LAST EDITED ON 11-17-11 AT 08:00 PM (EST)

Bunny Hop

Now why on earth would teams choose that butter task over those bunnies? The bunny detour option seemed much more fun and not that time-consuming. My suspicion is that one of the snowboarders is like Lennie from Of Mice and Men and aren't allowed to handle small animals anymore.

Oh yeah, and Laurence/Zac were eliminated after having a really rough leg.

Week 8 Results
1st place - Ernie/Cindy (2x)
2nd place - Bill/Cathi (1.4x)
3rd place - Andy/Tommy (1.2x)
4th place - Amani/Marcus (.8x)
5th place - Jeremy/Sandy (.6x)
6th place - Laurence/Zac (0x)

Groovy.

Scores were generally solid this week. Ernie/Cindy were popular picks, boosting quite a few scores. Andy/Tommy were less spectacular in their payout, but still managed to boost people's scores to some degree. The Lucky 7 bonus game proved to be a tricky one, though, with the large majority of players missing out on it.

Unfortunately, the Laurence/Zac ouster caused our player pool to shrink by one more player, as Molaholic has busted out of the game. Ultimately, I think we can all blame Bill/Cathi for this and their U-Turn. Oh, and Zac's inability to dance. That too.

Thanks for playing, Molaholic! Go have some cocktails in the lounge!

This week's Greatest Gainer Award goes to both CTgirl and Jims02, who both climbed a staggering, earth-shattering 6 ranks this week. It may not be that many numerical ranks, but it got both players into the Top 10, so that should be good enough.

The Perfect Bet Award goes to sarah1234 (3.44x) who not only managed a Keeper bet on Ernie/Cindy but also managed to get the Lucky 7 bonus game correct. sarah1234 edged out popeave this week for the award, who also managed to triple up. Very nicely done.

Leaderboard
1. 5cats - 597
2. beau_30 - 552
3. IanQuentin - 519
4. Ontheroadagain - 450
5. flipxcyd - 408
6. FFantasyFX - 403
7. CTgirl - 400
8. Jims02 - 347
9. Weez - 322
10. ARNutz - 312
11. Max Headroom - 296
12. Yogi - 282
13. alemattos - 277
14. michel - 271
15. KwietOne - 255
16. louislam - 252
17. vennui - 250
18. esquire - 244
19. qwertypie - 232
20. Belle Book - 154
21. Snidget - 133
22. Deshawnator11 - 104
23. Puffy - 94
24. Starshine - 84
25. samboohoo - 81
26. chiubakka - 70
27. Wallflower66 - 69
28. jbug - 66
29. sarah1234 - 62
30. LeftPinky - 57
31. cahaya - 53
32. bbenzenberg - 30
33. Element King - 26
34. Scuba Steve - 24
35. jbenz - 15
36. popeave - 6
37. taffnic - 3
38. Molaholic - 0

5cats is still sitting atop the leaderboard, but it definitely got much more crowded up there, with both beau_30 and IanQuentin jumping up 4-5 ranks each to be about even. The way the scores are shaping up this season, we may be heading toward a photo finish for this season.

Week 9 Payout Table
1st place - 2x
2nd place - 1.6x
3rd place - Break even
4th place - .4x
5th place - 0x

Max Individual Bet - 230 points
Number of Keeper Teams - 1

Now that we're down to 5 teams, you may only select 1 team as your Keeper for next week.

Clock Game

I always like this bonus game. I don't know why, but it's always been one of my favorites. Maybe because it isn't related to the final rankings or anything (like the regular wagers are).

This week, players may wager some points of the amount of time that the 1st place team beat the team that finished 5th in the previous leg. Or, in other words, how much did Ernie/Cindy beat Jeremy/Sandy by in the previous leg?

(Remember, Laurence/Zac got eliminated last week, so we have to use Ernie/Cindy and Jeremy/Sandy as the first/last teams.)

We are going to measure it based on the departure times for the next episode. So you could think of the question of actually being, "How much of a lead will Ernie/Cindy have over Jeremy/Sandy?" If, for example, Ernie/Cindy leave the next pitstop at 5:00 AM and Jeremy/Sandy leaves at 8:36 AM, then the correct answer would be "3 hours, 36 minutes."

Ah, but how close does your wager have to be for it to be a winner? That's really up to you.

For this game, you must choose how much risk you're comfortable with. Every wager must be accompanied by which Payout Table you're playing off of. The smaller margin of error, the higher the payout will be if you're right. Use the following codewords to label your wager.

"Wimpy" (45 mins)
Off by 45 mins or less - 2x
More than 45 mins - 0x

"Cheeky" (30 mins)
Off by 30 mins or less - 4x
More than 30 mins - 0x

"Gutsy" (15 mins)
Off by 15 mins or less - 6x
More than 15 mins - 0x

"Fearless" (5 mins)
Off by 5 mins or less - 10x
More than 5 mins - 0x

Max Bet (all tables) - 25 points
Number of Guesses You Can Make - 1

A sample wager might look like...

Bonus Game "Gutsy"
25 points - 2 hours, 31 mins

So, in this example, if your guess was off by 15 minutes or less (2:16 to 2:46), then you'd be a winner. It doesn't matter how close you were overall, just that you're within the range that you selected. That's why it's so important you label with payout table you're going for.

If they don't reveal the times at the beginning of the episode where we have no answer, then all bonus bets will be refunded.

TAR19 Teams Remaining
Amani/Marcus
Andy/Tommy
Bill/Cathi
Ernie/Cindy
Jeremy/Sandy

Good luck!

Thanks for the kind check-in messages folks.
(Although now I'm probably going to become a big attention-ho and deliberately delay my postings as an attention grab.)