RyDogg66

Well, Peavy isnt coming here and the thread has trended toward Peavy heading to the Cubs and the potential impact it would have, which then lead to the other Cubs moves and their impact. Typically on this forum when people make wild unsubstantiated statements, they get taken apart by others who use real life numbers to back up their stances. That is what is currently going on now. When people are comparing Micah Hoffpauir, Aaron Miles and Kevin Gregg favorably to Mark DeRosa, Milton Bradley and Kerry Wood, the facts need to sorted out. If there is new news about Peavy I am sure it will not be lost in here.

Onion Headline to read: "Adam Dunn prices self out of major league baseball"? He's got a family to feed you know.

Call me crazy JohnBriggs12, but I just dont see the Cubs have .900+ OPS talent at every position (including their bench) like you do. I also find it curious that you have generally have disliked everything the Brewers do and over estimate everything the Cubs do. Mike Fontenot - 2008 OPS = .909. A decent little player, finally made it to the majors at age 28 after spending 6 years in the minors after being drafted out of college. Micah Hoffpauir - 2008 OPS = .934. A decent corner Of/1b reserve, finally made it to the majors at age 28 after spending 6+ years in minors. He might be Brad Nelson with a good string of 73 MLB at bats for all we know. Milton Bradley - 2008 OPS = .999. Career OPS .822. Good hitter, unable to stay healthy, overachieved in hitters park, cant play CF. Likely to hit about .850 OPS. Aaron Miles - .2008 OPS = .753. Career OPS .697. Good fielder, likely to hit about .700 OPS. If the Brewers signed him you would positively hate the move.

I also disagree that the Cubs have gotten better. It isnt just Wood, Edmonds and DeRosa - the players - that they lost, it is great production that you would not otherwise expect from them last year that the Cubs have not replaced with Gregg, Bradley and Miles. The combo of Reed JOhnson and Jim Edmonds was unrealistically effective in CF last year and I doubt that Bradley and whomever they team him with will repeat that. Aaron Miles isnt close to what DeRosa did last year and Wood for Gregg isnt really close. Not only that, but with Marmol, their best reliever, pigeonholed into the 9th inning as the closer that means that lesser, more unproven players are going to have to come in a strike out the side in the 7th with runners on 2nd and 3rd and a one run lead.

Cruz would have to wait until after the June Draft to sign with a team and avoid draft pick consequences. He could also sign a minor league deal, but if the minor league deal has major league terms (i.e. if you make the team you get a 3 year, 15 million dollar contract) the commissioner's office would likely veto it. He and Varitek and Orlando Cabrera are in a world of hurt right now.

The thing is, there is no late game strategy. These are INITIALLY 24 hour auctions, but as long as people are placing bid, the time keeps being extended. If people never stopped bidding, the auction would go on for a month. Also, so-called late game strategy seems to lead to more bidding for two reasons. First, people's belief that it must be close to ending, so they keep b idding, and second, people's inability to let go - if someone has sunk 100 bids into a Wii, assuming they have more bids to spend, they are less likely to walk away than if they have sunk 10 bids. Also, video game consoles are hard to crack and likely are not worth chasing, as savings doersnt compensate for the risk.

Oh I remember a few more. Adventures in Babysitting (I remember falling in love with Elisabeth Shue in that movie) Swiss Family Robinson (I would watch that one by myself even)

Short response: the vouchers I have not "examined" much, but agree that they are a great thing to pursue. Vouchers are power. Second, in my example, it only applies to the auctions that start between about 2:00 and 3:00, and even then I am not sure yet. But yeah, if it is 2:30 in the morning, look for the auction that ends about 2:15 a.m. the next day. I will try to elaborate later but am short time right now.

I kind of sort of hope he signs in the NL (not in the central) and once or twice a year he shuts down the Brewers. well not really, but sort of.

Yeah lets boo the guy who bought and gave away thousands of tickets to the fans in September. Boo!!

What if he and Suppan both pitched 120 innings in the second half? Would you be irate about that as well? By the way, pitching a complete game and on 3 days rest for the last month of the season is not normal and will not be repeated by Sabathia. So if your baseline is Sabathia's line you are delusional. at most I would have expected 15 more innings from Sheets. Yes, we all know, you hate Sheets, that still does not make him a bad pitcher.

