Black Shoe Degenerates: Back Under New Management

First, the part you don’t care about. If you’re wondering why I’m making more frequent appearances around these parts after having written this last year, well, the answer to that is “some things in life are complicated.” If you follow me on twitter, you’ve probably pieced it together by now. For those who don’t, I may talk about it some day. But that day is not today.

Now for the fun part. Let’s spend a whole season finding out how much money we can flush down the drain and how efficiently we can do it! If you remember from two seasons ago, we tried this thing where I made some picks, you either picked with me or against me, and we tracked our progress throughout the season. Guess what? WE’RE DOING THAT AGAIN! As a reminder, here are the basic rules:*

1. Everyone starts out with 1000 fake dollars.
2. You bet based on American rules (a spread bet costs 10% unless otherwise noted).
3. If you win, you get what you put down plus your winnings. If you lose, you lose.
4. If you run out of money, you’re out of luck. 2019 TWIST! To keep going, you need to borrow money. However, instead of borrowing from me, you have to borrow from your fellow participants! This means whoever you borrow from can ask to be paid back whenever they want, and they set the terms of your loan!**
5. Picks are locked when you place them, even if the line goes up/down afterward.
6. You can make your picks up until the start of a game, or Saturday at noon, whichever comes first. Tuesday/Wednesday games will not be included.
7. If you don’t make any picks for a given week, you get docked 100 dollars for the week.
8. After four consecutive weeks of not making any picks, you balance is set to zero.
9. Person with the most money at the end of the season wins.
10. 2019 TWIST! Minimum bet amount is 10% of your total stash. For example, if your stash is 1000 and I have four games on the board that week, you can make four 25-dollar picks.

As always, I’ll have between two and four picks each week, and you can pick with me or against me. 2019 TWIST! You have to make a pick on all games I post. If you don’t pick on every game, your entire entry for that week is discarded.

Without further ado, signup time!

Go here, put your username down, and let’s get this started! I will keep this open until Week 1, but we ARE going to start on Week 0. Get those signups going!

Signup form

*Got an idea for a rule that would make the game more fun? Use the next two weeks to brainstorm in the comments.
**For simplicity’s sake, “terms of your loan” here will be limited to “how much above what I loaned you do you owe me back,” with a hard cap of 15%.