The 2011 Stock Lemon Fundraiser Event!

When we mentioned a few months ago that we had a paypal button on the left side of our blog that you could use at any time to donate to our cause here at Stock Lemon, we were merely trying to take advantage of the booming economy and pay for some of the costs we incur with this site.

Mainly, we were looking to add a little revenue in exchange for our time commitment to providing you with the otherwise completely free picks that you know and love, about 56% of the time.

While it's our promise to always keep our free picks just that--free--we have called upon any generous cappers (an oxymoron, we know) to help us out by simply donating any amount they so choose to the paypal account of stocklemonblog@gmail.com.

And we must say, the response has been expectedly underwhelming. But with your help, we can still reach our goal in the 2011 Stock Lemon Fundraiser!

Stock Lemon's Role in The Bucky Channel Relaunch

For those familiar with this site, you know that we frequently link to and are frequently linked by the fine folks at The Bucky Channel.

It's a curious relationship between our sites as we are both simply trying to provide our readers with more content that we feel they would be interested in reading. The reason we have this kind of relationship with them is because, honestly, they were some of the first people to help us out when we were new to the blogging game, and we did the same for them. And neither of us has forgotten it.

So, as you wipe those sentimental tears away, we're proud to say that we have played a small part in what is becoming The Bucky Channel 2.0. Regular Bucky Channel readers will notice a change in layout, and that change will come with a whole new staff of writers joining the team.

And we are one of them... kind of.

As we have done in the past, we'll be providing content through a semi-regular, semi-forgotten about feature called The Lemmy Channel, in which we look into interesting tidbits relating to their home town teams up in Wisconsin. We'll look at different betting trends as they pertain to the Green Bay Packers, Wisconsin Badgers, Milwaukee Bucks and Milwaukee Brewers (and maybe even the Milwaukee Iron of the Arena Football League) to cater to their readership.

We'll post tidbits about our analysis here, with the main content gracing the pages of The Bucky Channel 2.0.

So welcome, Wisconsinites, for those of you who didn't make it over for the first few installments of The Lemmy Channel. Please bring your finest beers and cheeses to Stock Lemon (or donate some cash to us using the Paypal icon on the left, so that we can purchase our own!).

A 6-1 Free NFL Picks Encore (85% YTD)

Now that's how things are supposed to go around here. Following an impressive 5-1 (83%) start to the NFL season, our Free NFL Picks had an even better encore in Week 2, going 6-1 (86%), bringing them to 11-2 and 85% in 2010.

Now would be a good time to continue our running joke of asking you greedy degenerates for a finder's fee on our picks, via the Paypal donation button on the lefthand side of the page.

It was a winning day, so we don't mind going through a little recap. First, the lone loss. The Panthers failed to beat the lowly Buccaneers, meaning they didn't cover the -3 1/2 point spread and that they might even be more lowly than the Bucs. Our system still takes last year's numbers into account this early in the season, and we were confident that the Panthers defense could overcome the, well, lowly offense. Not the case. We wouldn't be surprised to see the Bucs finish 2-14 after a 2-0 start, and for that matter, an 0-16 Panthers squad is possible, too.

As for the winners, there was much to like today. After slow first halves, the Packers and Falcons did what good teams do to bad teams, kicking the crap out of their lesser opponents. The Packers took care of the college-like -14 spread against the Bills while the Falcons easily handled a -7 spread against the Cardinals.

The Bears and Dolphins, at +7 1/2 against Dallas and +6 against Minnesota, respectively, did much more than cover, both winning their games. Great value picks in both cases, as the much hyped Cowboys and Vikings were the sexier public plays.

We don't think the Broncos are a very good team, but better than the team that lost to the Jags last week. Likewise, we don't think the Seahawks are a very good team, period. A Week 1 win over the 49ers will prove to be a fluke, as it did today, with the Broncos flipping the tables on Seattle and easily covering a -7 spread.

And then there were the Chargers. Like the Packers and Falcons, this was just a good team easily covering a paltry spread (-7) against a not-so-good team. As Kendra Wilkinson, wife of NFLer Hank Baskett, demonstrates in our Lemmy-censored image above, the Chargers were a thing of beauty today.

And that's how we arrive at a 6-1 day and 11-2 start to the 2010 NFL season. Our accurate NFL picks have lived up to the hype so far, and we certainly hope that continues for 19 more weeks (counting playoffs, duh).

