LAST EDITED ON 03-14-12 AT 10:51 PM (EST)

Buy a Certain Brand of Car!

You gotta love product placement, huh? Even by The Amazing Race standards, last night's episode felt like one long car commercial. And for those who skip over to Celebrity Apprentice afterwards, they got 3 full hours of car commercials!

Bopper and Mark finished last but were non-eliminated. Onto Germany we go!

Week 4 Results
1st place - Art/J.J. (2x)
2nd place - Rachel/Dave (1.8x)
3rd place - Joey/Danny (1.5x)
4th place - Vanessa/Ralph (.9x)
5th place - Nary/Jamie (.8x)
6th place - Brendon/Rachel (.6x)
7th place - Kerri/Stacey (.4x)
8th place - Bopper/Mark (0x)

Totally Awesome

Art/J.J.'s second straight win was a huge windfall for most players, with Rachel/Dave chipping in as well. Even with only 3 ranks scoring points last week, most players managed to finish in the black for the week. Brendon/Rachel's meltdown to 6th place did hurt a few players, however.

This week's Greatest Gainer Award goes to IanQuentin, who climbed 9 ranks to #12 overall. A job well done, if I do say so myself.

The Perfect Bet Award is a gigantic 6-way tie, with each player making All-In bets on Art/J.J. Congratulations to IanQuentin, esquire, FFantasyFX, Yogi, Scuba Steve, and the now-correctly spelled alemattos. Drinks all around!

Leaderboard
1. Jims02 - 144
2. Georjanna - 138
3. louislam - 135
4. KwietOne - 133
5. jbenz - 132
6. flipxycd - 130
7. qwertypie - 128
8. michel - 127
9. CTgirl - 119
10. beau_30 - 117
11. Ontheroadagain - 110
12. IanQuentin - 104
13. Starshine - 99
14. chiubakka - 98
15. MzTee - 98
16. kduck - 97
17. esquire - 96
18. vennui - 94
19. Molaholic - 84
20. FFantasyFX - 84
21. Weez - 81
22. sarah1234 - 63
23. ARNutz - 57
24. shillfiell - 56
25. Yogi - 56
26. bbenzenberg - 52
27. Scuba Steve - 46
28. samboohoo - 44
29. alemattos - 42
30. Element King - 40
31. Estee - 35
32. michiganhugefan - 34
33. mikey - 30
34. taffnic - 22
35. Wallflower66 - 12
36. Max Headroom - 6

Well, I commented what a close race it was last week, and can you believe it got even closer this week? The Top 10 is only separated by 25 points, while 21 of the 36 players are still within the halfway point of the leader. It will be interesting to see what happens, now that we've reached the Gimmick point of the game.

Speaking of which...

Week 5 Payout Table
1st place - 2x
2nd place - 1.9x
3rd place - 1.2x
4th place - 1.1x
5th place - .9x
6th place - .8x
7th place - .1x
8th place - 0x

Max Individual Bet - 85 points

I Dare You! I dare you to not bet on Art/J.J. or Dave/Rachel this week!
Dare Bonus Multiplier - 1.8x (for next week)

I Dare You!

This season, every week's payout table will be accompanied by a dare, an optional challenge to all players for their betting this week. This dare will vary from week to week... Some weeks, it might dare you to not bet on specific teams, other weeks it may dare you bet in a specific way.

Participating in the dares is completely optional, so you can choose to ignore them if you want.

However, if you complete a dare, you will get a bonus multiplier on any gains you score in the next week. The key word here is "gains", in that you'll only get a bonus based on how much profit you post the following week. If you complete a dare this week, you can't just bank all your points next week and collect an easy 1.8x payout! You gotta still post a profit!

Think of it as a power-up. If you complete the dare this week, you'll be powered-up for a potential big gain next week.

For example...

Let's say you completed the dare this week by choosing not to bet on Art/J.J or Rachel/Dave. So going into next week, any profits you post will be multiplied by 1.8x.

And let's say that after this week's bet, you end up with 100 points to play next week. And let's say that you manage to double-up next week.

So, your gain for that week would normally be +100.
But, because of the bonus multiplier, you instead score +180 (100 * 1.8).

Therefore instead of going from 100 points to 200, you'd go all the way up to 280 points.

So, since the bonus is only on next week's gains, there's a bit of risk involved in going after a dare. 1) That the dare might mess up your potential payout too much this week, and 2) You might not gain anything next week, making it a waste. If you score zero or negative the following week, the bonus payout won't count (it doesn't increase your losses or anything scary like that).

The bonus multiplier will change from week to week, depending on the difficulty of the dare, with more difficult/risky dares giving higher multipliers. Players who completed the previous week's dares will have their names in bold on the leaderboard, to denote their superpower for the week.

Bonus games will also start next week, with any gains from them will factor into any bonus multiplier from a dare. So these dares could become really, really lucrative. Just make sure you don't sabotage this week's efforts!

TAR20 Teams Remaining
Art/J.J.
Bopper/Mark
Brendon/Rachel
Joey/Danny
Kerri/Stacey
Nary/Jamie
Rachel/Dave
Vanessa/Ralph

Note About Next Week's Dare - Next week's dare is going to be time-sensitive... It'll probably dare you to make your picks before Saturday or Sunday (haven't decided yet). So you may want to check out the thread in advance and not wait until Saturday or Sunday, or you may miss out on the opportunity.

Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions about the dares!

Now I just gotta brainstorm silly dares to make people try...