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Office Pool Investigator
Proudly Presenting, Tips on taking money from the boss! There are all kinds of pools, with all kinds of rules and competition levels. Surely then there must be different optimal strategies for playing against other people?
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What type of pool are you playing?
The first guideline for any kind of contest you enter is to read the rules and understand what it will take to win. A classic example of this is with horse racing handicapping contests. These are very popular here in Las Vegas (and elsewhere), and the typical setup is you have to pick so many horses per day for several days, with the mutual price of winning horses you select being added up as your score.
Now many players who enter this sort of contest act like it was just another day of handicapping at the local racetrack, and their picks will feature all kinds of low odds 2-1 type horses. What they don't realize is that they have simply no chance of winning employing such a strategy. In a big enough group of contestants (and these horse things often have hundreds of entries) there is a huge statistical likelihood that some of the contestants will hit some fat longshots along the way and obliterate whatever meager winnings the chalkplayers can put together. To put it another way, if the contest calls for you to select ten horses as win bets, and "Mr. Chalk" selects ten even money horses, even if he should win every single race he chooses, it will only take some other player hitting one 10-1 shot (and nothing else) to beat him.
We have gone a long way off the subject of football pools with this little treatise, but the message is the same for football as it is for horse racing: know the contest rules, and know your competition.
Football pools break out usually by the following setups:
- Time frame: weekly winners or season-long chase
- Number of games: all games each week or select number of games
- Pick Mode: spread based or straight-up (all games equal) or straight-up (weighted value games)
There are of course other types of pool, like elimination pools (pick one team each week to win, keep going until the last player is left alive), or team-win pools (draft certain teams whose wins count for you during the season), but the vast majority of pools I encounter are based on the setting listed above.
The next key information points to consider are number of players in the contest field and handicapping ability of the players as a group. Once you factor in these elements, you should be able to gauge what it will take to win the top prize.
As an example, there is a popular contest run in Las Vegas by the LV Hilton wherein players have to select five games each week against the spread over the full regular season, with wins counting as one point, pushes as a half point, and losses as zero points.
There were reportedly 281 entries (at $1500 a pop) and it's probably safe to assume that handicapping ability of the group as a whole was above average.
Given these facts, what would we expect to be the required winning record to take the prize?
Well, let's do some simulations. To keep it simple we won't bother with the concept of push games, every selection either wins or loses. In simulation run number one of 10,000 such contests, we assume that all 281 entrants are simple coin-flipping handicappers, all with a 50% chance of picking a winner.
281 handicappers with 50% ability
First Place
# of Winning Picks |
Win % |
Times it
occurred |
Cumulative
Percentage |
| 65 |
76% |
1 |
<1% |
| 64 |
75% |
1 |
<1% |
| 63 |
74% |
4 |
<1% |
| 62 |
73% |
21 |
<1% |
| 61 |
72% |
75 |
1% |
| 60 |
71% |
172 |
2% |
| 59 |
69% |
322 |
6% |
| 58 |
68% |
742 |
13% |
| 57 |
67% |
1409 |
27% |
| 56 |
66% |
2070 |
48% |
| 55 |
65% |
2362 |
71% |
| 54 |
64% |
1881 |
90% |
| 53 |
62% |
820 |
99% |
| 52 |
61% |
115 |
99.9% |
| 51 |
60% |
5 |
100% |
Think 60% should be good enough to win? Think again! In fact if you entered the contest and nailed 55 wins (good for a blazing 65% against the spread) you would still have finished behind the leader almost half the time. The typical win total needed to take the prize would be 55 to 56. In the 2002 contest the eventual winner had...56 wins.
This table above may not do justice to the caliber of entrant however. Let us assume for a moment that someone willing to wager $1500 on a contest where luck will have a big say in the outcome at least feels they are competent NFL cappers. If we re-run the test with half of the 281 entrants as 55% handicappers, and the other half representing the "square" contingent at 50%, here's how the chart looks from simulation run number two:
141 handicappers with 50% ability,
140 handicappers with 55% ability
First Place
# of Winning Picks |
Win % |
Times it
occurred |
Cumulative
Percentage |
| 67 |
78% |
1 |
<1% |
| 66 |
77% |
3 |
<1% |
| 65 |
76% |
32 |
<1% |
| 64 |
75% |
88 |
1% |
| 63 |
74% |
183 |
3% |
| 62 |
72% |
413 |
7% |
| 61 |
71% |
859 |
15% |
| 60 |
70% |
1462 |
30% |
| 59 |
69% |
2075 |
51% |
| 58 |
68% |
2347 |
74% |
| 57 |
67% |
1730 |
91% |
| 56 |
65% |
670 |
98% |
| 55 |
64% |
132 |
99% |
| 54 |
63% |
5 |
100 % |
If half the field can handicap to the 55% mark then it really gets tough to win! You'd need to crank out 59 winners (or 69%!!) to give yourself a roughly 50/50 chance of grabbing the top prize!
Now the truth is there are very few people who can handicap to 55% on selective play, and even less who can do it under the rules of the contest (exactly 5 side picks per week, every week of the regular season), but the drift should be clear on all this -- the LV Hilton is a contest that requires a brilliant season AND a good deal of luck to win. With a six figure payoff for first place you would expect it to be that way.
The good news is the typical NFL office pool has much better odds to win, and in future articles we'll attempt to give you some pointers on maximizing your chances.
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