THE STATE OF ROUND EIGHT

Boasters League round 8~~

Just take a quick mental note that the numbers coming up in the article are an accumulation of 2 rounds, not just from last night. Since I was not in the office Thursday or Friday last week, I could not get the standings out for the league. When I did get back to the office on Monday though, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of scores in my in-box, there were a decent quantity of makeup matches to record. It did shake up the standings somewhat – at the lower end.

Nothing has changed with the top 3 other than the fact that the Winky-Dinks have all but locked up the top spot. Once again, they picked up the most points (66) and have a massive 38 point lead going into the final round next Wednesday. Butter Nutz had the round 8 bye, but managed to hold on to second spot even though Mongoose have the same amount of points. Butter Nutz currently hold the tie break by one bonus point. It is actually important to finish in the top 2 of the standings… you get the first round bye in the finals if you do. It also goes to show just how important turning up on Wednesday may (can?) be.

The team the suffered the most over the past 14 days was On the Rocks. They did have the round 7 bye, but they still only picked up 22 points – the least amount by 12 points - and plummeted from 4^th to 8^th and have now given themselves an awfully difficult task of reaching the top 6 and a play-off berth.

The Wardogs are currently 4^th and have the unenviable honor of sitting out round 9. However, they are probably pretty safe from elimination being 32 points off 7^th placed Vivio’s… but they should perhaps play a few makeup matches just in case and play it safe.

Like every season, the main interest will be not who makes the finals, but who doesn’t. Which teams are going to fight hard to end up in the top 6. The teams ranked 5^th – 9^th right now all have a reasonable chance not to make it.

One of the lightest turnouts in recent memory last night – which says a lot considering this half has had mysteriously low numbers – so I won’t delve into handpicking standout matches since there were so few of them completed. Although I will mention that Stefan Houbtchev’s (Mongoose) relative anonymity helped George Kordas take advantage of one of our members (that will remain nameless) who couldn’t imagine that anyone (other than Vikram) was capable of beating Jed Elley (Nick at Night). Like a slick pool shark in a seedy bar, George recognized he had a victim in the palm of his hand and of course could not pass up the opportunity. Not too sure how many drinks George is now owed, but I am sure that Stefan is now a little less anonymous.

So we come to the final round of the season. Deadline for any / all results to be sent to me is March 7 (inclusive). I will be sending out the play-off matches on Friday March 8. Top 6 advance. Top 2 get a first round bye. Bottom 3 are eliminated. In the case of a tie, bonus points will be the tie-break. If that is also a tie, then it will be who won the head-to head during the season. If that’s is also tied, we’ll count how many nicks each team has hit during the season. If that is also tied, I’ll decide who is the best dressed. If I can’t make that decision, I’ll simply sell myself to the highest bidder. I take checks as well as cash.