LAST EDITED ON 09-16-06 AT 02:59 PM (EST)

Welcome!

Welcome to the TAR10 Casino Game. It's been three or four months since we've last opened our doors and we've done quite a bit of remodeling. For one, the shag carpeting is completely gone and some hooligans stole the giant statue in the lobby... Still, our hotel has the fluffiest towels in the region, so make yourselves at home!

What? You don't want to hear about fluffy towels? You guys are no fun.

The TAR10 Casino Game is the sixth installment of the super-mega-popular game, hosted exclusively at TARSucks.com. OK, maybe it's not super-mega-popular, but we did have around 70 players last year. And that's pretty darn good, if I say so myself. Despite all the competition, at the end of the season, defending champion Neobie successfully kept his title. Hey, the more people who enter this year, the more likely it is that he'll be dethroned. Or the more people he defeats. Either one's fine.

Will Neobie prove that three time's a charm? We'll find out.

What's the Point?

The point is to have fun, and to make watching the show more enjoyable. And to score lots of points and rub it into everyone's faces. That's the best part.

Each week, players will bet some of their points on the different two-person teams on The Amazing Race. The better these teams place during a week (1st place being the best outcome, of course), the higher return of the wager. The worst one's teams do, the worse payout. It is kind of like betting on horse or dog racing, except dogs and horses are smarter than TAR racers.

Of course, there will be bonuses and other games to spend your points on, as well, but the main priority is to pick the winners each week. After the entire race is over, and we have an Amazing Race champion, the player with the highest point total wins the game. The player with the lowest total will receive a complimentary bottle of tequila for drinking away their sorrows.

...So in the end, everyone has a good time.

If you're just browsing this site or simply reading the boards, I encourage you to try this game out. I've found that watching the show is a lot more fun when you have something invested in the teams, even if it's just goofy points for some stupid internet game. I recall being quite bitter toward a few teams for costing me 30 to 50 points one week. Sending them a few hundred pounds of hate mail seemed to perk me up, though.

If you don't have a user name for these boards, register. You won't regret it.

Casino Game Rules

Sorry, folks. This is one of those games with "rules" to worry about. You can't just go around stealing everyone's points and taking people's lunch money. You can try, but you'll probably end up in "Time Out." After three strikes, you're sent home at noon on the kindergarten bus.

But enough about the kindergarten bus. Here's the rules to the game.

1. Each player that joins in Week One (right now) will receive 20 points to start the game. I'm not going to be handing more points for free later, so don't waste them. For every additional week you join the game late, you start with fewer points, so I suggest you join as soon as you can.

2. Once your points are gone, they're gone. If you lose all of your points, as indicated by the leaderboard, you're out of the game. So be very careful. Busting out of the game, especially early on... Well, it sucks. Big time.

3. Each week, you may choose to bet some of your points on the remaining Amazing Race teams. How many/few points is up to you. Your bets usually will look something like this...

10 points - Bugs/Daffy
5 points - RoadRunner/Coyote
2 points - Syvester/Tweety

Just make sure you don't overspend your points. Since you only have 20 points right now, you can't bet more that that amount. I don't give out credit cards. If you overspend, you force me to do some "creative accounting" on your picks. And you don't want that.

This week, everyone has 20 points, but next week your point totals will vary, based on your Week One performance. Check the Leaderboard for your current point total.

4. There is no limit for your individual bets, as long as you don't go over budget. So, if you've eventually racked up a bunch of points and you have a good feeling about one of the teams, you can bet all of them on that team. Or, conversely, a few points as you want.

I must warn you though. Betting all your points on one team is a risky venture. One poor week may halve your score, or worse. So proceed with caution.

5. You may bet on as few or as many different teams as you want. If you don't feel comfortable betting on only 1 or 2 teams, spread the points around to 5 or 6 different ones. It's up to you.

6. You don't have to wager all of your points each week, or even play at all. The points you don't use are "banked" and will carry over to the next week without risk. If you're really not "feelin' it" one week, you can completely skip an entry and all of your points will carry over to the following week.

7. All bets must be integers (whole numbers). That means no more betting in fractions of pi, folks. You know who I'm talking to. I can't memorize that many digits.

8. All entries are due prior to showtime, Eastern-Time, based on the RTVWorld.com clock. You can find the clock on the top right corner of every post or at the top of the "Conference" page. In other words, this week, you must enter by Sunday, September 17th, before 8:30 PM. Any entries posted after the deadline will not be counted.

9. Any entry which is edited after the showtime deadline will receive a significant penalty, at my discretion. You can still edit your post before the deadline as many times as you want, mind you. Just don't change your picks after the episode airs. I haven't had any problems with this yet, so we probably won't have to worry about it.

The Payout Table

You're probably wondering right now what happens to your wagers after each week's episode. Each week, I will post a Payout Table, which will tell you the relative payouts for each rank. These are expressed as multipliers, which will be multiplied (hence the name) by your bets.

For example, here's the Week One Payout Table:

Week One Payout Table
1st place - 2x
2nd place - 1.8x
3rd place - 1.6x
4th place - 1.4x
5th place - 1.2x
6th place - Break even
7th place - Break even
8th place - .8x
9th place - .6x
10th place - .4x
11th place - .2x
12th place - 0x

In other words, if you bet all 20 points on a team, and that team finishes in 2nd place for the week, you get (20 points * 1.8) = 36 points, a 16 point gain overall. If your team finished 9th, for example, you'd get only (20 points * .6) = 12 points, which is a 8 point loss on that bet.

When you bet on multiple teams, I multiply the individual bets by the individual multipliers and then add them together. Any decimals left over from your final total will be automatically rounded up.

Example

10 points - Bugs/Daffy (finishes 7th), 10 * 1 = 10 points
5 points - RoadRunner/Coyote (finishes 1st), 5 * 2 = 10 points
2 points - Sylvester/Tweety (finishes 11th), 2 * .2 = .4 points
3 points banked, carry over to next round = 3 points

Total for next week: 10 + 10 + .4 + 3 = 23.4 points = 24 points

If all the scoring confuses you, don't worry about it. I do all the calculations for you and give you your point total each week, so all you should worry about is picking the best teams, based on the Payout Table.

...And in case you don't know the teams yet (shame on you!), here they are.

TAR9 Teams Remaining
Bilal/Sa'eed
David/Mary
Duke/Lauren
Dustin/Kandice
Erwin/Godwin
Kellie/Jamie
Lyn/Karlyn
Peter/Sarah
Rob/Kimberly
Tom/Terry
Tyler/James
Vipul/Arti

If you're confused, please consult the Sample Entry in the next post. If you're like me, learning by example's often the quickest way.

Teaser! For those cocky veterans who know everything about the game, there's going to be a few curveballs coming up. But don't worry, most of the prizes are free of charge. If you've been to a real life Casino before, you'll have an idea of what I mean.

...One last thing. Have fun! Remember. What happens at the TAR Casino stays at the TAR Casino.

I'm playing again this year. Time to defend my 11th place finish, suckas.
Oh, and No-Limit again this year. Once I've "freed the points," it's tough to catch them again.