Congratulations to jacktjl, who won his first Overall Champion Trophy (Oct 12 to Oct 18). He finished the week with 1,797 chips on 18 bets, winning by a narrow margin of 40 chips over 2nd place finisher KellRawLive. jacktjl won two NCAAF 3-way parlays that earned him a total of 875 chips. That’s some smart pickin’. Who will be this week’s smartest picker?

Congratulations to LordHatton, who once again won the Overall Champion Trophy (Oct 5 to Oct 11). He finished the week with a ridiculous 3,515 chips on 172 bets, winning by a margin of 2,301 chips over 2nd place finisher verypink. That’s pretty impressive folks. This guy is no statistical anomaly either. He ranks 1st in more Genius Categories than I can count and is picking at a mind-boggling win rate of 80%+ in the NFL NFC South and the NFL NFC East Genius Categories. He’s the heavy favorite to win this week’s competition. Can anyone overtake him?

In case you don’t know, the Product User Group (PUG) is a collection of passionate WinTheTrophy users who provide input on the application’s development roadmap and get an exclusive preview of upcoming features. A little over a week ago, the PUG held its first meeting. Attendees included cscairns, brian, sean, jdavis and LordHatton.

We had an excellent conversation about the product, including likes, dislikes, ideas, bugs and so on. Both jdavis and LordHatton contributed some fantastic ideas on how to make the product even better and also pointed out some bugs.

1. LordHatton and jdavis both suggested that we make the Vegas Odds On/Off Toggle persist when you log back in after a logoff (or across different computers). sean immediately implemented this idea.

2. LordHatton pointed out a bug with how Recent Bets were being sorted, which sean also fixed immediately.

3. LordHatton suggested that we offer a Bet Week Graph that visually tracks and displays how users are performing over the course of a week. This is a great idea and sean is working to include it in the next release.

4. jdavis reiterated andrew’s desire for automated rules-based betting. Though we didn’t have this planned for immediate development, sean is taking the initiative to start working on an API service that will enable users to write programs that place bets automatically.

I my humble opinion, WinTheTrophy really forces us to take a new look at picking sport event winners. By providing the tools to take a close look at the events on a given day, you can really become a better (no pun intended) sports fan. We all know that any sport takes years to learn and even more time to understand the nuances. The timeline to a PhD is shortened if you actually played the sport, but not many people have had the chance to play a college or professional sport. But having played the sport at any level isn’t a prerequisite to becoming an expert. In fact, many so-called experts never participated in a single down, inning, minute, match or whatever it may be labeled. These experts have mastered another set of skills and their vigilance and study allows them to see things that others don’t. That’s why we value their opinions and that’s what I contend WinTheTrophy helps you to attain: a better, more enlightened, fuller, more descript, understanding of sports and the teams that play one another.

To me, understanding what happens behind the scenes is often as important as what you see in the black and white (stats). Many a team has come into a season highly ranked, populated by great recruits, returning seniors, a tested coaching staff, a reasonable schedule, but failed to even make the post-season. Why? X factors. You see a growing contingency of reporters, online bloggers, behind-the-scenes insiders, and so forth, who work assiduously to try and shed some light on what is happening in the locker room, the front office, the practice field and at the homes of the players. Television shows – like HBO’s Hard Knocks – take us through the entire pre-season; it’s during these episodes, taken as a whole, that we begin to see the complex dynamics of fielding a professional football team (let alone a successful team). Distractions abound, injuries lurk, coaching opinions fluctuate, public opinion peaks and ebbs, players’ confidence rise and plummet, money issues dominate, signings linger, agents do agent stuff, fans prognosticate and so on and so on. What you begin to understand is that building and maintaining a team at the highest level is equal parts – art, science and luck.

