Parts Unknown (DP--Disassociated Press): On this past weekend, the 4th weekend of this year's 16th annual Bookie Challenge competition, 8-veteran handicapper DawgPound finally got back into the swing of things after rejoining this year's competition. The "Dog-Day-Afternoon" handicapper (aka DawgPound) connected on a season-changing PERFECTA outing this past weekend to finish off his week with a league-leading eight points, and as a result, he barely edged out Vikings17 (7-pt outing) by one point to get credited with the "week-won". In the case of Vikings17, his 6-point parlay hit and one best-bet winner skyrocketed him up the point standings after he concluded his outing with 12 overall points on the season, of which the fortunate tally enabled him to the finish the weekend in second place overall, just two points behind his son kr@tos , who is presently the first-place leader in the competition's point standings (Kr@tos 14 pts on the year). Obviously, Vikings17 wasn't the only participant over the past weekend to rapidly rise up the point standings, as DawgPound's PERFECTA outing also enabled him to quickly climb up the point standings. Subsequently, after the "Top Dawg" registered his 8-point tally for the week, he finished his outing possessing the fifth overall top seed at the top of the point standings. Not for nothing, but ultimately finishing with one of the five top seeds after this year's divisional takes place at the conclusion of the eighth week of the regular season is a big deal, especially for the handicapper who wins the overall number-one top seed. Unless a Bookie Challenge participant is from Boulder, Colorado, and has been living under a rock for the first four weeks of this season, the winner of the overall top seed after this year's divisional seeding will not only pocket a cool &100 but he will also get seeded with two of the league's low-energy handicappers, of which the fortunate seeding will almost assure him to win a divisional title and possibly also corral the regular-season championship (comes with $150 prize). On the whole, it was also a pretty good handicapping weekend for the Bookie Challenge field, as it finally got on the scoreboard, so to speak, after it recorded its first winning best-bet outing on the season. Additionally, after the field had only connected on one exact-prediction before heading into this past weekend's handicapping action, on this past weekend the Challenge field exploded with a flurry of one-point exact-score winners, as in seven overall handicappers produced one-point exact-score winners and one handicapper, 7mick7, connected on both ends of his exact-score predictions to finish his weekend with two points off exact-scores. Recently, the league has seen some crooked point totals and 7mick7 added to that freaky point-scoring anomaly after he ended this past weekend to the with an overall 4-point tally.

Overall, however, the weekend belonged to the two leading scorers, DawgPound (8 pts) and Vikings17 (7 pts), as both handicappers each seemingly shot themselves out of a canon and got themselves into one of the five prime spots in the top tier of the point standings. DawgPound, in particular, leaped frogged nine slots in the point standings to claim the fifth overall top seed, going from 3rd to last in the bottom of the standings to 5th place overall. In doing so, he displaced the Nihilist for the fifth top seed after the Nihilist goose egged his outing and finished in 6th place in the point standings after ending his weekend with nine points on the season. A disappointed Nihilist saw both of his all-time consecutive streaks come to screeching halts after 33 straight weeks of scoring at least one point and after going 33 weeks in a row without laying a goose egg nor golden goose egg. Getting back to DawgPound, the sudden turn around to this season by the "Dog-Day-Afternoon Handicapper" was a much needed boost of confidence for DawgPound, who rebounded from his egregious antics in last year's competition, in which he and his step brother (HOF City Kid)each quit the competition before the start of the 9th week of last year's regular season. What was even more worse back then was that both handicappers shamefully abandoned the competition without submitting their respective membership fees, of which is big no-no that could result in a permanent ban from the Bookie Challenge competition if a handicapper repeatedly quits without paying his membership fees.

