Protect Your Unit Week 5 Picks Thread

(DISCLAIMER: This game is for entertainment purposes only. No actual money is being wagered.)

First, the new cancelled games prop bet is attracting some action! There has only been one cancellation as of noon Friday (Troy-South Alabama), so the line has moved from 5.5 to 4.5 to 3.5. The amount will always include a fraction, because I didn’t introduce prop bets jus t so we can have more pushes. I plan to implement more little prop bets like this one as the season goes on. If you have any ideas or wants, let me know!

The discussion in last week’s Picks thread raised some valid questions about how this bet neds to be handled. speruche pointed out that a player could wait until the late games kicked off, and place a bet at a time when time the number of cancellations would be known. For this reason, this bet will not be available after noon ET on Saturday. That is the “kickoff time” for this prop bet. Also, the house (me) can always move lines, as above.

Second, some of the early week game lines were a bit dodgy. This is because the real-life data I use to formulate the lines was itself dodgy. East Carolina-Georgia State was a major offender. For example, look at the real-life line histories here and notice how much they jump around. The point spread goes from 1 to 6 and back, never stopping in between. The over/under jumps between 61 and 69. Money lines fluctuate similarly.

By rule, bets on erroneous lines can be disallowed. But official rule #14.5.1 is: In general, if a line can be found in the line history of a real casino at least twice - they published it and did not immediately correct it - it will be considered valid. Because these more favorable lines on ECU-GSU and other games make multiple appearances in real-life offerings by multiple providers, I can’t justify disallowing PYU plays on them. So those of you who jumped on Central Florida over 51, or any other lines you might have thought were suspect, will get to play them. I’ll watch the lines more closely going forward. Some of my website’s internal mechanisms are still being fixed up from the offseason crash.

An up-to-date list of everyone’s picks can be seen at the usual place, http://protectyouru.net/pyu/weekly_picks.php. I’m also working on updating the historical CSV file of picks; should have that ready for download soon.

This week’s picks:

As always, use the comment section here to talk about the game, gambling in general, this weekend’s action, or whatever’s on your mind!