If you’re looking for some additional fun this Super Bowl Sunday, consider playing Super Bowl football squares. It’s a fun game to play along while watching the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons play Super Bowl 51. Since there is often cash involved with the game, some of you may be wondering what tricks there are to win when playing Super Bowl squares.
If the game is set up correctly, there’s no way to increase your odds of winning. You can find a detailed explanation of the rules and a free Super Bowl squares printable here. Have the members of your party then fill in their initials (all 100 spaces should be filled), and then randomly assign the numbers 0 to 9 across the top and side of the grid. A winner is often identified after each quarter by matching the last number of each team’s score with the numbers on the grid. For example, if at the end of the first quarter, the Seahawks are up 17 to 9, the person whose initials occupy the following square wins: 7 vertically and 9 horizontally. You and your friends can then decide how to assign prizes.
Returning to the art of winning (or at least trying to), if the numbers are assigned in the columns before you place your initials in a grid, you can increase your odds of winning by knowing which numbers appear more often. Football is scored in such as way as to have certain numbers appear much more frequently than others. You want to try to avoid squares with the numbers 2 or 5 in them, and place your initials in squares that have the numbers 0, 7, 3 or 4. This trick is based on the frequency with which these numbers appeared in past Super Bowls. For example, in Super Bowl scores, the number “0” has appeared approximately 27 percent of the time, “7” has appeared approximately 20 percent of the time, and “3” has appeared around 58 times (15.4%).
The number “5”, however, has appeared only 10 times (2.7%) and the number “2” has appeared barely 2 percent of the time. Thus, by placing your initials in the 0,0 square, for instance, you’ve significantly increased your odds of winning. Other “good” number combinations include 7-0 (0-7), 3-0 (0-3), 7-3 (3-7) and finally, 0-4 (4-0).
Of course the more honorable action might be to ensure that people place their initials in squares before randomly assigning the numbers, but if someone sets up the game incorrectly (which happens quite often), by knowing which number combinations are more likely to happen, you put yourself in a position of increasing your chances of winning the Super Bowl squares pool.
Keep in mind that there is no definite answer to who will win Super Bowl 51 and there is a chance you could lose money playing Super Bowl squares.
Will you be participating in a Super Bowl squares pool this year?