And the records update:

2010 Free NFL Picks

Week 1: 5-1

Week 2: 6-1

Overall: 11-2... 85%

Are You Ready for Some Football?

The slow summer that we've all gotten used to here at Stock Lemon is about to come to an abrupt end. After months without our money sport--football--both the NFL and NCAA Football schedules are about to get underway. With them, our successful Free NFL Picks and Free NCAA Football Picks come as well.

After several text messages to his Viking teammates, and others to resident Stock Lemon hottie Jenn Sterger (we have never been more jealous of Lemmy than right now), Brett Favre is back, which means football is right around the corner. And our Free Picks systems are never a Croc.

So come back later this week for our first Free NCAA Football Picks with a full slate of games Thursday and Saturday, and then again for Thursday/Sunday/Monday's NFL action. And then again for Week 2, and again, and again, and again.

The sun has set on the annual quiet Stock Lemon summer, so we'll see you early and often in September.

2010 World Cup: Picture Contest

In case you haven't noticed, we are currently in the process of providing picks and analysis on the 2010 World Cup. With each group prediction, we have included a picture relevant to the team we pick to win each respective group and we will continue to do so.

With only a few groups remaining, we think we've given you enough time to look over some of the first photos and alert you to the fact that this is all part of our first ever Stock Lemon contest! The first person to correctly identify all of the group prediction photos will receive an authentic Stock Lemon prize!

We're looking for either the name of the player(s) in the photo or the game or at the very least year that the photo was taken from (mostly, this applies to the picture for Group D).

Once we have completed our group predictions, e-mail us your answers for the picture contest at stocklemonblog@gmail.com. If you're answers are correct and you are the first to submit them, you will receive a prize courtesy of Lemmy (possibly similar to the picture posted above)!

Stock Lemon's Kentucky Derby Horse Betting Debut

Welcome to the track, Lemmy! Did you really think we were going to let the Kentucky Derby pass without placing our bet on a horse? Given our history... you probably did.

But here we are, on the eve of the Derby, ready to join the horse betting community.

In the 2010 Kentucky Derby, we like Super Saver at 14-1 odds to come away with a win. We do think that the favorite, Lookin At Lucky, will place or at least show, but our bet is with Super Saver.

And while we have a tie in opportunity, let us just say that Super Saving is what you will do if you follow our picks throughout the summer. Between the 2010 World Cup and the MLB, we plan on having our best summer yet.

Good luck and let's earn some cash on Super Saver tomorrow!

Print Out Those Brackets!

It's time! Time to start wasting ink by printing out our signature black bracket in time for March Madness.

We'll have a whole slew of picks for the NCAA Tournament tomorrow, so get back here and fill out your brackets with Lemmy and the gang here at Stock Lemon!

The UFL is Color Blind

We mentioned before that we're excited about the UFL providing us with another football league to bet on, but luckily we didn't bet on the uniforms to make any sense.

The UFL picked it's team names and uniforms last week, and the league wanted to make sure that everyone knows the teams are all operated by the league.

The California Redwoods, New York Sentinels, Florida Tuskers, and Las Vegas Locomotives were all introduced as the first four UFL franchises. Of course, that means that our quest for the Las Vegas franchise to be named the Las Vegas Lemons fell short. Sorry Lemmy!

The uniform colors--green, blue, silver, and black--are the colors of the UFL logo and the jerseys all use the same pattern.

What's more, the California Redwoods, as in red, have lime green uniforms, clashing with their own team name. If you're going to go green, at least go forest green or something similar to an actual redwood tree.

It's a quirky start for what will surely be a quirkly league. Still, it's a quirkly league that we are looking forward to betting on.

Stock Lemon Chosen As Blog of the Day!

On Thursday, June 25th, we here at Stock Lemon received a prestigious honor from the folks over at redOrbit.

Of course, many of you probably already know what we're talking about.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, kind readers of Stock Lemon, this site has received the Blog of the Day honor for 6/25 from redOrbit.

We are humbled to receive the recognition and hope to continue the work that made us deserving of such an award. When we began the site back in December of 2007, we could only dream of this recognition from redOrbit, and as we continue to grow, more of our dreams are becoming a reality.

We now know what it must feel like to receive a Lemmy award.

Thanks redOrbit!

