I have a team that is playing in the second round of the playoffs. I won the first round in a tough 7-game series. My opponent wins his first round in 4 games so almost his entire line-up is rusty starting the second round. Game 1 and 2 are on the road so I set my lineups and hope for a split. Game 1 sees Mark Prior get roughed up for 5 runs and I lose...OK. Game 2 sees me lose again by giving up 5 unearned runs...OK. So now the series comes back home. I've been saving Curt Schilling just in case I need a Game 3 win, which I do badly to get back in the series and then have Mark Prior go again in Game 4.

So Schilling starts Game 3 (Monday PM) and pitches well and I take a 3-1 lead into the bottom of the 8th inning. I load the bases with 1 out in the bottom of the eighth and have Francisco Cordero ready to pitch the 9th. Low and behold, the game crashes. Now what...I look at the manual since I haven't had a crash in awhile, especially during the playoffs, and to my horror see that it calls for me to INTENTIONALLY LOSE GAME 3. My immediate reaction is why be penalized like that? My take on it is that the game should be replayed. To take an almost sure win off the board and give it to the other team, effectively killing any chance for advancement, is LUDRICROUS. If this rule exists so that 1 or 2 people can't cheat the system and everyone else is penalized, that's just plain WRONG.

I email the other owner and let him know what's going on. I then email Mike on Tuesday AM about the problem hoping that maybe something can be done about this. Well...Tuesday passes, so does Wednesday, so does most of Thursday. I email both Mike and Tech again, hoping to get a response. Thursday night passes...now its almost 1 AM Friday morning and no word from anybody. I can't continue playing games because of the Game 3 pending. I start resigning myself to the fact that Mike is going to enforce the intentional loss for Game 3 which will put me down 3 games to none and effectively eliminate me from this series and the playoffs. On top of that, the stupid Robot is probably going to play Game 4 and Game 5 (if needed) because I can't sit up all night waiting.

The whole situation SUCKS, makes a mockery out of planning strategy to try and win and is just downright UNFAIR! What the hell is going on here...I'm already pissed about the game crush rule and to top it off, I get no response. My 2 big complaints are that the Game Crash rule is unfair and should be changed and that PB Management needs to do a much better job on communication. Like it not, PB is charging $10 a team/month to play this game and in so doing is obligated to act like a business instead of a part-time hobby.