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17 Long Weeks
Anthony Curtis, Las Vegas AdvisorSeptember, 2008
A saying popular among former boat owners goes, “The second best day of my life was the day I bought my boat; the best day was the day I sold it.” A version of this applies to many who sign up to play these cool-sounding contests.
In a nutshell, entering a contest with a low entry fee and high upside where you can fill out tickets at your leisure and use your knowledge of a game you love sounds fantastic. And that’s why these contests have done so well over the years. But if you’re like 99% of those who play them for entertainment, you’re guaranteed to curse your decision at least once over the course of the long season.
The obvious reason is resultsyou enter thinking you have 17 chances to win something in a weekly, plus your shot at the overall. But with at least hundreds, and usually thousands, of players competing, you’re a big underdog to ever cash. In most cases you have no shot at a weekly prize unless you choose no more than one loser. And even when that’s enough, you figure to split the prize with other one-loser cards. The reality, though, is that you’ll probably never get to that spot, and it gets tedious. Eventually, you get to the point where you’re out of contention for the year-end prize and it takes a lot of discipline to keep going for the weeklies (many drop out, so weeklies become more valuable near the end of the season).
And that’s nothing compared to the process of preparing and submitting the picks. For most it means two, and sometimes three, trips to the sponsoring casino every weekonce to pick up your card, a second to submit it, and a third to check the board if you happen to have a contender (so you know what to sweat on Monday night). Yes, you can (usually) pick up, fill out, and submit the cards on one trip, but that’s neither convenient nor optimal to doing your best. And how about those great bonus entries? Buy three at the Palms, get three free. Whoopee. Now you get to fill out six of the things. Careful what you wish for here.
And a discussion of contest drawbacks wouldn’t be complete without shining a light on something we learned playing the Cannery’s “Fantasy Contest” last year. In this one you pick players and compare performances head-to-head. It sounds like a format that would heighten involvement, but unless you’re a real fantasy expert who’s tied into sources of ongoing updates on the players, this contest is almost impossible to sweat on Sundays. Really. You make your picks, then consult a sheet the following week. It’s a good tournament, but not that much fun to play.