Parts Unknown (DP--Disassociated Press): Don't look now, but this year's rookies are slowly starting to make waves in the 16th annual Bookie Challenge competition. In the previous weekend of week #2, JamesGang had hit on his first-career 6-point parlay winner, and as a result, he immediately shot up the overall point standings to put himself in serious contention to possibly win one of the five top seeds at this year's divisional seeding, which will take place at the conclusion of week #8 of this year's regular season. Also to note about JamesGang's overall 7-point outing in week #2, is that he became the first participant this season to be credited with a "week-won" after he had edged out a red-hot kr@tos by one point to capture the week outright. Flash forward to this past weekend, and lo and behold, for the second consecutive week a rookie once again got credited with a "week won" after rookie Jonnybucs won the weekend outright, and did as much by producing a rare 4-point outing. Specifically, the "Floridian Pirate" (Jonathon's new and well deserved Bookie Challenge moniker) was able to collect the odd sum of four points after he connected on a seldom attempted 3-point parlay combination and after he also nailed down one best-bet winner. Elsewhere around the league, a previously red-hot scorching handicapper, Kr@tos, goosed egged his outing but still managed to cling to first place in the competition's point standings. However, the scoreless outing by the Handicapping God of War (Kr@tos) enabled all of his closest pursuers to nudge closer to his league-leading 13 points. Markedly, the four closest pursuers in the point standing who trail Kr@tos for the overall lead in the standings are all presently occupying the final four top seeds in the standings: 2nd-place/2nd seed Driveline (10 pts), technically in 3rd place/3rd seed JamesGang (also 10 pts--but loses tiebreaker to Driveline), 4th-place/4th seed the Biased Nihilist (9pts), and 5th-place/5th seed Matty_Ice (8 pts). Underneath the group of the five top seeds are three handicappers--Vikings17, jcvike28, and Jonnybucs--who are each tied for 6th place in the point standings with five points apiece. But after incorporating the league's tiebreakers to break the 3-way tie, the technical order in the point standings of the three aforementioned handicappers are as follows: Vikings17 in 6th-place, jcvike28 in 7th place, and Jonnybucs in 8th place. What's important to remember is that although Vikings17, jcvike28, and Jonnybucs are all three points from occupying a top seed in the standings, they are all presently a PERFECTA's distance from Kr@tos's overall lead in the point standings.

All things considered, the big story of this past weekend was how rookie Jonnybucs, aka the "Floridian Pirate", was finally able to get his footing underneath him after having an inauspicious start to the first-two weeks of his rookie debut. To illustrate just how wishy-washy was Jonnybucs' start to this season, and even though he had managed a best-bet winner in his first outing of his Bookie Challenge career, he botched his week #1 preseason Super Bowl picks and had them all disqualified. Having no preseason Super Bowl selections to take into a Bookie Challenge postseason could have a detrimental effect to a participants chance's to take it to the house and win an overall Bookie Challenge championship. In any event, as an encore to Jonnybucs' opening-week disaster, he only posted one best bet in week #2 and he also submitted a three-team parlay combination that included his only best bet in the combination, thus he created a parlay combo that was worth only three points. Nobody except Jonnybucs knows if his three-team parlay combination in week #2 was an inadvertent posting mistake or if it was a strategically intentional attempt at a 3-point parlay winner. However, after this past weekend (wk #3), after Jonnybucs created a second-consecutive 3-point parlay combination, it became obvious that he entered this past weekend compelled to start his rookie season by shooting for 3-point parlay winners, or at least that's what can be surmised after seeing Jonnybucs' sets of weekly picks for the second and third weeks of this year's regular season. Surprisingly, in just his third week of his first-ever Bookie Challenge competition, the "Floridian Pirate" caught the Challenge field off-guard after he grinded out the following 3-point parlay winner: KC -10 (over Mia), Buff -7 (over LA Chargers), and the NY Giants -3 (over Tenn). He also doubled down on the G-men as his only best bet selection to win a 4th point on the weekend.

