Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Football pool redux

Remember a while ago, I mentioned I was in a football pool? No? C'mon, you remember — I had won some money in week two, and I figured I'd never win anything again because I know zilch about football? You remember now? No? Uh.... ok.

So anyway, I'm in this football pool....

So it's week 14 now, and I have not come in first or second in any weeks since week 2. But dammit all if I'm not tied for first freakin' place overall! After thirteen weeks, I have correctly guessed predicted 9 games or more (out of 16) seven times. I have only gotten less than seven right once, that was 5 in week 5. I'm still in the 99th percentile, and I'm ranked even higher than I was before - 724th overall. In total, I have gotten 110 right out of 208, or a success rate of 52.9%. It seems odd to me that being slightly over 50-50 gives you first place. I also find my success in this pool rather odd, considering all I'm going by is (a) the ESPN game preview (though they never make predictions, they just say what's happened in the last few meetings between the two teams and/or any winning or losing streaks the teams are on), and (b) the tiny bits of football information that I don't fast-forward over when listing to my Prime Time Sports podcast. Note that the ESPN preview is right there on the page where you make your picks, so it's exactly the same information that everyone else in the pool has access to. For a while, I also had a general rule of never betting against the Patriots or Colts, though I had to break that rule when they played each other (and I got it right). I have since gone against both in a few cases, but only betting that they won't cover the spread, and I've almost always been right about those too.

I should have been buying lottery tickets...

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