Parts Unknown (DP--Disassociated Press): Over many of the past Bookie Challenge seasons, and over the many weekly reviews penned within those seasons, it has been reiterated many times how each Bookie Challenge competition is unique in its own ways. No two Bookie Challenge seasons are ever the same, and this year's competition is no different. After handicapping week #7 of this year's competition, or the penultimate weekend before this year's divisional seeding takes place this upcoming weekend, the final showdown for this season's four top seeds at this year's divisional seeding promises to end with a bang. Or will it? One ting is for certain that's going to happen, seeing as moemonie is the only participant in this year's Bookie Challenge roster who has won two number-one overall top seeds in two different seasons in the history of the Bookie Challenge, it is guaranteed that a new participant will win an overall number-one top seed, and it's because moemonie has mathematically been eliminated form winning this year's prime top seed. What a damn shame it is, too, because this season, for the first time ever, a cash award of $50 from this year's Latinum jackpot is going to be doled out to this year's eventual winner of the overall number-one top seed. Right now, the top four handicappers who are occupying the present top-four slots of the current point standings are Blitzkrieg (#1 top seed/24pts), Driveline (#2 seed/21pts), 7mick7 (#3 seed/18pts, and DawgPound (#4 seed/16pts), and a few other handicappers beneath the aforementioned group are in the hunt mathematically to snatch a top seed in the standings: HOF City Kid (5th place/15 pts) and the Nihilist (6th place/15 pts). On the outer periphery to sneak into a top seed at this year's divisional seeding, but have tougher odds of making the elite group, are Vikings 17 and rookie Jets69, both of whom will need PERFECTA outings and a little help from exact-score points, of which as of the release of this weekly review will have only Monday night's exact-score left for a chance to add game-changing points before this year's divisional seeding is over with.

It's no doubt that the point standings appear to be very tight when looking at the top tier of the standings--Blitzkrieg (24pts), Driveline (21pts), 7mick7 (18 pts), and DawgPound (16 pts). But, a closer look reveals the unmitigated truth, of which is that Blitzkrieg has the best path to winning this year's overall number-one seed or his first-ever number-one top seed. Hell, even if he goose eggs, the contestants that trail him in the standings are going to have to win at least three points or more this upcoming weekend to unseat the Snowman and his Falcon from the top perch of the Bookie Challenge point standings. The one handicapper who can ruin Blitzkrieg's parade this upcoming weekend is Driveline, who over the last four years before this season has turned into one of the league's most dexterous handicappers, one of whom is very capable of pulling off a much-needed miracle at this year's all-important divisional seeding round. Realistically, the upcoming battle for this year's number-one top seed can easily be predicted as one to be settled by Blitzkrieg and Driveline. But here's the rub, Blitzkrieg can seal his fate by hitting a third 6-point parlay winner, while Driveline can do the same by landing a 6-point parlay hit of his own and then hopes that Blitzkrieg doesn't produce a 6-point parlay winner. However, interestingly, both handicappers are the first this season to hit back-to-back 6-point parlay hits entering this week #8 showdown. In other words, for either handicapper to put away the other handicapper, it might have to take a third-straight parlay hit by either handicapper. That's not going to be easy to do, and Bookie Challenge history says as much, as in only one handicapper in the history of the competition has connected on three consecutive 6-point parlay winners, of whom was Theopholis. Sadly, Theo is no longer a member of the competition because of recent health issues. Amazingly, Theo set the all-time streak of three consecutive parlay hits back in Challenge year #2. In any case, Blitzkrieg knocked down his second consecutive 6-point parlay hit this past weekend, which marked the third time this season he has nailed down a 6-point parlay combination (wk #1 was his 1st parlay hit this year).

