"GERRY":

The pool uses a random pick for the first race of the year (Daytona), after that the order of picking is determined by how well you did the previous week. I had Jeff Burton in the Daytona 500. He ran near the top ten until just before the race was called on account of the weather, so I finished 28 with him. This garnered me 16th pick for the Auto Club 500 tomorrow as I was the 17th place finisher out of the 23 people that got in the pool. Whoever picks the winner, wins the pool money, but then has to pick last the following week out of those that were in the race the previous week, with new people picking after the previous week winner. So I finally get the list handed to me. 14 people had made their picks, with 1 not participating. When I have to pick this low, I mainly am hoping to pick a driver that will get me into the top 15 or 10 so that the week following will have me with a decent pick and fair to good chance of picking a winner. But today I was looking at Jr. and Newman still unpicked when it was my turn, with Burton qualifying 40th having been choosen already! I suppose Junior misses his Budweiser? Anyway, I picked him and will be rooting for him.

Walter Montego: Dale JR has to start driving like his father.He showed Vickers if you going to dive down on me your going to get spun.That was crazy they where both a lap down.And JR had a real run on him .But Vickers has never liked JR. That was in last week race:))

"GERRY": I remember that. The announcers got all bent out of shape about Junior doing that, but I blame it on Daytona's rules and their yellow boundary line. Besides when they replayed the action of it, they kept showing it in slow motion. Anyone can second guess a driver in slow motion after the fact. When they showed it in real speed, I am amazed that it wasn't worse than it was. I will however question Junior's judgment in driving that hard when he's a lap down, but all of them started driving hard after the hundredth lap and the threat of a rain out was becoming apparent.

Walter Montego: Yes i agree with you on that.

Walter Montego: Junior is,t doing very good in practise ,but i would like to see him do good today to.

Walter Montego: So how are you doing in your pool so far this year?

"GERRY": Not too well. After having to pick near the end, it can take some luck to get an early pick. Or, you get a good driver and he finishes poorly and back you go. This last race I picked 22nd. I took Joey Logano figuring the rookie might get into the top ten and help me the following week. He finshed 13th, so I'll have a half way decent pick next week. A few of the drivers ahead of him were not picked such as Reutimann (4th) and Bowyer (2nd), so this will get me a higher pick too. When it was my pick, I almost took Kenseth. He started 40th, but he's a good driver and proven as compared to Logano, but I went with Logano just on the hunch and he had a faster car in qualifying. I did not watch the race, but I have a print out of the race results and it looks like Kenseth only completed 6 laps and finished dead last!

I only picked one winner last year. We usually have 15 to 25 people in the pool. If you can pick two winners for the season, you'll break even for the whole year moneywise. Twice I've picked four winners for the whole season. Winning takes the whole pool, but you pick last the following week. Everyone else picks in the order that they finish in. When there's fifteen or so people, everyone usually can pick a good driver. 20 or more people and it starts to get tough for the people picking late. If you're one of those people likes a certain driver, it can get frustrating if someone grabs him before you do, but it makes the pool kind of fun that way especially when you do better at the finish than someone that picked before you. Picking last and winning has happened, but it's been awhile since someone won two races in a row. When I was the commissioner, I had a side pot and kept track of everyone's points that their driver earned each race. At the end of the year, we gave out money to the top three people in points. That was a lot of work and it's not easy for people that don't know numbers and charts like I do, so the commissioners since I resigned have just gone with a winner take all each race.

One year I had a separate pool in addition to the regular pool. Because of the inherent unfairness of picking in the regular pool, I decided to make a parimutuel type pool. Let people pick whenever they wanted and as many drivers as they wanted and bet whatever amount they wanted. So some drivers could have more than one person picking them, but then if he won the people would split the winnings based on their share of the pool. Just like horse racing is done here in California, though I took no cut out of the pool like the tracks do. This was quite fair, but for some reason it didn't catch on and people liked the pool that we already had going, flawed and all. :)

Walter Montego: Sound's like alot of fun ' but alot of work also Hope you get good pick's for this week end:))

Walter Montego: How you been making out in your NASCAR POOL