So back at home our lonely sports picker must sift through a litany of data, feelings and instincts to make an accurate prediction. And the good ones do just that: they objectively look at the facts, make a choice and then lay it out against their instinct and – if all factors are green-lighted – they place their pick and sit back to either muse at their genius or watch as their calculation fails miserably. However, even the losses – like in real sports or real life – teach something and those that learn something from these mistakes become better at an infinitely iterative process that ultimately helps them reduce the chance factor to a minute number (or fraction thereof). And these are the people who have evolved from the casual prognosticator into something more akin to a highly successful Wall Street trader. They are better than average and their opinions get noticed, and once they have a reputation, they must continue to perform or they will be disregarded as a fluke.

WinTheTrophy lets you develop these skills and objectively follow your development or regression. Numbers don’t lie and you can see from the categories where your talents reside and where you need improvement. Or, if you happen to be really good at one thing, WinTheTrophy shows you what that is and that, my friends, is certainly something worth knowing. So sports picking is just like commodities trading, stock picking, monetary investing and a vast array of other activities that are based on the choice of an individual who ingests a massive amount of information, makes a choice and wagers that that outcome will come to fruition. It’s infinitely difficult, perceptibly humbling and a skill that only a few can ever really master. So give it a try and see if you have the gift…you’ll never know if you don’t give it a try. I truly believe WinTheTrophy makes you learn, appreciate and ultimately become a better sports fan.

So you’re sitting around watching your 29th sporting event in a row and you’ve been clicking back and forth between 8 games in 5 different sports and that still isn’t enough. Well, you may need a little medical help, but other than that you’re a perfect candidate for WinTheTrophy. In fact, even if you only watch an occasional sporting event, you’ll find this free fantasy sports betting site fun, engaging and challenging.

After you signup, you fill out your profile (optional) – and you’re ready to start picking. “But wait,” you say, “I have no understanding of sports wagering and don’t really care to learn.” In that case, WinTheTrophy has you covered with its approach to automatically interpreting the complex numerical nomenclature of sports handicapping. Behind the scenes at WinTheTrophy, the complex numerical valuations of a sports wager are analyzed and then translated into normal every-day language like “Huge Payout,” “Tiny Payout,” “Favorites,” and “Underdogs.” Sound easy? It is.

To place a bet, you just click on one of the buttons associated with the three different bet types: moneyline ("Who will win?"), point spread ("Who will cover?") and over/under ("How many total points?"). After you click the button, you then choose how many free chips you’d like to wager. Upon entering the amount, WinTheTrophy automatically calculates how many chips you will win and – if you think that is fair – you go ahead and confirm the wager.

After you have placed a bet, you can see your wager(s) on your personalized My Bets page, which allows you to review your selections, watch the scores in near real-time and see whether you have won, lost or pushed.

Bad week? No problem because each week your 1,000 free chips resets and a new contest for the Weekly Leaderboard begins. Each week you are automatically entered in the Weekly Leaderboard contest. And if you wager with skill and consistency, you have a good shot at victory, online accolades, a coveted virtual trophy and Points (virtual currency units).

Points are also accrued as you wager, make comments, post blog content, invite friends and so forth. In the future, WinTheTrophy will have a virtual store where you can redeem these Points for virtual goods, bonuses, skins, avatars and other items.

Another key feature of the WinTheTrophy is personal betting statistics. On your personalized “My Profile” page, you can see your cumulative wagering record in the 100+ categories WinTheTrophy tracks. With this information, you can identify your betting strengths and weaknesses, compare your skills against others and formulate personal betting techniques that might yield more winnings.

So no matter who you are, you can have fun and benefit from the features of WinTheTrophy. Follow your favorite team, make a wager (or two hundred) and sit back and watch your team, and know that you have a little extra incentive for them to win (or lose) or to score a lot (or a little). It’s always fun watching your favorite team but WinTheTrophy will make it even better.

Well folks, just when you thought the Overall Champion Trophy was in your case and you could send smack down comments to your fellow WTT competitors, brian comes out of nowhere with a massive 4-way parlay to rescue him from the realm of the pathetic. Via that parlay, brian climbed the ladder from 23rd to 3rd with one game left and then he bet big on the Black and Gold. In a crazy TD shootout, brian hit five bets on the Steelers/Chargers scoring festival to steal (no pun intended) the victory from second place Matt2503 by a razor thin 67 chips.

