Preparation for the 2023 Protect Your Unit season is well underway. Here are some details about what will be new.
As discussed in the last two posts, PYU will be part of a larger sports ecosystem, with a new name. PYU will be the name of the season-length college football game. Other season-length games will exist, as well as meta-games like the below-mentioned "Daily 15", fortnight-length contests, and an "endless run" game where you start with a small number of points and try to build it as large as you can, and stay alive for as long as you can. Those will come later rather than sooner, though; the current priority is getting the season-length games running.
The goal is to have a season-length game running for WNBA or CFL season. This will serve as a test run for the next season of PYU, and will let you get accustomed to the new rules.
There will be a lot of rule changes, summarized below.
| CATEGORY | OLD | NEW |
| BANKROLL | Start with 1000 units, and your score went up and down from there. | Still start with 1000 units, but it's divided into "bankroll" and "winnings." Only winnings count towards your score. You start with 0 points instead of 1000; points only increase when you win bets. Bets come out of your bankroll, until it is consumed. You may then continue to bet from your winnings, risking some of your score for a chance to build it higher. |
| BET MINIMUMS | 3 bets per week including 1 AAC bet, for 5-25% of your bankroll (using the old definition of bankroll). You had to bet every week or spend a bye. | None. All these nitpicky details are going away, in favor of a new "In Play" system. During the regular season, you may have 250 units, or 25% of your winnings if larger, on pending bets. This increases to 500/50% in the post season. There are no minimums,m or requirements to play certain games. Instead, there are incentives to keep playing. The bankroll system, where your starting units are worthless until you play them, is one of them; we'll soon meet the others. |
| SINGLE BET LIMITS | Must bet 1 unit. | Bets must win 1 unit. If a line is -400, betting 1 unit on it would win .25 units, so this play is no longer allowed. If a line is +400, betting .25 units on it would win 1 unit, so this bet is allowed. |
| WEEKS | The season was divided into weeks, and only games from the current week can be played. | Play any game you want any time you want, if a line is available for it. This message was written on May 6, and there are about 35 college football games that already have lines. You can bet Michigan-Ohio State in June if you want, but bear in mind this bet will count against your In Play limit until the end of the regular season when the bet is resolved. (This has the side effect of eliminating the points race, but I am replacing it with something even better.) |
| LINES | Collected lines from one or more online sources, and offered the most favorable -110 line for each. Were updated daily. | Will collect lines from about 30 real-life sports books, and build a consensus line for each play. Point spreads and over/unders may be other than -110, but they will not vary from it much. We will not offer alternative lines this season, but this may be a future addition. Lines will update multiple times daily. Contrary to my earlier post, the house edge will not be removed from lines. |
| PARLAYS | 2 or 3 over/under or point spread plays. | Still limited to 3-way in PYU or any season-length game. Coordinated parlays will no longer be allowed; each choice in a parlay must be for a different game. Money lines may now be included in parlays. |
| POINTS FORMAT | 1000.00. | Your score will be the same as Winnings, but rounded to the nearest ⅛, rounding down. A total of 100.99 would be expressed as 100⅞. A final score of 200.59 to 200.51 would be a tie, since both round down to 200½. Bets amounts, and your winnings expressed as 1000.000. This allows maximum flexibility to bet the optimum amounts that will achive the winnings you want. (The new betting dialog will make this easy for you.) |
| GAMBLETRON 3000 | Offered a random game at -102 instead of the usual -110. | Removed. There will be more varied line offerings in general, making this less useful. |
| FUTURES | Were offered only pre-season, and futures bets were limited to 100 units total. | Available and updated at all times. Other than the In Play limit, there are no other limitations. |
| STANDINGS | Finishing first in the money race (or, in 2021 and 2022, the points race) was the only thing that mattered. | PYU is now one of many events in a larger overall competition. At the end of the PYU season, you will receive an award and a number of points based on your standing, which will count towards your
Permanent Record - an all-time, universal score of all players in all events. The breakdown will be:
You've heard of the wooden spoon? Spoons will be awarded to the... less successful entrants. This mechanism will replace the points race as a way to keep players involved, no matter where they are in the standings. And, it changes how you need to manage your bankroll/winnings, because there are repercussions for losing. |
| PRIZES | Were awarded. | PYU will no longer award physical real-world prizes, because I want to expand the player pool, and I don't want to run afoul of any local gambling laws that prohibit winning "anything of value." |
| WEBSITE | This one. | The new website will have minimal advertising, because it will be more expensive to run, and I need to be realistic about the costs. I plan to also offer "premium memberships", which will let you have the no-ad experience and contribute to the site's expenses. There will also be a way to donate. |
| BOTS | None. | There will be a handful of "bots" that will participate in each contest and make random choices. |
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 of our commitment to
keeping up with the latest technologynot dropping old technology when we should, Protect Your Unit has a Twitter accountnowstill.— 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.