The Official ZzyzxRoad 2023 Baseball/Geoguessr Contest

ZzyzxRoad

EOG Dedicated
I have decided to create this contest even though I have no idea what the level of interest/enthusiasm will be. I wanted to come up with an idea that was completely off the wall and unique, but still accessible. We will be combining my two favorite online activities. 1) Baseball betting. 2) Geoguessr. If you don't know what Geoguessr is, feel free to check out the site and play a few games, or just wait and I will explain it below. Here's how I envision the contest running:

Phase 1 (Baseball).
Every contestant will submit ten (10) picks on different games, starting on opening day, running through the Blue Jays-Angels game on April 8th. You can pick as many or as few as you want any day. In other words, you could bet ten games on opening day and be finished, or just do one a day (etc.). Picks must be made on the current Pinnacle odds, and can only be chosen from the Pinnacle drop down menu for that game. You aren't just limited to side or total, you can bet RHE, team total, alternate run line, etc. But you can only make one (1) pick per game.
For purposes of record keeping, I would ask each contestant (on the honor system) to keep a running total of what their accurate record is as they progress. After the 8th, we can work out what the exact standings are.

Phase 1 (Geoguessr)
On Wednesday the 29th (Twenty-Ninth), I will post five (5) pictures in this thread. They will be pictures taken by me at some point in the past of a (very) random place/street corner. All pictures were taken in the U.S. west of the Mississsippi River. I will also post a description of the picture and a clue. Each contestant will attempt to guess the nearest city and state to where the picture was taken. You score points based on how many miles from the picture your guess is. I will score each guess according to Google maps. You score a point for each mile away your guess is, and your total will be the combined score from all five (5) guesses. Your goal is to score as few points as possible. For this portion, please format your guesses as easily as possible. Make ONE (1) post where you list your choices as clearly as possible. The format should be this:

Location 1: Cawker City, Kansas
Location 2: McDermitt, Nevada
Location 3: Markleeville, California
Location 4: Altus, Oklahoma
Location 5: Riggins, Idaho

I will not read/grade posts that are not formatted correctly. I will post the pictures on Wednesday around the middle of the day, and contestants will have until Wednesday the 5th (fifth) at noon to submit their post.
Once all Gueguesses are submitted, I will tabulate the results and calculate the final standings. The standings from the two competitions will be merged together. For instance, if 20 people compete, and one person scores 2nd in the Baseball Portion, and 4th in the Geoguessr portion, their combined score will be a 6. If someone scores 8th in the Baseball Portion, and 11th in the Geoguessr portion, their combined score will be a 19. The two contestants with the lowest combined scores will advance to Phase 2. In case of a tie/dead heat, I do have an idea for a tiebreaking procedure,but I hope it won't come to that.

Phase 2.
I would suggest taking Sunday the 9th and Monday the 10th off to make sure all results are tabulated accurately.
Then, the two contestants remaining will face off.
Starting on April the 11th, they will each post their best pick of the day from the Pinnacle menu. For this phase, contestants can only choose bets where the vig is -120 or less at the time of their post. Additionally, I will post another random photo, and each contestant will provide a Geoguess for the photo. The contest will continue each day until three things happen on the same day. 1). Contestant A's pick of the day wins. 2) Contestant B's pick of the day loses. 3) Contestant A's Geoguessr score is lower than Contestant B's. At this point, the contest will end, and Contestant A will be declared the winner.

I hope this wasn't overly complicated, and I will answer questions as they arise.
Prizes!
First Prize will be $100 awarded to the charity of choice of the winning contestant.
I will award other supplementary prizes based on the level of enthusiasm and participation.
This contest is open to ALL EOG posters......who have never called me a fag or a faggot in a post. This means that Heisenberg, Bigrunner, Dave the Meatman Scandalitato, Billsyink, and Railbird are disqualified from entering. I almost forgot, so is Jammer.

Anyway, I'll leave this here for now and check back soon if anyone has any questions. I really think this can be fun, so I hope as many people as possible wind up playing.
 