Overall Champion Trophy chase ended up in the following order:

1. brian 1,747
2. Matt2503 1,680
3. jacktjl 1,490

Notables include:

JimmytheMeek with a 6-2 week (75%)
Nickelicious with a 4-2 week (67%)
Matt2503 with a 15-8 week (65%)
verypink with a 18-11 week (62%)

cscairns missed a 6-way AND a 7-way by just one game each! Great week so sharpen your pencil, reload, and see if anyone can take the crown from brian.

It was like being at Cedar Point this week at WinTheTrophy. We had an early favorite, jdavis, who took a commanding lead with almost 3,000 chips, and, frankly, we thought he would coast to an easy victory. Not to be my friends. Not to be. jdavis kept the hammer down and went for broke and, well, he kinda did (go broke). jdavis fell slow then fast. And just as we all thought STEELERROB was going to take his first weekly championship, Shizzy comes from behind on Sunday to take the coveted Overall Champion Trophy. Nicely done Shizzy.

This week’s top three include:

1. Shizzy 1,964
2. STEELERROB 1,528
3. jpan06 1,190

Honorable mentions for this week:
1. verypink 14-7 (63%)
2. jacktjl 25-18 (53%)
3. kizzyle who earned the highest BetIQ (10.0) on the Overall Genius Ladder

Rumor has it that Co-Founder, cscairns, missed another huge payoff 8-way parlay by one game. Tough luck. Good luck this week and let’s see if someone can break 3,000.

I begrudgingly congratulate brian for being the overall chips leader in last week’s Weekly Leaderboard competition (Sep 14 to Sep 20). He won with a measly 1,897 chips on 32 bets. The next closest competitor was Matt2503 with 1,260 chips. Lucky for brian I missed an 8-way parlay by one game that would have propelled me to the top. Unfortunately, the Lions didn’t beat the Vikings.

Congrats to LordHatton for being the overall chips leader in last week’s Weekly Leaderboard competition (Sep 7 to Sep 13). He vanquished his enemies with ease by raking in 4,393 chips on 165 bets. The next closest competitor was d3v1n with 2,400 chips. d3v1n hit a spectacular 4-way parlay early in the week that shot him into first place, but was overcome by LordHatton’s barrage of no-lose picks. Unfortunately for d3v1n, he’ll be coveting LordHatton’s shiny Overall Champion Trophy for at least another week.

Other weekly notables:

jdavis hit an 8-way parlay!

ai3theansr went 14-0-0.

KellRawLive picked 71% out of his 62 bets correctly.

Dishonorable mentions:

brian, co-founder of WinTheTrophy, managed to maintain his negative overall BetIQ (-2.0).

sean, developer of the site, decided to keep brian company – his BetIQ currently stands at -1.7. So weak.

Not being a big sports fan, I found WinTheTrophy to be interesting in a different way: I wanted to see if there was a simple set of rules one can follow to consistently win more than what was bet. After a week or two of trying different strategies, I realized the following observations:

• On average, no one knows the future. That is, if you were to randomly bet on all the teams, your winning percentage will be close to 50%.
• If the above point is true, you should bet more on the team in a given game with the largest payout.
• However, you must make sure you gain the advantage of statistical significance: bet on as many teams as possible in a given day.
• As you win, continue betting on other teams the next day to take advantage of "compounding interest": the more chips you gain, the more you can bet on the following day (until your chip count is reset the following week).
• This strategy has a weakness of being very naive: you might not want to bet against a team with a perfect winning record playing a team with a "perfect" losing record, for example. However, even with this weakness, this strategy has on average won twice the amount that I bet for a given week. 

After seven weeks of betting, I stopped because I became bored with the copious amount of clicking required to play using my particular strategy (i.e., as many bets as possible on high-payout picks). (Again, I’m not a big sports fan.) However, if (when?) WinTheTrophy offers rule-based betting (or bots, as they’re usually known), I plan on taking advantage of them.