ProgNOTsticator

I am in a football pool with some guys at work, run through ESPN.com. In week 1, I got 11 picks right out of 16, and was tied for second place. I lost the tie-breaker, so I didn't win anything. This past week, I tied for third place with 10 correct picks, so I didn't win anything there either. Currently, I'm leading our pool overall, I'm ranked 816th out of the hundreds of thousands of people in the ESPN pool, which is the 99.3rd percentile. This sucks.

It sucks because I know jack about football — I've just gotten lucky two weeks in a row. If I come in second or third every week all season, I have an excellent shot at winning the whole thing, but the odds of that are infinitesimal. My best shot of making any money in this pool was to get lucky and win a week or maybe two. I'm ranked near the top of the list right now, but in the long run, it'll mean nothing. Part of me thinks that I've burned up all the luck I had, while the other part of me that doesn't believe in luck thinks that I have as good a shot as anyone else. We'll see...

Update: Turns out I came in second in week two, not third, so I actually won $10. Also, I joined a similar pool at the local Boston Pizza and used the same picks for that pool, and I won the week and a $25 gift certificate!