Because Jonnybucs is a rookie in this year's competition, he's probably oblivious to the fact that, by far, the vast majority of the league's handicappers overwhelmingly submit 6-point parlay combinations throughout a Bookie Challenge competition. In fact, the last 3-point parlay combination that was undertaken in the Bookie Challenge was attempted by Kr@tos, who utilized the rare 3-point stratagem in the first week of last year's competition (Challenge year #15)--AND HE NAILED IT! But before Kr@tos gunned down his 3-point parlay to start off last year's competition, the previous time anyone connected on a 3-point parlay winner since Kr@tos' parlay winner was eight years prior, in Challenge year #7. Back then, a two-year participant named "ibbill" produced a 3-point parlay winner in week #8 of that year's regular season, but ibbill's story makes for a strong argument as to why 3-point parlay attempts should be tried sparingly, very sparingly. What first has to be pointed out about ibbill and his unusual penchant for submitting 3-point parlay combinations is that he easily holds the all-time Bookie Challenge record for attempting the most 3-point parlay combinations in the history of the competition. For example, in his rookie season of Challenge year #6, ibbill attempted 3-point parlay combinations for 12-straight weeks, from week #3 through week #13 (2nd outing of that yr's Turkey Shoot), but he only connected on one of those 12 consecutive attempts, of which his only 3-point parlay winner occurred in week #7 of that year's regular season. Interestingly, however, after his last 3-point parlay attempt in week #13 of his rookie season of Challenge year #6, ibbill at the time was so far behind in his divisional race that he had no other option but to abandon his 3-point parlay combinations and start going after the 6-point combos. In a head scratcher, he managed to connect on a 6-point parlay winner on the last week of his rookie season of Challenge year #6 for a 7-point outing. Oddly, ibbill's second season and last season of his short Bookie Challenge career saw the two-year veteran attempt to duplicate the same flawed handicapping pattern from his rookie season of Challenge year #6. And so it went in Challenge year #7 that ibbill submitted 3-point parlay combinations for the first-nine weeks of that year's regular season, with him winning only one 3-point parlay winner in week #8. Unbelievably, almost as if on cue, ibbill would connect on two 6-point parlay hits later on in the regular season of Challenge year #7, with one of them being a PERFECTA outing! In sum, which should probably be some food for thought for Jonnybucs, ibbill attempted 21 overall 3-point parlay combinations in the two years he participated in the Bookie Challenge competition and he only connected on two of those 3-point parlay attempts. Conversely, he knocked down THREE 6-point parlay winners during that same two-year time frame.

• VETERAN PARTICIPANTS AND ROOKIES ALIKE ARE ALREADY UNDERESTIMATING EXACT-SCORE SELECTIONS! Here we go again, meaning that participants in this year's Bookie Challenge competition, especially the veterans, have seem to already sunk into that handicapping funk in which they don't respect the league's exact-score selections. So a little history is needed to nudge handicappers back into the right direction, as in you've got to make the weekly exact-score selections--every week, twice week!--if you don't want to possibly miss out on some critical points. The thing to remember is that a one-point exact score hit is as good as winning a one-point best-bet. Let that sink for a while! Previous to Challenge year #12, the only way a handicapper could score points off an exact-score selection was if he got the exact score of a game exactly right, meaning a participant had to predict the scores of both teams and also predict the winning team of the exact score to win five points--period! But starting from Challenge year #12 until the present, handicappers can now win exact-score hits worth five points (exact score of both teams), two points (exact score of game wrong winning team), and one point (exact score of one of the teams). If there are handicappers who haven't yet connected the dots, and have yet to realize the importance of not missing an exact-score prediction, he had better get with the program. Just as an example, in last year's competition (yr #15), there were three 5-point exact scores won, five two-point exact scores won, and a whooping 44 one-point exact scores won. What's really strange, there are participants who for some damn reason have become regulars for missing weekly exact-score selections, such as catman23, the Hall-of-Fame City Kid, jcvike28, and Blitzkrieg, just to name a few. Wait! From the looks of it so far this season, Matty_Ice can now be added to that group of regulars, and that's because he has already missed three exact-score selections this season, which includes missing this past Thursday night's exact score to start week #4. Now granted, to start off this year's exact-score selections through the first two weekends, nobody from this year's Challenge field won any points off their respective exact-score predictions. Then the same thing happened to start off the first exact-score game of week #3, as in nobody connected on any exact scores again. Mercifully , however, two-year Kennypie86 knocked down the first exact-score on the Monday night game that ended week #3. What's mind-boggling is that Kenny's exact-score hit opened the flood gates to start off this weekend's action, as a season high of five handicappers each scored a one-point exact-score winner on this past Thursday night's exact-score game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cleveland Browns. Ironically, two of the five handicappers who kknocked down exact-score winners were Blitzkrieg and the HOF City Kid, or two of the handicappers who have a reputation for missing exact-score picks. And just to get an idea of how important a role exact-score predictions can affect the competition, also connecting on an exact-score point on this past Thursday night was Kr@tos, whose seemingly innocous one-point exact-score winner increased his lead to four points in the point standings heading into this upcoming games on Sunday and Monday. Moral of this story? DON'T MISS EXACT-SCORE SELECTIONS!




• WEEKLY TICKER .................Due to time constraints and because all the major highlights from this past weekend have already been documented in this weekly review, this section is being canceled but will be back in next week's weekly review. Bet on it!