What can be deemed as extraordinary feats in Bookie Challenge history is how both Blitzkrieg and Driveline have both notched back-to-back 6-point parlay hits throughout their respective Bookie Challenge careers, so it would be hard to write both of them off when it comes to the possibility of either one to hammer out a third 6-point parlay hit in a row, with Blitzkrieg repeating the phenomenal feat more times than Driveline has. To be specific, the last time the Snowman hit back-to-back 6-point outings was back in Challenge year #11, when he pulled off the tremendous feat twice that season (once in wks' #12 and #13 and once in wks #15 and #16). But that's not the half of it, for Blitzkrieg hit on back-to-back 6-point parlay winners in Challenge year #9 (wks #11 and #12), Challenge year #7 (wks' #7 and #8), and in Challenge year #6 (wks' #13 and #14). As it concerns Driveline, he nailed down the feat in last year's competition, in Challenge year #13, when he hit consecutive 6-point parlay hits in weeks' #15 and #16. Additionally, over the span of the last-two postseasons, the Fisher of Winners (aka Driveline), hit a round #2 6-point parlay winner and in round #3 of the same playoffs he connected on a 3-point parlay hit. Amazingly, Driveline pulled off the same stunt, in the same exact rounds of the postseason of Challenge year #12. So when given the aforementioned parlay hits of both Blitzkrieg and Driveline, one can easily see that this year's divisional seeding round promises to be off the charts.

One last handicapper who nailed a 6-point parlay winner this past weekend (wk #7) was the Hall-of-Fame City kid, who only registered six points for his outing after he failed to connect on both of his best bets. Regardless, the 6-point outing enabled the HOF City Kid, who is now handicapping his sophomore season in the Bookie Challenge, to gain his 15th point on the season and tie the Biased Nihilist in the point standings. In an odd tidbit, this year's 6-point parlay hit was only the City Kid's second of his 2-year Challenge career. Coincidentally. his only 6-point parlay winner of his rookie season also resulted in a 6-point outing after he failed to connect on both of his best bets. But when comparing his rookie season to his sophomore season of this year's competition, the Hall-of-Fame City Kid is faring much better in this year's handicapping campaign than he had in his rookie season of last year's contest. In fact, it's almost unbelievable how different the City Kid's handicapping has been when compared to his greenhorn season. Specifically, after the first-seven weeks of this year's competition, the City Kid has only submitted 6-point parlay combinations, which was far from being the case in his rookie season. If one can imagine it, the Hall-of-Fame City Kid only attempted to connect on 6-point parlay hits on three separate weekends, of which were weeks' #1, #3, and #4 of last year's contest. Incredibly, from week #4 until the end of last year's regular season, of which was 16 straight weekends, the City Kid only attempted to hit 3-point parlay combinations, and when adding week #2 to the total, the City Kid attempted to knock down 3-point parlay combinations in 17 total outings. What turned out to be a strange twist of fate, was that the City Kid, who attempted to win 6-point parlay combinations in weeks' #1, #3, and #4 of last year's competition, hit his only parlay winner in week #3, of which he landed a 6-point parlay hit (his first ever parlay winner). Another interesting tidbit about the City Kid is that besides the two 6-point weekends in which he only connected on 6-point parlay hits, the most points the City Kid scored in a regular-season outing was the 14 points he accrued on Thanksgiving day of last year's Turkey Shoot weekend, of which was an outing that contained a boat load of propositional points. Regardless, the weekend was an electrifying outing for the Hall-of-Fame City Kid because he set an all-time rookie scoring record for a Thanksgiving Day outing, which was a whopping 14 points. To his credit, The City Kid is holding his own in this year's competition, and presently, he is a bona fide contender so far in this year's competition. Without question, the City Kid's season this year has been quite the turnaround, quite the story. Unfortunately for the City Kid, however, there is already one handicapper who is presently being coined as this season's feel-good story--and that would be Blitzkrieg's story.