Stock Watch: Casino Stocks Monday Report

We are closely watching three casino stocks: MGM, IGT, and LVS, all of which were down today in what was overall a pretty rough day for the market.

While none are official Free Stock Picks quite yet, it's possible that one of them will soon be.

Here's today's ugly report:

MGM 6.53 -0.60‎ (-8.42%‎)

LVS 8.05 -1.05‎ (-11.54%‎)

IGT 15.76 -0.54‎ (-3.31%‎)

As we said, today we are just watching. Soon, though, these ugly numbers might have a serious impact on Lemmy's kid's college fund.

Records Update

As you've probably noticed, we keep record of our free sports picks and post them on the side of this page. We've posted plenty of plays that weren't part of any system, so you won't find those stragglers on the right hand side of our site, otherwise all of our picks are posted on the side at the completion of the season so long as we played at least ten games under each particular system.

We have updated our 13-6 (68%) Free NBA Picks record and posted it under Lemmy's Resume now that the season is over, and so it joins the other completed sports seasons we have bet on.

We have received some criticism about the lack of plays that we post for certain systems, but that's just the way it is. Our systems are strict for a reason--they are successful.

Though we're not sure if we're going to focus more on free picks or analysis in the future, free picks will always be a part of the site. And when we do post them, we think our records speak for themselves.

Special Edition of The Lemmy Channel

Everybody's favorite program is back for a special edition. This week on The Lemmy Channel, our friends at The Bucky Channel linked to our 2009 NFL Mock Draft to see what we had to say on their hometown Packers pick. 

Rather than use this space to re-hash what we said in this post, we thought we'd alert you to a cool little game they're playing over at The Bucky Channel called Bucks Survivor. 

It's an obvious take on the hit show, Survivor, but in TBC's version they allow their readers to vote off members of the Milwaukee Bucks. The team is split into two "tribes," with immunity granted to one player on that week's losing tribe. You don't have to be a Bucks fan to vote off your least favorite players of the team, so go ahead and check them out and follow the hit game that is sweeping the nation. 

While you're over there, be sure to leave a comment urging The Bucky Channel to join twitter. Here's what they said last month about the social networking craze:

Twitter sucks so much, it's a stupid trend that is pointless and stupid and doesn't contribute anything beneficial to society and is a waste of time and will fade out within six months and is not worth the trouble to either update or check out people's Twitters. How people are making money off of something so stupid blows my brains and now I must move on before I quit doing The Bucky Channel right this very moment, that is how much I hate Twitter.

And, of course, be sure to follow Lemmy's twitter account if you aren't already.

Attention Lemmy's Friends

We've got a good number of fellow bloggers listed on our blogroll, making multiple sports and sports betting bloggers friends of our very own Lemmy. 

In order to give more exposure to those blogs updated more frequently, blogs listed under the Lemmy's Friends section on the right hand side of the blog are now listed by those most recently updated rather than alphabetically. 

The only problem is that somehow we managed to screw it up. Many blogs or sites that we had listed (we would guess about seven or so) did not fit the format that would allow for updates and would rather sit at the end of the blogroll, which would be fine if we didn't accidently exclude them from the listing entirely. 

If you are one of those blogs, or any other fellow bloggers interested in a link exchange, or an advertiser willing to pay us big bucks for us to post a link seperate from the blogroll, please contact us at stocklemonblog@gmail.com. 

Let the Madness Begin!

Ladies and gentlemen, March Madness has officially begun. The 2009 NCAA Basketball Tournament Bracket is officially set, and as always we'll gladly serve as your home for tournament picks and betting. 

Our Free NCAA Basketball Picks are hitting 60% in 2009 and are worth checking out, so make sure to stop on by early and often as we kick off the March Madness festivities. 

Last year, we attempted to bet on every single game in the tournament, just for fun. Certainly, from a profitability standpoint, that's a bad idea. We didn't follow our system or spend nearly the same amount of time analyzing each pick, so while it was fun, it probably wasn't the greatest idea. It wasn't until we went back to our system during the Sweet 16 that our picks started winning routinely, as opposed to winning half of our selections before the Sweet 16. 

This year, we'll take a much more sane approach, and simply bet on the games that our system sees value in. We'll offer our take on some leans and other games as well, but for the most part, the amount of Free NCAA Basketball Picks will be down from last year. 

Regardless, we hope you've printed out your brackets. If not, why not go ahead and print out the official Stock Lemon Bracket, starring Lemmy and a cast of all blank ink to really make your printer happy. 

