Luck had nothing to do with New York’s 21-17 victory over New England in yesterday’s Super Bowl unless you count the Mud Bay Blog’s coin flip, which correctly predicted the game’s winner. Instead, this post is about the off-the-charts results in the Super Bowl numbers pool a friend of mine runs every year.
The pool is simple. There are 10 players in the pool and one winner. Each player puts in $100 and in return is randomly given a single digit from 0 to 9. All 10 digits are assigned. The player has no say over which digit he or she gets. At the end of the game the player with the number matching the ones digit in the Super Bowl’s total score wins $1000. The winning number this year was 8.
My friend has been running the pool for 8 years. He has no problem selling all of the spots. I ponied up the $100 entry fee a few years ago. I can tell you that I didn’t win, but I’m not cleared to publish the name of the winner. Let’s just call him Mr. Duck.
Mr. Duck struck again this year. That makes 3 wins in the 8 years my friend has been running the pool. For an investment of $800, Mr. Duck has pocketed $3000. Those are the kind of results a great (and also lucky) player can sometimes walk away with at the World Series of Poker. They are not the kind of results you would expect in a game of chance.
Based on past Super Bowl scores, the numbers in the pool don’t have equal chances of winning. (That’s why they are randomly assigned instead of letting the players pick them.) For example, the combined total score has ended seven times in the digit 6, while the digit 4 has been a “winner” only three times.
The digit 8 (Mr. Duck’s number this year) is a bad draw. Prior to yesterday, it was tied with 3 and 2 as the numbers with the least chance of winning—only two wins each through 45 Super Bowls. But for Mr. Duck holding an 8 wasn’t a problem. Even with an unlucky number he’s lucky. He probably wasn’t even worried when New York lined up for a two-point conversion late in the game to stretch their lead to 6 points. The conversion attempt failed and Mr. Duck was in the money again.
There’s no word yet on Mr. Duck’s reaction to his victory as he is on vacation in Mexico. Whether he is spending his winnings there is also unknown. The rest of the players in the pool aren’t discouraged though. They might get lucky next year.
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