– Well, I’d say we nailed the Over/Under for average amount of money lost in this contest. It was set at $1,000. Not counting the money won on that question, 10 participants lost an average of $1,026.9 (a substantial improvement over last year’s $1,534). Since most people bet the over, however, the **final **average amount lost was $983.6.
– The largest amount of money won on a single wager was $2000, by Stringer, who was not the only one to bet on Percy Harvin as Offensive Rookie of the Year (+1000), but was the only one to bet more than $100 on him.
– The largest number of total wagers was 30, by both **Omni **and furt. MadTheSwine bet the minimum of 10 (and was wrong on 9 of them).
– Hamlet was docked $200 for failing to risk the minimum amount ($4000).
– Every single participant made at least one try at guessing the rushing champ. Only **Omni **correctly picked Chris Johnson. There were 14 losing wagers on the question.
– Unlike last year, Question #4 (“Name 6 teams that will not make the playoffs”) was not a black hole: 4 out of 7 people actually got it correct, and the 3 who missed it only named one playoff team apiece. There just weren’t as many surprises in the NFL this year as there usually are.
RNATB, $720
Congratulations to Cyberhwk, Omni, and our 2009 Champion Taber, who win (respectively) $1, $3, and $5. To claim your prizes, PM me a mailing address or PayPal account and I’ll send it out.
**RNATB **finishes dead last for the second year in a row; he’s down $7,439 total.
**Taber **absolutely crushed this. Most (relatively) successful bet sheets are redeemed by just one or two big wins. Taber did have a +$1400, but mostly he was successful because of the volume of bets that he won. In a contest in which everyone won only 24% of their collective wagers, **Taber **went 14-11 on his bets (56%), and all but 1 of those 11 losing wagers were for the minimum amount.
Sweet. Looking at the results, I thought Stringer had it for sure, from his big Harvin pick. Thanks for running this, it was fun. I can’t believe I missed Schaub on the 2004 qb question, though I may have just thought he’d get hurt and miss some games.
What’s the formula for calculating the payouts? I always have a hell of a time visualizing how to calculate the winning amount for minus bets.
I’m a little shocked that I was in the top 3, scanning my picks I expected to be near the bottom and though I landed a couple big ones I also whiffed on a lot of small bets. I’m amazed only 4 people won money.
There are probably a couple of different ways to do it, but I would just find the ratio between the odds and an even-money bet (+100), then multiply the result by the bet amount. So, if someone bet $400 on the AFC to have a better record than the NFC at -185, then they’d get paid (100/185)*$400=$216.2. After a while you memorize some of the more common ratios (e.g., -125 = .8), and three quarters of the bets are losers, which just require me to write down the amount wagered, so it doesn’t take as long as you might imagine.
Hey, last year only one person turned a profit, and that was just barely. There’s a reason casinos run sports books.
I’m pretty sure the “1+” in the parentheses is extraneous.
Ah, of course. It’s not relevant to me because of the way I was keeping score: in one long column, write down the amount of each losing bet (the minus sign is implicit), and the profit from each winning bet with a “+” in front of it, then add it all up (losers first, then winners). Short of maybe building a spreadsheet, I can’t think of a quicker way.
Thanks VarlosZ. This the the first year I’ve actually done reasonably well on the football competitions. Finished well in the Survival League too.
I will bequeath my $1 prize package to the charity of VarlosZ’s choice. If his charity of choice is O’Malley’s Irish Pub, more power to him for taking the time for setting it up.