There seems to be a definite strategy involving the Bid Butler and setting it up early on the auction (a few minutes after the auction begins for example) and choosing an auction that is counting down to get close to zero for the first time in wee hours of the morning (CST). The first thing you have to understand is how the Bid Butler works in relation to other people who use the Bid Butler in the same auction. Example: Lets say user JohnDoe places a Bid Butler on a Macbook auction for 100 bids between .01 and $10.00. The game should then bid .01 for him and indicate that is done via the BidButler. Now lets say that user BobSmith comes along and places a bid butler on the same auction (with many hours left) and he places his bid butler to run from $.02 to $10.00 and he wants to use 75 bids. What the game does when two BidButlers face off is rapidly spend through the bids even if there are many, many hours or minutes remaining. So in this instance, BobSmith would have spent through all 75 of his bids instantly and John Doe would spend 75 of his as well and have 25 remaining. The price would then most likely be $1.51. ***this is also why bids go from 15 seconds up to 15 minutes or a half hour. If two bid butlers face off there are essentially 150 bids placed immediately and 15 seconds added on for each bid. How do you prevent this from happening? Obviously in the dollar auction scenario the only way to "beat" that game is if players understand what they are up against and "cooperate" to keep the bids down and have just one person bid. That is what I am seeing with the BidButlers. Sometimes (NOT ALWAYS!) the players that truly understand how to use the BidButler will find an auction and place a bid butler to place just 2-3 bids. If there is another bid butler currently set at that auction point it should set off 4-6 instantaneous bids running through all 2-3 bids that the new player has placed. This tells the new person that another user has "laid claim" to this auction and that the value of using the bid butler is diminished and further more the advantage actually goes toward the single bidder as all the bid butler bids by both players could theoretically be run through immediately and then leave just single bidders to bid (although the time will increase a lot and allow other players to swoop in and place a new bid butler if they wish). The Bid Butler is best utilized vs. Single Bidders and not using your bids unless the time falls below 10 seconds. Essentially I am seeing some people "cooperate" by placing those small bids and if another bid butler is placed they move along to another auction. The other thing is timing. More and more I am seeing people place bid butlers on auctions that have just started. For example, here is a MacBook Auction set to expire tomorrow morning at between 2:00 A.M. and 3:00 A.M.. As you can see, I placed a small bid butler here this morning and it set off another bid butler placed by user Whiskeyfrog. Example #2: Last night I was monitoring a Macbook auction set to expire early this morning around 2-3 AM. I noticed that user Omamackma had placed a bid butler already and I took note. This morning user Omamackma won that auction for $4.51 by placing 128 bids. The entire Macbook cost that user about $125.00. So what would I recommend to win a Macbook? Well I wouldnt place my bids yet, and now that I have sort of shown you what to look for others can monitor these auctions as well, but I would stay up until (or wake up at) 2:00-3:00 in the morning when a new auction begins, set to expire 24 hours later. I would purchse 200 bids (Cost $150.00) and set up a Bid Butler immediately for $0.01 to about $20.00 and to use all 200 bids. Hopefully that would result in you winning the Macbook for under $200.00. There is the risk of course that someone who is less patient that we are will try to out gun your bid butler with his/her own and 300 or 400 bids, but that is as likely for any auction, remember this is about keeping risk down.

If it hast been mentioned yet, Stand By Me is one of my favorites.

I dont really feel like sitting here and defending Swoopo so this will be my last post on your concerns. When I first saw it I called it "Evil Genius" and it is, but from what I can tell it is 100% legit. There are ways to beat the game you just have to work and research, you cant plug in $50 worth of bids and be a single bidder in 10 different auctions in the middle of the day and expect to win. That is what they want you to do. If you do that you will lose in a hurry. Just like playing every hand in Texas Hold 'em is dumb. There is 1 thing that can stop swoopo from manipulating their bids. The incredible profits they make off of human nature to 1) not lose and let the other guy the great deal 2.) to find a great bargain and 3) people's interest in gambling. Swoopo runs penny auctions for a new laptop that retails for $1200. Usually on swoopo that sells for $100.00, that is $7,500.00 they made. Why mess with that and open yourself up for criminal sanctions? If an employee ever got fired, EVER or even left and opened their mouth it would be the end of the cash cow. From what I have read, yes, things are listed swoopo's international websites, so "Befrak" won just one laptop. I dont know why they list it in different currencies other than for convenience. The bottom line is if you are skeptical, dont play. It is easy as that. Believe me, Im skeptical. I still have 32 bids left that are non refundable and I know that is most likely not enough to win something else so if I want to I would have to sink another $75.00 into the game. Again, the game is beatable if you work at it.

