Last year we took a look at the expected odds of any given combination of numbers in the ubiquitous squares game played by billions this time of year… ok, maybe it’s only millions but there are certainly billions of squares in play. We looked at the score of the first three quarters of every championship game, as well as the final score.
When you pick a square before the numbers are drawn, it has a default 1/100, or 1%, chance of winning. Once you draw the numbers, only 26 squares will provide a better than 1% chance of winning, based on historical results from the last game of the NFL’s season.
The most common combination to hit is 0-0, which happens 7.4% of the time- meaning you have a 7.4% chance of winning with that combination. You may as well give it up if you get a 2-8 (or 8-2) or 2-2, each of which should only happen .05% of the time. That’s 5 times out of 1,000. Not very likely. At all.
Your next best combo is 0-7 (or 7-0), at 5.95%.
So, here is a table detailing the historical odds of all possible combinations. Good luck and enjoy the Big Game in the Big Easy!
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ||
| Total % | 27.20% | 5.60% | 2.13% | 15.47% | 10.13% | 2.67% | 8.00% | 21.87% | 2.40% | 4.53% | |
| 0 | 27.20% | 7.40% | 1.52% | 0.58% | 4.21% | 2.76% | 0.73% | 2.18% | 5.95% | 0.65% | 1.23% |
| 1 | 5.60% | 1.52% | 0.31% | 0.12% | 0.87% | 0.57% | 0.15% | 0.45% | 1.22% | 0.13% | 0.25% |
| 2 | 2.13% | 0.58% | 0.12% | 0.05% | 0.33% | 0.22% | 0.06% | 0.17% | 0.47% | 0.05% | 0.10% |
| 3 | 15.47% | 4.21% | 0.87% | 0.33% | 2.39% | 1.57% | 0.41% | 1.24% | 3.38% | 0.37% | 0.70% |
| 4 | 10.13% | 2.76% | 0.57% | 0.22% | 1.57% | 1.03% | 0.27% | 0.81% | 2.22% | 0.24% | 0.46% |
| 5 | 2.67% | 0.73% | 0.15% | 0.06% | 0.41% | 0.27% | 0.07% | 0.21% | 0.58% | 0.06% | 0.12% |
| 6 | 8.00% | 2.18% | 0.45% | 0.17% | 1.24% | 0.81% | 0.21% | 0.64% | 1.75% | 0.19% | 0.36% |
| 7 | 21.87% | 5.95% | 1.22% | 0.47% | 3.38% | 2.22% | 0.58% | 1.75% | 4.78% | 0.52% | 0.99% |
| 8 | 2.40% | 0.65% | 0.13% | 0.05% | 0.37% | 0.24% | 0.06% | 0.19% | 0.52% | 0.06% | 0.11% |
| 9 | 4.53% | 1.23% | 0.25% | 0.10% | 0.70% | 0.46% | 0.12% | 0.36% | 0.99% | 0.11% | 0.21% |
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Fantasy Football is in essence a social network. Its a hobby you can share with others in a variety of fun ways. Check out some of the ways we punch up the fun in our leagues here or under articles above.
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Last year, and really for several years, I’ve been studying the population of top QBs, RBs and WRs in terms of age and experience. The study began back in 2007 in examining the Running Back Rule of Thumb- don’t trust an RB 30 and over. I expanded the study to QBs and WRs to discover that age and experience alone can help you winnow down the prospective pool of top players to target.
This year, we do away with the ‘sweet spot’ concept and instead look at the whole picture, breaking players into three tiers based on age and experience still, but trying to identify who you should target in a given age/experience tier, along with the number of players you should expect to be in the top ranks in a given position. Check it out here, or above, under Articles-> Dog-Day Tiers.
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Quick update for tonight- created a quick and dirty way to see how many significant changes each team went through this offseason. This is important because the more changes, the more unpredictable a team is when creating projections. You have to deal with uncertainty and make assumptions when creating projections, but make them informed ones. Check it out under Articles above, or jump straight from here.
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The arguments seems as old as the value-based drafting method- what is the best way to determine your baselines? The Draftologist is here to help, and we’ve come up with a way to standardize baseline computation. Check it out in the articles section here.
Coming up here at Draftologist.com: A simple table ranking teams in terms of what changed in the off-season, a revamped overview of our sweet-spot concept, some things to punch up the fun in your leagues, and a revamped version of the 3P Draft Strategy, reflecting updates to the Draft Planalyzer. Stay tuned!
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A brand new, already updated, totally FREE Draft Planalyzer is now ready for your perusal- already being hailed by DavidGonos.com as possibly being “your Fantasy Football league’s Mel Kiper”. Get your last three year’s worth of draft data and go to it! Thanks to Mark from the Footballguys.com forums for finding a bug that has been corrected in version 12.02.
Version 12.03 is now available, with a major new feature- the ability to planalyze third-round reversal drafts! You should see the length of the Excel formula it took to accommodate this.. but we aim to please!
Want to check it out prior to downloading it? Watch the video overview here!
Get it here or just click on the Resources-> Draft Planalyzer tab above. As Mr. Gonos notes, “Helmet-hair aside, I think this just made Kiper expendable.”
Under the ‘Articles’ tab on this site you can learn how to use the spreadsheet.. we will be updating for the new version but it is still very relevant. Also, we’ll be recording some screencast video tutorials on how to use it soon. Once training camps start rolling we’ll post more useful info on reducing draft pick busts and how to punch up the fun factor in your leagues.
Draft Planalyzer Features Include:
- New in version 12.03! Third-round Reversal Draft Order support! By request from a few interested folks, I figured out how to include this interesting variant draft order that seeks to help increase draft parity.
- New in 2012! Individual Owner dashboard and stats page. Allows you to zero in on an owners year-to-year tendencies, how ‘predictable’ an owner is compared to others, when they take their first player at a given position, year to year fluctuations in how many players of each position they take, and more.
- Filterable Lists: Example, show what your league’s typical pick depth is at draft slot 5
- Process up to 320 draft picks in straight or serpentine order, up to 25 rounds.
- Up to 12 different player positions- customizable to your league’s positions
- Up to 16 teams/owners
- Automatically generated tables and charts with no macros necessary.
- Ability to enter up to your past three years of drafts, and weight them for computing averages.
- Works in Excel 2003 and up; Google Docs; and should work with any Excel-compatible spreadsheet program (OpenOffice, etc).
- Did we mention.. it’s completely, 100% FREE?