 exact-score picks for the first-two weeks of this season, this past weekend the entries dipped slightly to nine overall selections. Incredibly, the only participant who has yet to post an exact-score entry for all 3 Thursday night games has been DIRTYBIRDS.....