However, much to his credit, this past weekend DawgPound was able to shake the rust off his long absence from the Bookie Challenge after he blasted the competition's first PERFECTA of the season to get himself back into serious contention for this year's overall number-one top seed. DawgPound, who is a huge Cleveland Browns' fan, started his week out by taking the Browns as one of his best bets on the Thursday night game between Cleveland and Pittsburgh to start week #4. He then hit a scintillating 6-point parlay winner in the early slate of games of this past Sunday, with one of those winning parlay selections coming courtesy of the Los Angeles Rams' spectacular come-from-behind cover over the Philadelphia Eagles as 3-point road favorites (Rams won 24-20). DawgPound's other two parlay winners were each a breeze as Jacksonville (+3) held off Cincinnati 22-17 and Chicago bounced the New York Jets 23-12. The Dog-Day-Afternoon Handicapper would complete his PERFECTA outing in the second slate of Sunday's games after the San Francisco (-3) finally broke away from a stubborn Los Angeles Chargers team to win by a final of 24-14.

As to Vikings17's stupendous weekend, he connected on a daring 6-point parlay winner that was composed of three over/under selections. He also added one best-bet winner after Las Vegas covered it's 4½ underdog pointspread against Kansas City. The Chiefs barely defeated the Raiders and enabled Vikings17 to finish his weekend with seven total points. But it was the three over/under parlay selections that "carried the day" for the Purple People Eater after he daringly took all of his selected games to go over the pointspread totals: KC/LV-over 48 points (KC won 30-27), Det/Car-over 52 points (Car won 32-26), and Atl/NO-over 42 (Atl won 45-24). As can readily seen by his three over/under games, he never had to sweat any of the totals going over their respective over/under point spreads, especially the past Monday night game in which Atlanta creamed New Orleans 45-24. The over/under selection by Vikings17 for the game between the Falcons and Saints to go over turned out to be a brilliant pick, as the Falcons by themselves scored more than the over/under pointspread total of 42 points! What's more, it didn't come as a big surprise that Vikings17 won his parlay combination consisting of all over/under picks because he and TCU by far select more over/under selections than any other handicappers in the league, and they're both pretty good at winning over/unders. But overall, ever since Vikings17 joined the Bookie Challenge competition, with this year's competition being his fourth season, he has been one of the league's better handicappers. In fact, the Purple People Eater is the only handicapper in the history of the Bookie Challenge to win regular-season championships in his first-two Bookie Challenge competitions, but his handicapping heroics doesn't end there. Amazingly, Vikings17 has been so steady a handicapper ever since he burst on to the Bookie Challenge scene that he has won divisional titles in each of his first-three seasons participating in the competition, and if it weren't for the Nihilist beating him out for last year's regular-season championship--Vikings17 would've incredibly won a regular-season championship in each of first-three seasons! The only reason he didn't win last year's regular-season championship was because in last year's regular season the Biased Nihilist set a new all-time regular-season scoring record when accrued 55 points in last year's regular season.

What's presently more important for Vikings17 is that he finished this past weekend just two points from the overall lead of the Bookie Challenge competition, and interestingly it's his very own son, Kr@tos, who Vikings17 trails for the present number-one overall seed in the point standings (Kr@tos 14 pts vs Vikings17 12 pts). As it stands heading into week #5's handicapping action, the top five seeds are as follows: Kr@tos 14 pts (#1 seed), Vikings17 12 pts (#2 seed), JamesGang 10 pts (#3 seed), Driveline 10 pts (#4 seed--loses tiebreker to JamesGang--mosst best-bet wins), and DawgPound 10 pts (#5 seed). What needs to be noted, this past weekend, both Kr@tos (#1 seed) and Driveline (#4 seed) both laid golden goose egg outings, meaning they each lost five different selections, but each was spared the ignonimity of going scoreless for their respective weekends after each handicapper lucked out and each scored a one-point exact-score winner. What's also noteworthy is the surprising season that rookie JamesGang is so far putting together, as he is presently in third place in the point standings and is technically holding down the third overall top seed over former champion Driveline, which is impressive for the newcomer to be in betwwen two former Bookie Challenge champions in the point standings, meaning Vikings17 and Driveline. Of course, the jury is still out as it concerns the upstart rookie JamesGang, who was ironically recruited by Driveline, or the very handicapper JamesGang is battling to beat out in the upper echelon of this year's point standings.