You are probably going to want to create an excel SS and create 7 different pages, one for each day of the week. Then column furthest on the left should be time of day and that should go down from 11:59 P.m. down to 12:00 A.m. for each new macbook insert into its proper place. The next column should be price, then # of bids the winner placed. Next column, did they use Bid Butler or were they a single bidder? Also, keep in mind that the higher the price of the item the further away in time it started relative to the time it ended. That might be importatnt as well. I would guess that with the different operating systems that Macbook is unique enough from a PC that it would deserve its own spreadsheet as I doubt people are bidding on both, but who knows they may.

I was just trying to explain why the numbers came out that way. They consistently did, so there is no disputing that, how it is explained then, I dont know.

Again, for the cash you dont have to pay the amount of the winning bid. That is why those auctions get so high. You only pay in how much you invest in bids. If that makes sense. I see the guy spend $1500 in bids to win $1,000.00. Yeah, that is dumb, but not as dumb as if he had stopped bidding after spending $1490 in bids and win back nothing. That is what you want to avoid happening.

I wouldnt (and havent) placed bids between 8:00 AM and Midnight. Unbelievably the worst deals and decisions for the TVs came between Midnight and 2 A.M., I chalked it up to people wanting to go to bed and placing bids like mad to win something before they go to sleep. Also, a bid that might be going on all day long might end at that time and that wold affect the price and the number of bids.

Patrick - if you go to the site and watch some auctions you will understand. Each bid adds 1 cent to the price, and 10-15 seconds to the time remaining. If someone bids 1 cent with 50 seconds left and then the clock clicks down to 20 seconds and another person bids, then the clock hits 15 seconds and another bids, the bid butler will not place my bid until and/or unless the time remaining falls below 10 seconds, and even then it is random as to when the bid is placed (to keep the other players guessing). This saves you money in the long run I believe since you only bid 1 cent when you absolutely have to (to prevent the time from expiring), then when you bid 1 cent, the time in the auction goes back to 15 seconds and ticks down again. Take note that if multtple people place bids with 1 second left (other 2, 3, 4 seconds, whatever) that 10-15 seconds is (sometimes) added for each person and you could have over a minute remaining.

For laptops, or Macbooks, generally speaking, I wouldnt bid tonight (Saturday/Sunday) but tomorrow night looks good. The best times to bid are 2:00-3:30 A.M. CST and for whatever reason 7:00-8:00 AM, CST, perhaps because the east coasties are going to work and the left coast is still sleeping.

Re: cash auction, I dont think you have to pay the cash you bid, only the cost of your bids. I THINK that is the case, some auctions are 100% off auctions. Read some more of the info on the site. Swoopo gives away a lot of information, and this is like poker. The more information you know about the game your opponent the btter you can do.

Yes, I have seen some people win Nintendo Wii for $100.00 but spend 300 bids to win it and actually spend more than it is worth. Dont do that.

