Golden Nugget Friday Football Showdown

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Golden Nugget Friday Football Showdown Can’t decide between a college football contest or a professional football contest? Then the Golden Nugget Friday Football Showdown is just the thing for you. The contest combines betting on college and NFL, and also has a bracket portion in the final weeks. Luxurious booths and a laid-back vibe make this the perfect place to spend a game night, a race day or for the ambitious, an entire Sunday of football and more football. Race & Sportsbook Rules - Click Here. Monday 10am - 9pm Tuesday 10am - 8pm Wednesday 10am - 8pm Thursday 10am - 9pm Friday 10am - 10pm Saturday 8am - 10pm. Topic: Golden Nugget Friday Football Showdown. 40 Replies 9316 Views. In CFB Forum Quicklink to Main Forums (Latest) Topic Starter Brady Kannon. Joined: Posts: 868.

LAS VEGAS -- The Friday Football Showdown -- the $2,000 buy-in contest at the Golden Nugget which is in competition with the more-established Westgate SuperContest and includes college games and over/unders -- is back for a second season and open to the public.

Before last year, the Friday Football Showdown, which is hosted by The Las Vegas Sportsline radio show on local ESPN affiliate AM 1100 and has roots dating back to the old Stardust Invitational and Leroy's Money Talks Invitational radio contests (which had 16-player fields in a single-elimination tournament format) was open mostly to professional handicappers and touts. Last year, the Golden Nugget and Sportsline crews decided to make it an open contest, with the top eight handicappers from the first half of the season qualifying for the head-to-head tournament to determine the champion.

Registration opens at 12 p.m. PT Friday, to coincide with the release of the Golden Nugget's College Football Games of the Year.

The Friday Football Showdown attracted an 87-player field in its first open year, which organizers were happy with, and Jonathan Rice took home $118,500 (the $115,500 champion's prize, plus $2,000 for making the playoffs and $1,000 for his quarterfinal win) after beating the team of Frank Betti and Anthony Curtis (who collected $38,500 for second plus the $3,000 in prior winnings) in the finals. This year, the goal is to get closer to 200 entries.

'After we made it open to the public for the first time last year, we went over the rules and wanted to make it more exciting and more fair,' said Golden Nugget race and sports book director Tony Miller.

Miller said the 'more exciting' rule changes were mostly developed by him and his staff, including his right-hand man Aaron Kessler, along with The Las Vegas Sportsline host Matt Youmans, and include a 'wild-card chase' in Weeks 9 and 10 for those who don't qualify in the first eight weeks, plus a mini-contest over Weeks 15-17. The 'more fair' rules were suggested by contestants last year; those include moving the day that contest lines become available from noon Wednesday to noon Thursday and increasing the money for making the playoffs from $2,000 to $3,000.

'The moving of the lines from Wednesday to Thursday was because we saw a lot of lines, especially college totals, move a lot, and some players would just be playing the biggest moves,' Miller said. 'Now, you still have 26 hours from noon Thursday until 2 p.m. Friday to put in your plays.

'Also, last year, if you made the playoffs and got eliminated in the first round, you would only break even, so we agreed that those qualifiers should at least make a profit.'

Full rules, including tie-breaking procedures that make NFL tie-breaking protocols look simple, are posted on The Las Vegas Sportsline website, but here are the basics:

• There's one entry per person and local players or out-of-towners can designate a proxy to put in their weekly plays.

• All contestants make seven plays against the Golden Nugget's contest lines (again, the full slate of college and pro sides and totals are available, unless a game is off the board and left off of the contest card) during Weeks 1 through 8 of the NFL season (the opening weekend of college games aren't included). Each win is worth one point per win, with a half-point per push (there are no 2-point best bets this season).

• The top-seven records from the first eight weeks advance to the playoffs. The wild-card chase is held in Weeks 9-10, with contestants making nine plays those weeks and the wild-card winner making the playoffs as the No. 8 seed.

• Playoff contestants will receive $3,000 each and must appear on The Las Vegas Sportsline radio show (2-3 p.m. PT on those Fridays) to announce their plays or designate someone to appear for them. The quarterfinals will be Nov. 18, Nov. 25, Dec. 2 and Dec. 9 (winners get an additional $2,000) with the semifinals on Dec. 16 and 23 and the championship match on Dec. 30. A total of $32,000 will be paid out to the winners of the qualifiers and the quarterfinal winners, the remaining prize pool will be split up with 60 percent going to the champion, 25 percent to the second-place finisher and 5 percent each to the semifinal losers.

• All entrants are eligible to compete in the mini contest in Weeks 15-17 (playing along with the semifinalists and finalists), making seven selections each week. The winner will receive 5 percent of the remaining prize pool (or split among all mini-contest ties).

Golden Nugget Friday Football Showdown Predictions

One change the Golden Nugget didn't make is that it's returning 100 percent of entry fees as prizes. The Westgate SuperContest has instituted an 8 percent administrative fee off the top of its prize pool this season, and only time will tell if that hurts their number of entries. The South Point has also been working on a 100 percent payback high-end football contest of its own, but no details have been announced as of this time.

Golden Nugget Friday Football Showdown Today

Keep an eye on ESPN Chalk as we give you the latest news from the Las Vegas football contest scene all the way through the champions being crowned.