Fortune Favours The Brave… Until It Doesn’t
When enjoying a couple (or about 10) cold beverages with a friend, the friend (who is very much in this pool) asked for advice on who to take in his Survivor pool. I’m sure most of you at least notionally know of these pools, so won’t belabour that point. He was contemplating taking the Niners as his pick for this week which (of course) makes all the sense in the world: the Niners were 10.5 point favourites at kickoff and the Giants team they were facing was a) not very good, b) missing their best player (Saquon Barkley), and c) coming off an emotional come-from-behind win over an also not-so-good team (Arizona). The fact that this game was on Thursday was also a contributing factor – the early-week game making it difficult for the underdog to scheme up the tricks and gadgets needed to pull the game out.
However, picking the Niners means you don’t get to pick them again, and Week 3 appeared to be teeming with favourable picks: Kansas City, Baltimore, Dallas, and Jacksonville were all favoured by a touchdown or more, generally a good starting point for a Survivor bet (In hindsight: Uh oh). Baltimore had already been taken, Dallas was a no go for personal reasons, which left the Chiefs and Jags. The Bears were going to provide little resistance to the Chiefs, though you might want to pick the Chiefs again later. The Jaguars, not as much – while a playoff team, the Jaguars are a tier below the other contenders and likely not a high-faith matchup for many other games. The Texans, though, looked bad to that point with a spirited but decisive loss to the Ravens in Week 1 and a not as spirited but equally decisive loss to Indianapolis in Week 2. My suggestion was to take all those factors into consideration and take the Jags, which he did. What I did not tell him (because I didn’t know until I heard it during the fourth quarter of this game), was that the Texans had won 20 of the last 25 games in the series between the two teams, including 9 of the last 10. You know the rest: the Texans had everything go right in their blowout 37-17 win.
APY POOL RESULTS
As mentioned above, the Jags, Ravens, and Cowboys were all touchdown or more favourites this weekend, which not only hurt Survivor pool contestants, but also pools scores. The league averaged 11 points, which is a not great but not awful showing, though the highest score in the pool was 14 of a possible 20 points.
The 14 point marker was achieved by Donna P (shocker!), Jason R, Lourdes, and Adam. Congrats to each of you!
In the overall standings, Donna P moves back into top position, in a tie with Tom (who got 13 points of his own!). In third place sits Neil (39 points), and Donna K is in fourth place at 38. Basically if your name is Donna, and you’re in this pool, you’re killing it! David and Darren are tied for fifth with 37 points
APY POOL STANDINGS
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