Beat Guru is back!

Adam Markowitz
Tuesday March 30, 2010

It's been over a year since the Guru put on his thinking cap for the AFL, but after watching the Orlando Predators and Tampa Bay Storm kick it off in a scrimmage last Friday night, the juices are flowing again, and the Guru is back!

For those of you who don't remember how this works or are new to the game, let's go over the rules.

Let's get all of the legal mumbo jumbo out of the way before we get started...

Disclaimer: This information should be used for entertainment purposes only.  Should you choose to actually lay real money on these games, that’s purely your choice, and neither I nor ArenaFan are responsible.

Basically, I don't want to hear it if you actually place real money bets on the games that I'm picking and you lose. There's no crying in Arena Football.

Here are the rules of the game...

Approximately on Wednesday or Thursday, I'll post my weekly article with the spreads from a reputable sportsbook for that week's games.

For those of you that don't know how spreads work, here's a quick explanation.

In the most recent ArenaBowl, the San Jose SaberCats were +3.5 against the Philadelphia Soul. What that means is that the SaberCats were essentially starting with 3.5 points on their side before the game ever started. In order to "cover the spread" as it is referred to in gambling, the favored team (in this case, the Soul) have to win the game by more than 3.5 points to win.

In the case of ArenaBowl XXII, the Soul won 59-56. So if you factor back in the 3.5 points for San Jose, the SaberCats actually won 59.5-59, and they covered the spread.

Just to set the record straight... The mighty Guru predicted that the final score of the game would be Philadelphia 58 - San Jose 56. Don't believe me? Click on this link.

If you're still confused about how this works, you'll catch on after you start seeing some other people post.

Speaking of posting, that's exactly how this contest works! There will be a thread that is made a sticky at the front of the ArenaFan Message Boards that will be linked to the bottom of each weekly article. In the article, you'll get both my picks and the picks of my handy, dandy Magic 8-Ball, which I'm still knocking all of the dust off of as I type this article.

Winners will be recognized weekly in the following week's article, and records will be kept on a weekly basis for the duration of the season. Here's how our standings finished up last year in the regular season...

Beat the Guru’s Regular Season Top 10 (must have 40 games selected to qualify)
AFLJunkie: 78-53 (59.5%)
Es46ne10: 73-61 (54.5%)
InsideSix: 66-60 (52.4%)
Arena Guru: 70-65 (51.9%)
AFLGuru: 69-66 (51.1%)
EKUVolley: 59-58 (50.4%)
MBoyle: 44-44 (50.0%)
Phillysoul04: 41-46 (47.1%)
Rush43: 58-68 (46.0%)
Chrisncory: 30-36 (45.5%)

Hitting 51.1% of my plays, I consider to be a complete and total abortion, and it won't happen again. That being said, of you mere mortals, only four of you were able to beat me in the regular season, and I'm taking it as a personal challenge to make sure that that doesn't happen again.

So if you dare, try your hand at Beat the Guru in 2010! Look for our first installment coming up later this week!