And with that, let the Madness begin!

Follow Stock Lemon On Twitter

To ensure that Lemmy keeps up with the times, we here at Stock Lemon try to catch on to any major fad and exploit it for our own personal gain. 

Enter Twitter, the most recent must have for websites, celebrities, and self-absorbed people updating every aspect of their mundane lives.

So, though we began a Twitter feed back in January, we think we might maybe try to possibly update it now, so go ahead and add Stock Lemon to your list of Twittererererers. 

If Shaquille O'Neal can do it, so can Lemmy. 

Stock Orange

We know we usually go by the name Stock Lemon, but in light of the recent play by the Syracuse Orange, we might start going by Stock Orange. 

Even Lemmy has turned into Orangey! 

After a six overtime victory over UConn last night, Syracuse came back to beat West Virginia--in overtime. The Orange won the game 74-69, covering the +6 1/2 point spread and winning us some cash in the process. 

Our Free NCAA Picks are now 11-8 (58%) in 2009, including nine of the last 14 (64%), getting hot right in time for March Madness. More plays should be coming tomorrow, so stay tuned as always. 

Tulane Gives Us Win Number Two For The Day

After Air Force took care of Colorado State earlier today, we were left with two more conference tournament plays on our card today, and went 1-1. 

Unspectacular as that may be, it gives us a 2-1 winning day, which we'll gladly take. 

Tulane beat East Carolina 69-59 to cover a -3 spread and give us our second win of the day, making it five of the last seven for our Free NCAA Basketball Picks

As a commentor so kindly pointed out (rubbed in), our brand new feed via FeedReader boasted a total of zero readers thus far, so we'll just go ahead and assume that everyone has Stock Lemon set as their home page. 

If not, make sure to add us to your feed by checking out the Updates From Lemmy section on the right hand side of the page. As you'll see, to save ourselves embarrassment, we've changed the FeedReader so that it no longer displays the amount of readers that follow us through that method. We'll wait until more people add us to their RSS before throwing that back up again.

Air Force Won

In our early afternoon game today, we picked Air Force +3 over Colorado State and were rewarded. 

Air Force won the game straight up, 71-67, giving our Free NCAA Basketball Picks their fourth win in five attempts and giving us a chance to use that oh-so-clever headline. 

We have two more games tonight, which those of you subscribing to our RSS feed would know. If you haven't signed up for our RSS feed, check out Updates From Lemmy on the right side of the page. Go ahead. Do it.

Now!

Don't Miss Any Of Our Picks

Sometimes, though certainly not intentionally, we can't post a play until tip-off is roughly a half hour (or less) away. 

This happened the other night, and we want to make sure that if it does happen again, you won't miss out.

Our solution? Aside from continuing to badger you about bookmarking our site on your personal computer or even setting us as your homepage, we're once again here to promote using an RSS feed to keep tabs on Lemmy.

By clicking on the Feedburner link just below our e-mail address on the right hand side of the page, you can set up a Stock Lemon RSS feed through any popular site, such as Google or Yahoo, ensuring that you receive the latest picks at the moment that we post them. (At least somebody subscribe to a feed, so we don't have to keep staring at "0 Readers").

Additionally, you can now subscribe via e-mail, per request. 

Hopefully these new additions to Lemmy's Updates will help you follow us in a more timely fashion.

The Lemmy Channel Moves Into Prime Time

Nevermind the ratings success of the Super Bowl, we've got our own Smash hit right here. Judging by the fantastic comments by yoga and meditation and aftershave balm on our last Lemmy Channel post, we can tell that the readers are just loving The Lemmy Channel, which is why we have moved it into prime time!

This week on The Lemmy Channel, we tell you why you should fade the Milwaukee Bucks, the hometown team up in Wisconsin. 

We also advise The Bucky Channel's readers to stop by and check out our Pro Bowl pick before participating in TBC's 2nd annual Pro Bowl Live Blog on February 8 at 3:30 central time. 

We'll do the opposite here and advise you to participate in TBC's 2nd annual Pro Bowl Live Blog on February 8 at 3:30 central time after checking out our pick here at Stock Lemon. 

Stop on by The Bucky Channel for more on Wisconsin sports as well as, before we forget to mention it, their 2nd annual Pro Bowl Live Blog on February 8 at 3:30 central time.