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ZzyzxRoad

EOG Dedicated
Here's a sample Geoguessr to give an idea of how that portion will run:

1679936713297.png

What is the nearest City and State?
 

howid

EOG Dedicated
apologies to Tom Petty;

I didn't know which way to go
I was a dude on the Zzyzx Road ...



not really big on western USA geography, but let me guess Baker California nyuck nyuck
 

ZzyzxRoad

EOG Dedicated
Soda springs, ca
On picture, thinking Carson sin City, Nevada.



not really big on western USA geography, but let me guess Baker California nyuck nyuck

So out of these three guesses, the winner is Howid.
His guess of Baker scores 0 points since the picture was taken in Zzyzx, California, and the nearest populated town is Baker.
Dell Dude's answer scores 461 points, and Railbird astonishingly is in last with 513 points.
 

FairWarning

Bells Beer Connoisseur
I’ll watch from afar, no clue about the small towns west of the Mississippi unless 1960’s Vegas counts.
 

ZzyzxRoad

EOG Dedicated
Location 1:

1680108713648.png



One of the weirdest small towns I've ever visited. Walking around "downtown" is like staring into a dystopian future.
 

ZzyzxRoad

EOG Dedicated
Location 2:

1680109356894.png
1680109962337.png (side view of post office)
I really like post offices. Don't ask me why. Whenever I'm in a very small town, I have to stop and take a picture of the post office. If anyone on this site has ever been within 200 miles of where this picture was taken, I will be astonished. I have this picture in my phone, but I actually googled to get a better one that shows more of the background. That means that someone else at some point in their life also visited the same place and took a place of the same abandoned post office. Wikipedia has the town's population at 20, Ghosttowns.com has it at 2. All roads leading to and from here are unpaved.
 
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ZzyzxRoad

EOG Dedicated
Location 3:
1680109754761.png

I saw a movie 20 years ago that I loved. It was basically a hard case crime novel about a group of mobsters who wind up in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Years later, I was driving and realized the town the movie was set in was just off the highway from me. I stopped off and started looking around. It was literally the most ordinary town you could ever imagine existing. And when I asked around, it turns out the movie was actually filmed in Canada, not here. For some reason, they just picked a random, plain town. I got to see it.
 

ZzyzxRoad

EOG Dedicated
Location 4:

I was driving on an unpaved road in the back country and several abandoned buildings in the distance that shouldn't have been there. Stopped and took pictures, and then did some web sleuthing when I got home. According to ghosttowns.com, there used to be a small town near the spot where a family ran several ranches, but it was abandoned in the 60's. There was abandoned mining equipment and supplies that was more recent than that. I hate posting pictures here sometimes because it's impossible to get the full appreciation for how far I had to drive to get them.
 

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ZzyzxRoad

EOG Dedicated
More from location4
 

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ZzyzxRoad

EOG Dedicated
Location 5:
Possibly the hardest one to get. It's an abandoned mining town in the middle of the forest. Oddly, there are about a dozen cars that were just left there. This is the only picture not taken in the middle of nowhere. One of the most famous landmarks in the country is about twenty miles from here.

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kane

EOG master
1) Wells, NV

2) Riverside, Wyoming

3) Pioche, Nevada

4) Elkhorn, Montana

5) Bodie, California
 

Dell Dude

EOG Master
1) Natties 3.070
2) Giants 2.560
3) Orioles 2.090
4) Cubbies 2.260
5) Tigers 3.090
6) Phillies 2.210
7) Pirates 2.220
8) Marlins 2.100
9) Royals 2.360
10) White Sux 2.270
 

Dell Dude

EOG Master
1) Natties 3.070 (L)
2) Giants 2.560 (L)
3) Orioles 2.090 (W)
4) Cubbies 2.260 (W)
5) Tigers 3.090 (L)
6) Phillies 2.210
7) Pirates 2.220
8) Marlins 2.100
9) Royals 2.360
10) White Sux 2.270
 
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