Gambling Tips & Hints

Office Pools - Confidence Ratings

This is the second article in a series discussing a few office pools that can be tailored to almost any sport, but that are particularly well suited to NFL football.

The first article discussed the basic rules for a point spread office pool in which participants pick game winners taking into account the point spread for the game. In this article, I will discuss a variation that allows the office pool contest to take into account the level of confidence participants have in each of their game picks.

Point Spread Office Pool with Confidence Ratings

This variation of the point spread pool allows participants to rank their game picks according to their confidence level. The pool is played the same as the basic point spread pool except that participants assign a number rank to their picks and get a bigger reward for correctly picking the games in which they have the most confidence.

A number one is placed next to the game pick they are most confident about, number two next to their second most confident pick, and so on. If there are fifteen games that week, the pick the participant is least confident in will be number fifteen. For ease of administering the pool, you can have the participants turn in a sheet on which they have listed the games with their most confident pick at the top progressing down to their least confident pick at the bottom.

Now, instead of one point per game, this type of pool assigns graduated points to the game picks. The game at the bottom of the participant's sheet, the game pick with the least confidence, is worth one point. The next one up is worth two points, and so on. If there are fifteen games that week, the game at the top of the list, the game pick with the most confidence, is worth fifteen points.

The person with the most points at the end of the season wins the pool.

In the next article, I will discuss a survivor office pool in which the goal is to be the last remaining participant.