• SOME CHALLENGE VETERANS--AND ROOKIES ALIKE--ARE STILL SQUANDERING EXACT-SCORE PREDICTIONS FOR THURSDAY NIGHT AND MONDAY NIGHT GAMES: It just makes no damn sense whatsoever! There are still handicappers in this year's competition who are failing to post exact-scores, with Thursday night's exact-score predictions far outdistancing Monday night's exact-score selections. In fact, it's not even close! As of this release of the weekly review, the exact-score predictions for Thursday night games, to include this past Thursday night game between the Vikings and Rams, outnumber the exact-score picks for the Monday night games by a total number 24 games. Yes, as head-scratching as it is, a total of 13 handicappers (out of 16) have missed posting either a Thursday night exact-score or a Monday night game exact-score. Heck, and much to the disbelief of the league's two administrators, the Biased Nihilist and 7mick7, one of those 13 handicappers who have missed posting exact scores, has been Realtalkrob--a rookie, of course!--of whom missed posting both Thursday night and Monday night exact scores. Not to be totally outdone, it took another rookie, CAP_ATTACK to be the only other handicapper in the Bookie Challenge to miss the exact-score predictions of three Monday night games. In the case of Realtalkrob, however, his two failures for posting two Monday night games, were shamefully disqualified because he didn't correctly post his exact-score picks. For example, in two exact-score predictions for the Monday night games, he posted one game's pointspread for his exact-score of two Monday night affairs. For example, in the first weekend of the regular season, Realtalkrob failed to post his exact-score for the Thursday night opener, then turned around and posted his Monday night exact score as follows: San Francisco -4 over the New York Jets. And to think, he posted the spread of a second Monday night game in the same way.

  As a matter of record, Realtalkrob botched his exact-score selections a league high of five times. So not surprisingly, he has been one of only three handicappers who has not yet scored any exact-score points so far this season, with the other two handicappers being the Hall-of-Fame City Kid and Kr@tos (another rookie!). Also for the record, only three handicappers made all of their respective exact-score predictions on the season: Vikings17 (a 5pt XS and a 2pt XS for a total of 7pts), the Biased Nihilist (1pt XS), and 7mick7 (1pt x2 for a total 2 pts). All things considered, there are handicappers in the competition that don't believe the importance of posting exact-score predictions, mainly because they're hard to get right, and when breaking it all down, it just seems statistically fruitless. With that being said, the truth of the matter is that even a one-point exact-score hit is tantamount to winning a best bet. Even more eye-popping is that a total of 27 overall exact-score points have been scored so far in this year's contest. What's more, top seeds from a divisional seeding, divisional titles, regular-season championships, and even the two top slots of a complete playoff round have been determined by one point on many occasions. In fact, too many times has one point made a critical difference in the point standing, which is too many times to ignore posting exact-scores. The bottom line is that one would have to be a complete fool not to submit all of his exact-score predctions--end of story!



• WEEKLY TICKER ..................After losing both of his best bets in week #7, jcvike28 no longer leads the league with the top best-bet tally, so his ambition to at least pull out this year's Swami award took a sharp hit after last weekend's outing. Now with a best-record on the season of 10-4-0 (win% .714), jcvike is presently tied with 7mick7 for the league's top best-bet marks after the Mick won both of his best bets this past weekend. Also surprisingly hanging in there to take down this year's Swami award is the Hall-of-Fame City Kid, who is by far proving to be a more dangerous best-bet handicapper than he was in last year's competition, or his rookie season (17-19-2/w% .472)......................This year's 14th annual Bookie Challenge competition hasn't been nowhere near gratifying for three struggling veteran handicappers of the competition--TCU, dbucc, and moemonie--all three of whom are failing to be in contention for the top-four seeds at this year's divisional seeding, and never mind pulling out this year's first cash prize of $50 in the upcoming week. Now granted, seven regular-season weeks does not make for a Bookie Challenge season, but each weekend that TCU, dbucc, and moemonie fail to wake up from their handicapping slumbers, the harder things will be if they want to embark on comeback attempts and salvage their respective seasons, albeit that there is still plenty of time for the three veteran participants to turn around their respective handicapping seasons. Sadly, at the present juncture of this year's handicapping contest, neither one of the three aforementioned handicappers are currently in any major contention for a Bookie Challenge championship. To be exact, all three handicappers are near the bottom tier of the point standings and each are tied with eight points apiece on the year. Worse, the only handicappers below them in the point standings are four rookies, which is an embarrassing state to be in for a veteran handicapper of the Bookie Challenge competition..............