Development of the new and improved PYU makes good progress. I hope to have something ready to show you soon, though you won't be able to log in or make plays right away. I'm aiming for baseball season as an estimated start date, but it'll be ready when it's ready.
It will have a new name. I've chosen one, but am not ready to announce it yet.
At the outset, you will be able to play the following: NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, WNBA, NHL, college football, and (men's) college basketball. Non-American sports leagues will be an future expansion.
Instead of one contest lasting the entire length of the college football season, there will be many concurrent contests. There's always a new race to play in, and sporting events every day of the year, so you'll never be out of the game for long.
The first such contest will be "The Daily 15." You make four picks, and get a "Lucky 15" bet on all of them. That is a four-way parlay, six 3-way parlays, four 2-ways, and four single bets - all on the same four picks. This can be any combination of offered sports, individual games, and bet types you want.
The second such contest type will be a two-week "mini-season", running from the 1st to 15th, or 16th to last day, of each month. There will also be sport- and season-length contests, like PYU traditionally was.
There will be two new game mechanics that will force you to avoid last place, and avoid running out of units. Think of it like relegation; even if you're not in the title hunt, there will still be minimum standards to meet. It will often be preferable to stand pat on a "safe" result than throw all your chips into a last-ditch parlay.
One such mechanic will be the All-Time Standings, which will be a sort of eternal contest that you're always playing in. Good results in daily or biweekly events will build your total, while bad results will cost you points.
There won't be any real-world prizes, because I don't want to run afoul of any local gambling laws.
Each offered line will have a custom payout, but there will be no house vig. Most bets will be +100 (instead of -110). Payouts for money lines will be adjusted accordingly.
The overall presentation will be more light-hearted in tone, while also preserving the realistic experience of sports betting. You'll see what I mean.
I am rebuilding the game into something much bigger, better, and more ambitious. The features of the new game will include:
My goal is to have a beta version open for public testing in time for baseball season. I'll need beta testers, and you're invited to participate. I'll send more specific instructions when an unveiling date gets closer.
As hinted at in the Week 12 post, I am planning some radical changes to the PYU format for the 2023 season. This includes:
Click "Futures" to see all futures bets that were made for the 2022 season. Bets on USF to win more/fewer than 4.5 games have been voided and the bet returned. because the location of the East Carolina game moved.
Now you can bet on how well or poorly USF starts the game! The bets page has both a regular and a "halftime" option for USF-Tulane. The halftime option is for the point spread at halftime. You can take Tulane -20.5 (Tulane leads by 3 TDs at halftime), or USF +0.5 (USF is tied or leading at halftime). Only point spread is offered. It counts as an AAC bet if played, and pays the usual -110. It's an all new way to love and/or hate your 2022 USF team!
Still to do:
Now, some games on the Make Picks page will have a gold color. These are Gambletron games, which means you get -102 instead of the usual -110. A win pays $98.04, instead of the usual $90.01. This is an incentive from the house to drive more action on other games. Previously, only one line in one game was offered.
These are randomly chosen games, except that they will never involve USF, UCF, Florida, or Florida State (because those are the most played teams by far). They may involve other Florida teams and/or AAC teams. You may bet either team's pointspread, the over or under. The moneyline wager has no additional premium. Parlaying has no effect on the parlay payout.
The bets page has some new features: you can view or hide games by type. The types are:
Games may belong to two or three categories; if so, the color will be a gradient reflecting both colors. (The USF game is always just green, though.)
If you're not sure what category a game belongs to, or you don't want to go by color, you can click the Hide All button and then click the categories you want to use. Only games of that type will be visible.
We are prepping for the 2022 season! The only major rule change will be that FAU, UAB. UTSA, Rice, Charlotte, and North Texas will count as AAC teams for purposes of fulfilling the "1 AAC bet" rule. Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF will NOT count as AAC teams. Either team in a game can be AAC for the game to qualify as AAC, so this will affect few games. The money and points races will both be back. We'll have Futures bets to make soon.