Other tips: The auctions start counting down at about 24 hrs I think. Realistically, from 24hrs until about 1-2 minutes there is little to no action. I found (luckily) a TV that was counting down at the 4 hour mark, set to expire exactly at 2:00 a.m. At that time the high bid was $0.15, no bid butler bids yet (which is important, you want to be the only bid butler if possible). Also that means that nobody had become emotionally invested yet. I believe this is HUGE. I have seen two products sell at the same time, one for 3x what the other goes for. Once people become emotionally invested they focus on one and do not want to cut bait, even when they should. ***I also do not know if this is important or not to my success but there was another tV counting down about 2 hours behind me. So I set my bid butler to begin bidding at $0.25 and to continue bidding until $25.00 and to use 100 bids. The Bid Butler will then use the bids up or stop at $25.00, whichever comes first. Also, the bid butler does not match every bid, it only bids if the time drops below 10 seconds, so that saves you some money if you are up against multiple single bidders as they likely spend their bids BEFORe the bid butler does. I also believe one variable was that most people figured this TV would sell for $25.00, $50.00 or more dollars (like the others earlier in the day), and in a penny auction vs. a bid butler at 2:00 in the morning and the price is $1.75, why stay up and keep bidding when there (at least seem to be) at least 2000 more bids (and hours and hours) yet to come?? They dont. Ok, if I can think of more stuff I will let you know. If you have questions about timing and days of week for the laptops (Macbook or ACER or whatever, let me know and I will be happy to share what I have, in fact I will post it in the next reply as I have had some IMs about the macs.) In the end, I just might have gotten lucky, as I said, I fully expected to wake up to pissing away 100 bids (and $75.00). They dont call it entertainment shopping for a reason.

I have a lot of messages in my inbox so let me expand a little bit about what I did to win - feel free to ask other questions and if my research indicated anything I will let you know. First off, realize, that what I did was simply minimized my risk - it didnt guarantee anything. I fully expected to wake up and see all 100 of my bids that I bought gone and the TV sold to some other sucker. I was surprised that I won. Second, I initially targeted three things that I wanted. A laptop, a Wii and a flat screen TV. Early on in my research I realized that getting a TV would be the easiest of the three - and provide the biggest savings - so I ended up focusing on that. I then started to chart EVERY tv that sold on the site going back a couple hundred pages worth (about 1,000 sales) and built a grid taking note of the TIME of sale, DAY of week, PRICE, how many BIDS the winner placed and whether the winner was a SINGLE bidder or used BID BUTLER. I also tracked SIZE of the Television but did not notice anything statistically significant, although the 61" might be a bit different but I knew I did not want one so I didnt look into it. Third - My research showed the following. TIME OF DAY - not surprisingly, the best time to bid was at about 2:00 CST until about 3:30 CST. Late enough to get the typical west coast person in bed and earlier enough that folks on the East Coast are long in the sack and not ready to wake up yet. This seemed to be true for the laptops and Wii's as well however like I mentioned above I have not fully gone through that path yet. DAY OF WEEK: There were two days that seemed to stick out. For whatever reason one of them was Saturday, which I could not figure out why since people are home on Saturdays. Then again, most of the good deals were EARLY saturday morning, so I figured many people were either out (and not in front of their computers like they might usually be that time) or sleeping, like they are at 2:00 in the morning every night. Tuesday was the other day that stuck out as a good day to bid. Probably because people like to toy around on the internet on Monday back to work and get down to business on tuesday. So, to my delight I prepared to make a bid Saturday morning SINGLE BIDDER or BID BUTLER: A single bidder is someone who is sitting in front of their computer clicking and bidding as the clock winds down. BID BUTLER is an auto bid program that lets you plug in a bottom amount and top amount for the Bid Butler to protect your bids. You also must enter how many bids you want him to place in that time period. Overwhelmingly 90-95% of the people who won used Bid Butler. So I knew I needed to use that. Part of it is a psychological advantage vs. a single bidder. If that single bidder knows you are away from the computer, in bed or out to eat and he does NOT know how high you are setting your bids he knows he likely CANNOT outlast you and he moves on to another auction. # of BIDS PLACED by winners: I do not know if this is important or not, but you might want to know how many bids people are placing to win. Swoopo doesnt tell you how many the losers place. However, this should tell you how many bids you can expect to place to win an auction if your sample size is big enough. PRICE: Price seemed to be not that bid of a factor and it isnt really a factor in any of these auctions because the idea is to limit the # of bids you place in order to win, as I have never seen an auction go for more than 60% of the retail price on anything, and for the big ticket items even lower. That being said, about $25-$30 seemed to be the going rate for the winning auctions, with a few outliers in the 125-150 range and a few in the $2.00 range. ....will continue in next post, dont want to lose everything I have typed so far....

Thanks. I am now turning my attention to a new laptop. It is looking like Monday (morning) is the best time to get one as the data seems to indicate that there is a considerable difference in the ACER brand on Monday than on any other day so I might try snag one tomorrow night.