LAST EDITED ON 10-20-10 AT 11:37 PM (EST)

First to Last

I wonder how often that seems to happen? Probably less than the average would be, but it's still interesting when it does.

Like others have pointed out elsewhere, it was a good leg of the race, though, in terms of the tasks. Nothing seemed like a contrived task made up by the producers to fit the country. All of the tasks felt pretty authentic to me... Although I'm not an expert on Northern European countries, so they might've been throwing fits.

Week 3 Results
1st place - Nat/Kat (2.2x)
2nd place - Gary/Mallory (1.5x)
3rd place - Brook/Claire (1.4x)
4th place - Michael/Kevin (1.4x)
5th place - Jill/Thomas (1.1x)
6th place - Nick/Vicki (1.4x)
7th place - Chad/Stephanie (.5x)
8th place - Katie/Rachel (.3x)
9th place - Johnathan/Connor (0x)

A Fork in the Road

This was an interesting week of scoring, as it was very "Feast or Famine" for people. There were plenty of people who surged ahead with their scores, but there were also a few that had a tough week. Some people seemed to bank on a Nat/Kat bounce-back, and it helped their scores greatly. Johnathan/Conner's huge fall was unexpected by many, as well.

We also had a new player this week, Nume. Enjoy yourself here and remember, the first cocktail is on the house!

The Greatest Gainer Award goes to IanQuentin, who climbed 23 ranks to #13 overall. Sweetness.

The Perfect Bet Award technically goes to 5cats (2.5x) alone, who made an All-In bet on Nat/Kat, and the number rounding did the rest of it. Also, with less rounding-fueled All-In Kat/Nat bets were Yogi, ARNutz, IanQuentin, michel, beau_30, and Nume. Way to go!

And the very special Thankfully Late Entry Award goes to Georjanna, whose All-In Jonathan/Conner bet was nullified by being a mere 7 minutes late. I suspect something in your subconscious knew that was going to happen, and prevented you from getting to your computer.

Leaderboard
1. Yogi - 163
2. vennui - 97
3. louislam - 95
4. popeave - 68
5. Jims02 - 62
6. ARNutz - 55
7. sarah1234 - 52
8. kidflash212 - 46
9. mikey - 40
10. Belle Book - 38
11. flipxycd - 34
12. Molaholic - 34
13. IanQuentin - 33
14. CTgirl - 31
15. michel - 29
16. Georjanna - 28
17. MzTee - 28
18. cahaya - 27
19. KwietOne - 27
20. Weez - 26
21. chiubakka - 24
22. HistoryDetective - 22
23. bbenzenberg - 20
24. beau_30 - 20
25. Ontheroadagain - 19
26. Snidget - 17
27. Starshine - 16
28. jbenz - 15
29. Deshawnator22 - 15
30. FFantasyFX - 14
31. vince3 - 14
32. shilfiell - 14
33. Element King - 11
34. samboohoo - 11
35. esquire - 11
36. Nume - 11
37. kduck - 10
38. taffnic - 5
39. 5cats - 5

Yogi's got a nice lead going now. It should be interesting to see if anyone can unseat the champ!

Week 5 Payout Table
1st place - 2x
2nd place - 1.6x
3rd place - 1.4x
4th place - 1.2x
5th place - .8x
6th place - .6x
7th place - .4x
8th place - 0x

The TAR Casino Game is now closed to new entrants.

One note about the Loser Bonuses, as I saw a couple people allude to the idea that it would be a risk-less bet. The Loser Bonuses do indeed raise the payout for most all of the ranks, but the exception of the rule is last place. Last place will always score 0x, regardless of whether that team was eligible for a Loser Bonus.

I would hate for someone to be eliminated due to some confusion over a rule (thankfully, it didn't happen last week!), so it's worth reiterating.

Bonus Game - Who Doesn't Finish Where?

(Ever wondered what the kids would look like if the Lucky 9 game got married to the 5 True Statements game?)

Place a bet and see if you can win it. For the first bonus wager of the season, the goal is to fill in the blanks of all 4 of the following statements with a correct answer.

___(Team A)____ and ___(Team B)_____ don't finish 1st or 8th.
___(Team C)____ and ___(Team D)_____ don't finish 2nd or 7th.
___(Team E)____ and ___(Team F)_____ don't finish 3rd or 6th.
___(Team G)____ and ___(Team H)_____ don't finish 4th or 5th.

Here's the catch. You can only use each team once in the statement set.

(And no, you may not use any previously eliminated team or fake team in your statements. You know you thought about doing that.)

If all 4 of your statements turn out to be true, then you win the bet. If you get even one of them wrong, you lose the whole wager. For example, if you say that Brooke/Claire don't finish 3rd or 6th, and they end up finishing 3rd... Then the wager is lost, regardless of any other right answers. It's not a wager for the faint of heart.

Here's the Payout Table for this Bonus Game.

Bonus Payout Table
Correct Answer - 10x
Incorrect Answer - 0x

Max Bet - 8 points

As you can see, if you get a correct answer, it could mean a huge payday.

For example, a valid entry would look something like:

Bonus Game - 8 points

Brook/Claire and Chad/Stephanie don't finish 1st or 8th.
Gary/Mallory and Jill/Thomas don't finish 2nd or 7th.
Katie/Rachel and Michael/Kevin don't finish 3rd or 6th.
Nat/Kat/ and Nick/Vicki don't finish 4th or 5th.

Use all 8 teams in your statement and you got yourself a valid entry. If you duplicate one of them, I gotta dismiss the whole bonus entry.

TAR17 Teams Remaining
Brook/Claire
Chad/Stephenie
Gary/Mallory
Jill/Thomas
Katie/Rachel
Michael/Kevin (+0.1)
Nat/Kat (+0.1)
Nick/Vicki (+0.2)

So, do you go for the extra bonuses and go for a huge payoff, or is it still just not worth it? It's up to you!

This entry is so late for the sole sake of figuring out what the odds of winning the bonus game is based off of random chance. I ended up using the logic that each individual guess would be right 3/4ths of the time, and did (3/4)^8, which was about a 10% chance of winning.

There's definitely something wrong with that logic, as the first guess would have a (6/8) chance of being correct, but the second and third guesses' probabilities' should be adjusted (5/7? 6/7?)... That's how you calculate odds in poker, after all. It might be the same way. Eventually, I just gave up and went with the straight probability because I got tired of dealing with it this late.

I try to be statistically fair with all the odds, although they always skew in our favor (since we can sometimes eliminate certain teams as possibilities). So if the odds are actually worse, then chalk it up to our advantage we get.

If anyone knows their probability theory really well, I'd be really interested to see what the actual probability would be and how you got there.