Greek's $1.1 million Football contest

[Justin7]

It's advertised as giving out "Over $1.1 million in prizes*"

It's a well run contest. Their software is first-rate to accept and grade picks, and it's very easy to enter.

So here's the real question: what is the expected payout of TheGreek in a year for this contest?

Here's a link to the prizes if I am not clear:

http://contest.linkrd.com/osg/fb08_tg/prizes.cgi

2 big components of the prize:
1. You have to go 52-8 or better in any of the 4-week brackets for them to payout a $150k prize, so there are 4 chances. Assume there are 2000 entrants. What are the odds that any player will go 52-8 or better assuming all players hit 53% against stale lines?
2. Weekly jackpot bonus: this is awarded each week if a player goes 15-0. How often will this be given out, with 2k players hitting 53% against the spread?

Now, the weekly payouts are as follows based on your finish. Assume there will always be over 250 players, and that there are no ties (to simplify):
1 $1,500 or $15,000**
2 $1,000
3 $750
4-5 $500
6-15 $300
16-25 $200
26-50 $100
51-100 $75
101-175 $50
176-250 $25

What is the expected payout of TheGreek on this contest after 16 weeks (16 payouts of weekly prizes, including 4 "jackpot" payouts of 150k if someone qualifies, and possible up to 16 "big" first place prizes)?

[Justin7]

Ganchrow, please don't answer this until 48 hours later.

This is a good intermediate problem from a probability perspective.

[Aces]

Its a great contest I won 75.00 this week. 11-4 but my projections on Monday Night Football kicked me way down the list.

[RickySteve]

Are we assuming infinite selections and 0 correlation between entrants?

[RickySteve]

$367,434.39, if above.

[accuscoresucks]

won 350 a few weeks ago

a couple more hundereds would be nice by seasons end

[Justin7]

Are we assuming infinite selections and 0 correlation between entrants?

Yes, although your inference would lower the average payout.

[LLXC]

$15,000 very rare (actually happened once this season). $150,000 is almost impossible. Also have to factor in the non active members...

[Dazzez]

1) What are the odds that any player will go 52-8 or better assuming all players hit 53% against stale lines?
The probability that at least one player will go 52-8 or better at least once is 1.304%.

2) Weekly jackpot bonus: this is awarded each week if a player goes 15-0. How often will this be given out, with 2k players hitting 53% against the spread?
This will be given out each week with probability 13.608%.

3) What is the expected payout of TheGreek on this contest after 16 weeks?

If we assume as RickySteve (infinite selections and 0 correlation between entrants), we assume 2,000 players per week, and we assume that ties for a jackpot are split result in the prize being split evenly, then expected payout for TheGreek is:

$21,125 guaranteed per week * 16 weeks = $338,000 +

+ (15000-1500)*13.608%*16 = $29,394.13 in expected value for the weekly big prizes +

+ 4*0.32761%*150000 = $1,965.64 in expected value for the 4 jackpot payouts

= $369,360, which is slightly off from RickySteve. I'd estimate it's 50/50 which one of us made the minor error in our calculations.

[wtt0315]

well considering i played this week and got confirmation of my picks when i looked yesterday it showed me 0-0 and they told me no way i entered this week. i had a bad week either way but not sure what happened.

[Justin7]

It might be a "new week" already. Go back and check your results for 1 week earlier.

[Justin7]

Dazz and Ricky -

Nice work.

My point is looking at this: it's advertised as a 1.1m contest. Now this is still a lot of free money, but not as much as you'd initially think.

[blackbart]

played for several years and i have only ever heard of one player going 15-0, i have never heard about anyone winning the quarterly bonus

[wtt0315]

15-0 player also didnt play that week so he only got 1500. Also justin no i recieved a email in my spam box saying i hadnt picked yet but didnt see it till monday. strange, guess it was just a bug. i went like 7-8 so i am not going complain.

[RickySteve]

Probability any given player wins <52 out of 60: 0.999999966444163
Probability all 2000 players win <52: 0.999999966444163 ^ 2000 = 0.99993289057659

What am I missing?

[Dazzez]

Probability any given player wins <52 out of 60: 0.999999966444163
Probability all 2000 players win <52: 0.999999966444163 ^ 2000 = 0.99993289057659

What am I missing?

You're right. I was mistakenly calculating probability that no players lose more than 8 out of 52 rather than out of 60.

So the probability that at least one player will go 52-8 or better at least once is 0.0268%.

4*0.00671%*150000 = $40.27 in expected value for the 4 jackpot payouts

= $367,434.39 total contest value.

I wonder why the person who asked this question didn't immediately catch this error. Could he be freerolling our answers?

[goldengoat]

i won like $50 or something like that once from this contest

other times i've had real good weeks but didn't win jackshit and wondered wtf

don't think i've ever had 4 solid weeks in a row though....usually something disastrous happens and brings me back to reality

is fun to do though....don't spend much time on it

[goldengoat]

haha i just read the rules for the 1st time and found you have to bet that weak to get the full prize....maybe i should pay more attention

just checked and won $25 this year and didn't even know it just like last year. at least now i know wtf i am supposed to do...i think

greek is great book but funding it is kind of a pain

[Peep]

Cool thread.

Addendum questions:

Can we estimate how many people enter per week by the average payouts?

And if I enter ten times with coin flips for picks how much would I net on the average over the ten weeks?

[TotallyTilt]

14-1 last week

Just wanted to say thank you for this thread. I put my picks in last week since I play at The Greek and ended up going 14-1. I lost the tiebreaker and came in 2nd. I'm supposed to get $1,000 bucks but haven't received it yet.

[accuscoresucks]

congrats totally

they credit acct and send confirmation e mail at approx 1am wednesday morning




no worries their

[Justin7]

Congrats!

I won $50 one week. I think I've been above .500 every week, and am creeping up the standings overall. Unfortunately, there's no price for overall standings.

[TotallyTilt]

congrats totally

they credit acct and send confirmation e mail at approx 1am wednesday morning




no worries their

Yep, just checked my account and it's there.

And thanks again Justin for starting this thread. If I hadn't seen it here, I doubt I would of entered or known about it.