The major change for 2021 will be the new points system, which will award a co-championship based on who accumulates the most points each week of the competition. The most fake money won in a week will earn 15 points, then 10, then 7-5-4-3-2-1. You must profit $1 or more in a week to be eligible for points. So some weeks will not see all of these points awarded. For example, if only three players are in the black in a week, the points awarded will be 20-15-10 and then stop. If more than 9 players earn points in a week, all remaining players who qualified will earn 1 point. Whoever has most points at season's end will be co-champion along with the traditional money leader.
Futures bets will be back for 2021. You can preview the list of available bets here. You may bet up to $250 on futures. There is no minimum bet, or any requirement to bet on AAC teams. Futures bets are entirely optional.
And we're back. I am planning to have the site open for business on Saturday, August 1. There will be some season-long prop bets offered. I earnestly hope that last year's "number of games cancelled" bet will not be back. Ever.
Starting with Week 5, there will be a new prop bet:
how many games will be cancelled this week? It appears as "COVID 19 vs college football" and is an over/under for the number of games that will be cancelled. Details:I still haven't fixed the Review Picks page - I basically have to rebuild the whole thing from scratch, while my server support can't even tell me what changed - so you'll have to email them for now. Here are the lines for Week 1 games:
S Alabama +16 S Miss -16 O/U 58.5
Ark St +16 Memphis -16 O/U 69.5
SMU -17 Texas St +17 O/U 71.5
MTSU 5.5 Army -5.5 O/U 54.5
BYU +2.5 Navy -2.5 O/U 53.5
Send your picks to me via email. I'm sorry for this very retrograde method, but it's all I can do at the moment. 2020, am I right?
We are currently working on fixes that are currently preventing bets from being placed.
We are making preparations for the 2020 college football season! Due to all the uncertainty, we have to be a little more flexible than usual. Official Rules have be en updated; the major changes are no Futures bets this year, and "weeks" are not set in stone.
If you need to recover your username/password from last year, or want to join for this year, please send an email to the Contact link above.
As of our commitment to keeping up with the latest technology, Protect Your Unit has a Twitter account now.— ProtectYourU.Net (@protectyouru) May 27, 2019
Protect Your Unit is the college football pick'em contest operated by Voodoo Five SouthFlorida.247sports.com The Daily Stampede. 2019 will be our seventh season on this website, and our 10th season overall.
This contest combines our love of two of life's greatest gifts: college football and degenerate gambling. It also proves that beating the spread, no matter how much college football you watch, is often tougher than it looks. The greatness of this contest is, besides proving how wealthy you would really be if you just bet all your net worth on college football like you want to, when you're wrong there are no pawn shops or payday loans involved. We're doing this for fun, and to see who's the best college football gambler of them all. That guy should move to Vegas and just shop lines all day... because why not??
The contest takes its name from the sage advice often given by legendary broadcaster Chris Thomas of sports radio WDAE in Tampa. CT was our role model for balancing a fulfilling professional career with openly being a true degenerate (and usually a profitable one).
We miss him for so many reasons (our favorite being how he would annually broadcast the Outback Bowl with Jack Harris and a raging hangover), but one of the biggest was every Friday during football season he ran a picks contest with his listeners on air. People would call in and give and the reasons why they were picking the games they chose. We want you to do the same: participate in the weekly thread saying why you chose the picks you did. This is where the comedy ensues. RIP Chris.
The contest is open to all Daily Stampede readers as well as our friends throughout the college football blogosphere. Email GarySJ with your SBNation member name, desired password, team you support, and your blog/Twitter (if any). We'll get you squared away faster than your bookie finds you after going 0-6 and not covering your double-down on Monday Night Football, or the WNBA parlay that was just ohsoclose and oh God 1-888-Admit-it and do you know how to get a cash advance on an Old Navy gift card?
You will begin the college football season with $1,000 of fake money. Each week, you will have to make at least three different bets, one of them involving an American Athletic Conference team. You must bet between $50 and $250, or 5% and 25% of your total, each week. You get one bye week per season. The Make Picks page will show all of the upcoming week's games, and the wagers you can make on them.