It's Round #2. CC in Germany won Round #1 in 9 rounds. The first week of Round #2 is Spieltag 10 (games starting on October 21, 2011). We'll play the same way; generally speaking, the pool works this way: Each Spieltag, you pick one team per week to win. You must pick that team before it plays its game that Spieltag (e.g., if you want to pick Bremen to win and they play Friday at 20:45, your pick as to be in by Friday at 20:44). If the team you pick does not win (i.e., either a tie or a loss; note that a postponed game is considered a loss if the game is not played before the next Spieltag), or you do not make a pick, that is a strike. In a marriage of soccer and baseball (or the American penal system), the rule is three strikes and you're out. In other words, after three strikes, you are eliminated. We play until everyone is out (e.g., has three strikes) but for one, who is our Survivor winner. If, after a round, there is no survivor (e.g., everyone goes out), the winner is that player who last picked up his or her first strike (and if that doesn't yield a winner, the tiebreaker goes to the player who last picked up his or her second strike). Once we have a winner, we will immediately commence a new competition in the next Spieltag. Simple, right? The big twist is that once you pick a team, you cannot pick that team again in that same competition (except if you've already picked all 18 1.BL teams during the competition, in which case you can begin repeating teams, but this has never happened before--competitions generally last between 10-12 Spieltags). So, if you pick Bremen in Spieltag #1, you can't pick Bremen again until either (a) the competition ends with a winner and a new one starts; or (b) you've picked all 18 teams in the current competition and have no other team left to pick. This game is largely self-governing. When you make your pick, please do so in the following format (or something like it): Sp. 1: Bremen Then, in the next week: Sp. 1: Bremen Sp. 2: Schalke Then, in the next week: Sp. 1: Bremen Sp. 2: Schalke Sp. 3: Augsburg If Augsburg loses, when you make your next pick, place an X next to Augsburg, indicating that was a strike: Sp. 1: Bremen Sp. 2: Schalke Sp. 3: Augsburg X Sp. 4: Bayern That way, everyone (including me) can follow easily who made what picks and how many strikes each player has.
SPIELTAG 10 Augsburg v Bremen Dortmund v. Cologne Nuremberg v. Stuttgart K'lautern v. Freiburg Hoffenheim v. Moenchengladbach Hertha Berlin v. Mainz Hamburg v. Wolfsburg Leverkusen v. Schalke Hannover v. Bayern Munich My Pick: Sp. 10: Dortmund
A bunch of strikes: nahkampfbiber, unclesox, Lamprey, CC in Germany, JeremyEritrea, RMFCKevin, and GeoffWii. The games for Spieltag 11: Freiburg v Leverkusen Bayern Munich v Nuremberg Schalke v Hoffenheim Stuttgart v Dortmund Wolfsburg v Hertha Berlin Gladbach v Hannover Mainz v Bremen Cologne v Augsburg Hamburg v K'lautern My pick: Sp. 10: Dortmund Sp. 11: Bayern Munich