[MicroBob]

Wonder if the 2nd place guy can try to make picks that he thinks will be the opposite of the other guy.

Picking the games that he thinks are more likely to lose might actually give him the best shot since this gives him a better chance to stray from the other guy's picks.
to that end, he might even want to consider picking all of the playoff bound teams who are supposed to be resting their starters (PHI, PIT, IND, GB, etc) if he thinks the other guy will avoid these teams.


I played in a free weekly pool last year at a casino.
Top 5 winners of 12 random college games won money ($2.5k down to $100 I think). Tie-breaker was total points of one of the games. You were just picking winners...not picking ATS.
Normally 11-1 or 10-2 was good for first place (out of 600 entrants).
One week I went 12-0 and missed the tie-break total by only 3 points. Thought I had cashed-in (and it was on my birthday no less).
Learned that out of 600 entrants, 120 had a perfect 12-0 score and 10 players or so missed the tie-break by 0-2 points so I didn't cash-in.

From that point, I determined it was better EV to pick a team that I thought had only a 40-45% chance of winning IF I thought 70% or more of the public would be siding with the favorite.
In other words, picking an undervalued underdog had value to give me the best chance of winning in the pool. This is in spite of the fact that my chance of going 12-0 or 11-1 were decreased by choosing the underdog.

This would have been different, of course, if I was still in contention for the $10k or whatever they were giving for the best season-total. But I was already far enough behind in that race that it wasn't a concern.