LAST EDITED ON 04-14-09 AT 10:58 PM (EST)

What Rules?

Obviously Mark & Michael forgot to read them before leaving. And because of it, they got slapped with a four-hour penalty and (even worse) a Phil Grimace of Shame. Four penalties in two weeks is pretty unacceptable.

You could make the argument that Kisha & Jen were even worse by trying to check into a Pit Stop without their passport. They could, in theory, be eliminating Mark & Michael as well as not being able to continue in the race themselves. I'm glad the producers changed the rules to prevent that kind of situation.

Week 8 Results
1st place - Margie/Luke (2x)
2nd place - Jaime/Cara (1.4x)
3rd place - Tammy/Victor (even)
4th place - Lakisha/Jennifer (.6x)
5th place - Mark/Michael (0x)

Hindsight is 20/20

I have a feeling there's a lot of players this week who are kicking themselves for not going with Margie/Luke. Tammy/Victor were almost unanimously the popular pick, which really stalled a lot of the scores. Most of the gains were through the Bonus Games.

In case you weren't paying attention, here were the results.

1. Title - No team said it. Phil said it during the description of the Detour. Just our luck that the one time we can wager on that, Phil's the one who says it.

2. Lost - Lakisha/Jennifer said it when their taxi got lost en route to the Detour. Although, they said they "lost a lot of time." Still counts though.

3. Taxi - Tammy/Victor, when departing the PitStop. Although Jaime/Cara probably said it the most, as they screamed "taxi, taxi!" the whole episode.

4. Phil - Jaime/Cara, at check-in. When Phil greeted them with the suspenseful, "Jaime/Cara..." one of them said, "Yes, Phil?"

5. Karaoke - Tammy/Victor, despite reaching the Detour last. The other teams either said the Detour by name, or just described their singing.

6. Supercilious - No one said it. I just can't believe it.

7. Detour - Margie/Luke, of course. This one was really a question of which team was going to get there first.

8. Polite - Tammy/Victor, when leaving their first taxi at the airport. Jaime/Cara could've beaten them, but fought with the taxis instead of thanking them.

9. PAT - Tammy/Victor again. They were a popular bonus pick, but not for this one.

We did have one more player bust out of the game, IanQuentin. He went for the bonuses, but unfortunately struck out on each of them. In my opinion, it was worth a shot, though. I mean, if he just got 2 of them right, he'd go from 20 to 40 points. It's too bad it didn't work out.

Thanks for playing, IanQuentin.

This week's Perfect Bet Award goes to kidflash212 (5x), who wagered their whole stack on the Taxi Bonus game. It's a good thing, too, with Corvis and popeave going after 'em. Speaking of which, popeave, tripled-up, good for second-best. Special shout-out goes to FFantasyFX, who was the only player who put a lot of their points on Margie/Luke.

The Greatest Gainer Award goes to Jims02 who moved up 8 ranks to #18 overall. Good job, me.

Leaderboard
1. Yogi - 3521
2. KwietOne - 3086
3. flipxcyd - 2647
4. 5cats - 2022
5. ARNutz - 1501
6. CTgirl - 648
7. louislam - 427
8. SilverStar - 402
9. taffnic 312
10. FFantasyFX - 276
11. Weez - 270
12. sarah1234 - 258
13. beau_30 - 251
14. vennui - 217
15. tvgeek401 - 186
16. Higgs - 164
17. Belle Book - 135
18. Jims02 - 100
19. Element King - 95
20. dragonflies - 90
21. MzTee - 78
22. jbenz - 78
23. Quepea - 77
24. Ontheroadagain - 74
25. bbenzenberg - 58
26. esquire - 58
27. LeftPinky - 30
28. michel - 28
29. shilfiell - 26
30. kidflash212 - 25
31. suzzee - 19
32. popeave - 6
33. Corvis - 3
34. HauntedOne - 2
35. IanQuentin - 0

Scores remained pretty static at the top of the list.

Week 9 Payout Table
1st place - 2x
2nd place - 1.6x
3rd place - 1.2x
4th place - .2x
5th place - 0x

Building this week's table was really tricky, considering the circumstances. Hopefully this one will give a nice risk/reward balance for play.

Bonus Game - Clock Game

Ah, a remake of last year's game with a twist.

This week, players may wager some points of the amount of time that the 1st place team beat the team that finished last. In other words, how much faster did Margie/Luke complete the previous leg than Mark/Michael?

We are going to measure it based on the departure times for the next episode. So, if Margie/Luke leave at 4:23 AM and Mark/Michael leave at 11:54 AM, then the correct answer would be "7 hours, 31 minutes." Remember, Mark/Michael got penalized four hours, so factor that into your guesses.

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

Like your regular wagers, 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.

"Cautious" (60 mins)
Off by 60 mins or less - 2x
More than 60 mins - 0x

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

"Dangerous" (15 mins)
Off by 15 mins or less - 8x
More than 15 mins - 0x

"Insane" (5 mins)
Off by 5 mins or less - 16x
More than 5 mins - 0x

"Suicidal" (0 mins)
Guessed exact time difference - 25x
Off by 1 min or more - 0x

Max Bet (all tables) - 20 points
Number of Guesses You Can Make - 1

A sample wager might look like...

Bonus Game "Insane"
20 points - 6 hours, 12 mins

So if you're off by 5 minutes or less (6:07 to 6:17), you'd win. If you weren't, you might wish you'd played more conservatively. It doesn't matter if your guess fell within the range of another payout table. It's all based on the one that you choose.

Because of the sensitive nature of the payouts (16x, 25x), I am requiring all Bonus wagers to be submitted by 11:59 PM on Saturday night (April 18). You can make your regular picks on Sunday, as usual, in a separate post. Just make sure you don't edit the previous one on Sunday!

If I see any bonus picks posted/edited on Sunday, I'm throwing them out and just scoring your regular picks.

TAR14 Teams Remaining
Cara/Jaime
Lakisha/Jennifer
Margie/Luke
Mark/Michael
Tammy/Victor

Good luck, everyone! I have a weird feeling that this could be a real game-changing week.

This bonus may be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever had or one of the best. It took a long time deciding what payouts would be fair for each table. It's not like I could use probability math.
I wasn't sure how high I should go with it, so I ended up thinking, "What's a +480 point bonus when the top score has over 3000?" It's not that likely to happen anyway.