As all of you know, there are two major playoffs right around the corner. With the race for the Stanley Cup starting in less than a week, and the NBA playoffs kicking into high gear in mid-April, the excitement and competitive spirit is brewing. Making your picks during the playoffs is always much more meaningful than the regular season.

Well now, we want to make those picks even more meaningful, as well as the few games left heading down the stretch. Brando and I are pleased to announce the first ever Picktastic Playoffs!

Here's how it works!

Picktastic Playoffs happen at the same time as the playoffs for every sport, so NHL will start after the regular season ends next week. During the playoffs, the objective is to get the #1 ranking in picks for the duration of the entire playoffs. At the end of the playoffs, the winner will be crowned winner of the sport for that season, and will get a super awesome badge on their profile. They will also get featured on the home page of Picktastic, along with a picture of themselves (it doesn't have to be an avatar), and a short quote so you can talk trash to all the other hosers you just beat out for the season. You're the champion, so you may as well talk trash. Everyone else has a whole year to try and get you back.

Getting into the playoffs is a whole other story, though. Like the playoffs for real sports, having the best record for the season is the surest way to get you in, so we will take the top 10 Pickrs for the entire season and they're in. No sweat!

There will also be 6 Wildcard spots available to the biggest Wager winners for the season for that particular sport. This is based on the net overall winnings for that sport, and the Pickr must also place in the top 50 rankings for that sport to be eligible for a Wildcard spot.

So get ready! You can see the NHL Playoff Standings here, and see if you've made the cut for the playoffs, as they start soon! If you're on the list, and there's a yellow number next to your name, you currently stand to make the playoffs.

NBA Standings can be viewed here, and playoff spots will lock-in mid-April.

Good luck!

We're approaching our 100,000th pick, so I thought I would check and see who the most popular teams to pick are. Since Picktastic officially launched about 3/4 through football season, some of these numbers might be a little bit skewed.. (like.. oh.. NCAA Football, maybe?)

Most popular teams by picks and sport:

NFL:

New England Patriots 391
Green Bay Packers 340
Seattle Seahawks 289

NCAA Football:

Oregon State Beavers 138
Florida Gators 123
Oklahoma Sooners 123

MLB:

Boston Red Sox 180
Colorado Rockies 101
New York Mets 97

NBA:

Boston Celtics 1119
Detroit Pistons 1015
San Antonio Spurs 1005

NHL:

Detroit Red Wings 634
Pittsburgh Penguins 580
New Jersey Devils 525

NCAA Basketball:

Duke Blue Devils 341
Memphis Tigers 339
Kansas Jayhawks 334

Hey guys, there was a slight miscalculation in the Pickr of the Week that went up yesterday, so I’d like to apologize to Luuuk and EireHog for the mistake on my fault. Last week’s race was so close especially towards the end there, too! I’m sorry about the error on my part, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Congratulations to EireHog for the narrow victory last week!

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Hey guys and gals,

We rolled out some new features today that were some small changes and additions. For example, now when you're browsing profiles, you can get a quick glance at some of their friends, as well as their avatars. You've probably seen something like it before on other sites, and we really liked it, so we thought we'd add it.

Another cool thing we threw in is now on the home page, which is our Latest All-Stars feature. We're now taking the nine hottest Pickrs in the last 48 hours and throwing your avatar up on on the home page (right below the Pickr of the Week, of course)!

In addition to this new stuff, we did make some tweaks and removed a couple of things to try and speed up the site, but they were pretty subtle.

Hope everybody is having a good week, and if you haven't told all your buddies about Picktastic yet, make sure you send out that mass e-mail everbody loves to receive with pictures of kittens dangling from chandeliers and they'll be sure to come sign up to pick against you. If they don't like sports, you could even try and bribe them with potato chips. I mean, look at Creel. The dude doesn't even like sports and he's hooked!

In other news, I totally spaced the Video of the Week last week, but I think the timing for this week's winner couldn't be better. This week's Video of the Week goes to stever for his video of San Diego Supercharger anti-Patriot spreading mojo. We can all agree that the banged-up Bolts will need to bust out all of the voodoo they can to even have a shot this weekend in this weekend's AFC Championship.

This week JakeBreaker returns to reclaim the spot as weekly champion as he dominates picking the boards with college basketball. Do you have what it takes to unseat the two-time champion of picking?

