Say I’m in a pool whose object is to pick a winner in each week’s NFL matches, no limit to the number of teams one might choose (each pick costs $50) and no point-spread, just who wins each game. You buy a fixed number of picks at the beginning of the season—some choose one pick per week for $50, some choose five picks per weeks for $250, etc. Last guy(s) left standing win(s) the pot—it’s usually worth $10,000 bucks or so.
Those with multiple picks choose two or more heavy favorites every week, to spread out the chances of an upset—that’s why they opt to buy multiple picks, to make it less likely that you’ll pick a game where the underdog pulls out an unlikely victory.
Essentially, it’s a game of luck, getting through the NFL season without drawing a game where the underdog wins. You’re looking for the heavy favorites each week, which doesn’t really take that much brains or acumen.
I think it makes the most sense to buy a lot of tickets—that strategy is the only one that makes sense to me. (Second-best is to buy no tickets, and in last place is buying one ticket. It’s more efficient to flush $50 down the toilet, and more fun to watch.) I was trying to figure out if there is an optimal number of tickets to buy: 5? 10? 15?
A friend in the pool with me claims that it’s all the same—“If you buy 5 tickets, it costs you 250 bucks for a chance to win $10,000, and if you buy 10 tickets, it doubles your chances but it also costs you twice as much.”
I don’t see it that way, since the idea is to avoid getting eliminated, which to me means figuring out multiple heavy favorites each week, and betting all of them at least twice (so that if you almost get wiped out you’ll still be left with two chances going forward). But I’m unsure of the optimal number of tickets to buy at the beginning of the season. Is there an optimal number of tickets? Or as my friend maintains, the odds are the same no matter how many you buy, and it’s just a question of how much you can afford to spend?
Not sure what home and away has to do with anything. Home teams tend to be favored, but that means just that you’ll bet strong favorites. You’re wasting money and picks betting on underdogs to win.
I think he means bet both sides of the bet. Like for last night’s Dolphins-Eagles game, bet both the Dolphins and the Eagles so you’re guaranteed a win. Rereading the op, though, I don’t think that’s allowed.
What does this mean:
I don’t understand how the payout works. Are you out of the running as soon as any of your bets lose? If so, I would imagine the payout would happen by like week 7. Or are you only out if all your bets in that week lose? Or something else entirely?
Say you buy ten “tickets”, fifty bucks apiece. Week One, you bet the Eagles five times, the 49ers five times. The Eagles win, the 49s lose, you still have five “tickets” to play the next week.
Week two, you bet the Eagles three times, the Bills once and the Chiefs once. The Eagles lose, the Bills and Chiefs win. You still have two “tickets” to play.
Week three, you bet the Chiefs once and the Vikings once. They both win, you still have two tickets to play.
Week four, you bet the 49s once, the Chargers once. The 49ers win, the Chargers lose. One ticket left.
Week five, You bet the Eagles, they lose, you’re out.
Okay, now I understand. And looking back, you did describe this in the OP. I just didn’t pick up on it.
On first glance I think your friend is right, but I also think there is an optimal amount of tickets to buy. Unfortunately, I think the optimal amount runs afoul of the same issues as betting a martingale system, where you double up after a loss.
I don’t think I would double up pretty much ever. I think I might buy 16 tickets, picking all 16 favorites in week 1. For every week after that, however many tickets I had left I would pick that many heaviest favorites. So something like the 10 heaviest favorites in week 2 assuming six of my picks lost in week 1. Then maybe the eight heaviest favorites in week 3 assuming two lost in week 2. I would expect to make it halfway through the season before losing all my tickets.
If I had more money than sense, I would instead go with 32 tickets. First week two tickets per favorite. Again assuming I lose six of those games, that leaves me with 20 tickets. One ticket each on every favorite in week two, with the four extra tickets going on the four heaviest favorites. etc… I would expect this technique to get me to around week 12 or so.
When does the last man standing typically happen in the season? What week?
In real life I would probably go with six tickets, putting one each on the six heaviest favorites each week. I would hope to get to week 6 using this technique. $300 feels like the most I would be willing to lay out.
Very late. Week Thirteen, Fifteen, something like that. Often when there are a handful left, they agree to split the pot.
It’s mostly luck. I used to admire my friend for his football knowledge, but really all that time he spent figuring out which favorites were especially strong and which underdogs were likeliest to pull out an upset was time wasted. The Vegas book does all that for you, and probably more intelligently than you can however many hours you sink into it. A dummy with the Vegas line can pick the best three games to bet on as well as the most fanatical of fans can.
Which is why I think there may be an optimal number of “tickets” to buy. If you buy a hundred tickets, you’re spending $5000 bucks to win $10,000, half of which was yours to begin with, and you’ve got no guarantee that some lucky slob won’t be there to split it with you. If you buy one ticket, you’re almost certainly going to be out at some early point. So what’s the sweet spot?
With a single ticket if the chance that your pick will win betting on the strongest favorite each week is 0,8 then the odds of you surviving gw10 is 0.8^10 or 0.107.
If you get multiple tickets you will have to bet on slightly less fancied teams so the chance of each ticket getting past gw10 is less than 0.107. You might have on average 1 ticket left but you have spent 10 times as much.
The best strategy however involves trying to be last left not to get as far as possible. If in GW1 you predict there will be a total of 12000 tickets, 10000 on the Eagle playing the Cards with an 80% chance to win and 2000 on the Chiefs playing the Broncos bwin a 77% chance to win the best strategy is to put you ticket on the Cards. An 80% chance youlose you $50 but a 4.6% chance you win $600000 after GW1 and a 15.4% chance you are still in the game with the number of tickets left down to 2000. Of course if everyone follows that logic and bets on the cards you want to bet on the Eagles so the game depends on outguessing what everyone else will do.
Yes, I suppose that’s the skill part: guessing correctly which teams will be super-popular picks, and putting your money on a less touted team in the hope that the super-popular team will get upset and take most of the picks out of the pool that week.
Question: if you make 1 pick a week, is it $50 for the entire season, or $50 per week (so that’s $900 for the season)?
If it’s $50 per pick for the season, then my gut answer is, buy 16 picks for $800. It’s almost impossible to lose all 11 (which I think is the minimum number of games played in any particular week) games in a week, so I have a feeling someone else is doing it. If you live somewhere with legal sports betting, you also have an out; except on the last week of the season, where there is no Monday night game, if you lose all but one, you can hedge the bet on Monday night.
If it’s $50 per pick per week, then even one ticket doesn’t seem cost effective.
That doesn’t work. Each entry is a Survival Pick entry - once that entry loses a game, it’s out of the pool. All your method does is guarantee lasting to Week 2 with one entry.
If you want to guarantee a win at the end of the season, you just need to pony up $13.1 million on 262,144 entries. Evenly dividing those up among all of the games (or even just splitting them 50/50 on two opposing teams each week) leaves you with 2 entries for Week 18, guaranteeing a win.
Alright - if we assume the favored team is winning 66% of the time, we can cut that down to 4,666 entries for $233,300 by betting on the favorites each week through Week 15, and then using the last 8 entries to split 4 games in Week 16, 2 games in Week 17 and one game in Week 18. We’re getting there!
