This week I’ll be joining some guys in a football betting pool. The rules are simple: eveybody pays $20 up front. $1 goes towards each week of games. The remaining $3 goes into a separate pool. Each week, you pick winners and losers (no point spreads) except for the Monday night game (for that you pick the total of the points scored). Whoever has the best record, wins. In the event of a tie, whoever got closest in the Monday night game (over or under makes no difference) wins. In the event of another tie, you split the money. At the end of the 17 week season, you drop your worst week and calculate your overall record. The winner there gets the extra pot.
I know nothing about football, so I’m gonna scour the net l and use what I find there (there’s no rule against it).
About 20 years ago, the store where I worked had a Superbowl pool. The numbers 2 through 50 were put in a bag. You paid $5 and picked a number. We took the total score of the game and whoever had that number, won the money (a pot of $245!). I didn’t want to play. Everybody begged and begged so I decided to play (it was worth $5 to shut them up). I drew 50.
It was for Superbowl XIX - San Francisco - 38, Miami - 16 for a total score of 54.
Nearly all the other cow-orkers were having a Superbowl party (I was out of town doing software work).
Since they didn’t think to go higher than 50, they decided to give the money to me (reluctantly with some nearly resorting to violence against it).
The smart, logical thing to do would have been to give everybody their money back since, technically, nobody actually won.
However, since they pestered me for a week, I took the money graciously. With my software work and the football money, I made $390 that weekend!
So, tell me about your adventures in the world of office pools.