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The Portland Trail Blazers keep moving up excessively in our weekly NBA Power Rankings, but the boys are still showing plenty of poise (and are beating the pants off of the Nets as we speak). I'd look for the Pistons to reclaim their spot near the top after their nasty loss the other night.

Here are the Week 11 NBA Power Rankings:

# 1. Boston Celtics - 3040
# 2. Portland Trail Blazers - 2400
# 3. Dallas Mavericks - 2368
# 4. Los Angeles Lakers - 2331
# 5. Detroit Pistons - 2226
# 6. Phoenix Suns - 2191
# 7. San Antonio Spurs - 1962
# 8. Cleveland Cavaliers - 1855
# 9. Denver Nuggets - 1624
# 10. Houston Rockets - 1568
# 11. New Orleans Hornets - 1360
# 12. New Jersey Nets - 1169
# 13. Orlando Magic - 1115
# 14. Golden State Warriors - 1104
# 15. Utah Jazz - 1086
# 16. Washington Wizards - 870

I'm pretty much stupid when it comes to NHL (which is why I don't do as many picks as I ought to.... you'll take my points!), though it's easy to show this week who is hot in the NHL.

Here are your Week 13 NHL Power Rankings:

# 1. Detroit Red Wings - 1225
# 2. New Jersey Devils - 1144
# 3. Pittsburgh Penguins - 1120
# 4. Ottawa Senators - 1050
# 5. Anaheim Ducks - 819
# 6. San Jose Sharks - 812
# 7. Vancouver Canucks - 774
# 8. Philadelphia Flyers - 721
# 9. Calgary Flames - 600
# 10. Montreal Canadiens - 600
# 11. Nashville Predators - 525
# 12. Minnesota Wild - 516
# 13. New York Rangers - 496
# 14. Colorado Avalanche - 496
# 15. New York Islanders - 495
# 16. Columbus Blue Jackets - 474

This weekend was full of amazing NFL action, and shocking moments as we saw the unexpected happen as San Diego took down Manning and the Colts, and the other Manning toppled the Cowboys at Texas Stadium.

While these huge upsets were entertainment spectacles of themselves, there were two other moments of just outright laughter and confusion I felt the need to share.

The first was the press conference following the Cowboys loss to the Giants in an interview with Terrell Owens. NFL Network sportscasters comment on how T.O. is just a really emotional guy, but you can tell that they really just want to call him a big sissy. This is really a can't-miss video.




The second came during the New York Giants, Cowboys game where Brandon Jacobs managed to rush for the score. You almost have to wonder if he didn't want to get the fine for spiking the ball in the endzone and felt the need to take out his frustration on the game clock instead. I laughed maniacally when I saw this, not just because of how goofy it looks, but also the loud noise it makes as he slams the ball into the clock.

Someone should inform Jacobs that the clock was already stopped after his touchdown. Players these days are just getting far to creative in finding ways to avoid taking a timeout.

For what it's worth (if anything), PickrBot, who is now a real profile for making picks (and maybe even someday a major motion picture), is now making his NFL Playoff Picks.

So far, he's not doing so good. This could be a sign that we need to refine the PickrBot algorithm. He's a buggy PickrBot. A bad, bad, buggy bot. Although who really expected the Jags to actually pull one out last weekend against the Steelers? (and I'm talking before the game started). The Bucs were also a conservative pick, right?

We'll see how he does with this weeks. He's already going out on a limb with picking the Chargers to win. The fact that I also happened to pick them is coincidence as well, by the way.

Get your NFL picks in to see if you can beat him!

The NFL Playoffs are here, College Football is officially over (congrats to LSU), and there’s still tons of picking to do. Congrats to Marjie for her second Pickr of the Week honors as this week’s winner.

Who will win next week?

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We've been hard at work on a bunch of new features for the site, as well as many things we like to call "polish." When I say polish, I don't mean like the hot dog, but more like that goop you put on your car to make it look shiny.

One of these things we just rolled out today is a brand-spanking new global nav menu dealie! (If you're thinking its that whole HOME, NFL, MLB... thing, then you're thinking right). We tried to keep it kinda similar so it doesn't look too different than it did before, but would also give you an idea of where you are in the site while you're making picks.

We also cleaned up the Picktastic Blog a little bit so that it looks cleaner. We made lots of little tweaks so it looks more.. uh.. well.. Blog-like? Yeah...

So what do you guys think? Love it? Hate it? Think we should scrap the whole thing entirely? Let us know!