I Know The Score

Last August Matt invited me to play I Know The Score, the English Premier League's official score predictor game. Essentially, it's just like any other "pick 'em" game, where the object is to predict the final score of each of the week's football games. You get the most points for exactly picking the correct score, lesser points for only picking the winner of the game, and negative points if the team you picked didn't draw or win as predicted. The game also gives you one banker token per week to double or triple your score (positively or negatively) and one insurance token (if you are incorrect you don't lose any points). Obviously, the object of the game is to amass as many points as possible throughout the 9-10 months of the season.

I've been tracking my global ranking throughout the year, since I won all 3 of the mini-groups I was in and 2 of them by blowouts. Back in April Matt posted a blog about my ranking, since he was also watching how well I was doing and predicted that the time was right to announce it on his blog. I'm glad he mentioned it because since his post I pretty much have been on fire. 8 of the last 9 weeks of the season I climbed in the rankings, and the 1 week where I didn't I only dropped 5 spots. In the end, I finished the highest I had ever been the entire season.

What makes this significant is that this game is played by people all over the world. This year, to be exact, it was played by 182,108 people all over the world. My final ranking was 220th place in the world and 8th in the United States. 220 out of 182,108 is the top 0.12 percentile. Or to put it another way, the top one-tenth of one percent in the world. Amazing, really.

I really had fun with the game and it took a lot of patience (and some superstition) not to make a post about it earlier. Although a lot of people played, I'm not sure all 182,108 players actively participated each week. So, doing well in this game requires knowledge, skill, luck, and probably most importantly, dedication. I know that sounds cheesy for a game, but making 10 picks every week for 9-10 months does require some level of "stick-to-it-tive-ness".

Although the game is a partly chance, I feel it's necessary to point out it's not entirely luck. In the past I've won my office NFL pick 'em game and NCAA bracket buster games. So, I think I probably have the type of personality suited to analyzing data and information. At some point the score you choose for each game comes down to a judgment call. However, I will be the first to admit that most of the scores (and thus success) that I settled on had nothing to do with what I thought or what I felt. That is, I didn't go through the list each week and arbitrarily fill in the sheet as best I could. I used a similar method, as had proved successful in the other games I've won, for this game too. In the end though, the method is only as good as the source of information. I'm not going to tell you my source - it's a secret. However, it's free to anyone and readily available information. Anyway, my point is that I used a quick amount of research and a method because I'm smart enough to know that I'm not smart enough to successfully pick correct scores week in and week out. I can't take 100% credit for my score...or can I? I guess that's for you to decide.

This was the first time I played this game, and now that I've figured out how to use my banker appropriately and confirmed my selection method, I think I can do even better next year.