The American sports tipping site Covers.com has an ongoing free $100,000 Streak Survivor Competition. It’s definitely worth looking at if you follow US sports, although if you pick and random, chances are you will get lucky eventually. While the $100,000 prize is incredibly hard to win, there are various lesser prizes up for grabs.
How to Play
To participate, simply select a winning pick from a lengthy list of upcoming fixtures. If your selection is a winner, you will receive one point towards your streak total. If your selection is a loser, your score will be reset to zero. If the game results in a tie, your score will not change. The aim is to build the longest winning streak. You must make a selection on a game played within 7 days of your previous selection to avoid having your streak reset to zero. You are limited to one pick per day.
All of the eligible picks will have bookmaker odds of at least 1.77 (-130 in the US format). The markets available are line (or H2H, depending on the sport) and over/under. At the time of writing the available leagues to pick from are the NFL, MLB, NCAAF and Canadian Football. Virtually every fixture for each of these leagues is available to select from.
Click here to learn more about the competition
Prizes
The following prizes are automatically awarded if you can achieve the following streaks:
9 – a free hat
13 – a free hoodie
17 – $1,000 USD
21 – $25,000 USD
25 – $100,000 USD
There is also a monthly prize that is awarded based on totals wins for the month, not highest streak. The eligible entrant to accumulate the most overall wins each month will be awarded $1,000 USD.
All players are limited to winning 2 hats and 2 hoodies/equivalent per year. The cash prizes are paid by Paypal.
Strategy
If you know your US sports well and are able to pick astutely, you should patient with your picks and wait for value. If you don’t have a long-term record of beating the bookmaker at US sports you should instead do the exact opposite and pick fixtures that occur daily (i.e. MLB, NHL and NBA). As the next section shows, the more picks you make, the higher your chance of eventually hitting a streak. The latter strategy of making frequent picks also brings into play the monthly prize, which is purely based on total wins for the month.
Note that regardless of whether you choose to play fast or slow, whenever you streak gets reset to zero you should pick a fixture that is shortly due to start. This provides a free swing of the bat, so to speak because there’s no harm in getting it wrong prior to later a fixture that you intend to make a more serious pick on.
Probability of Winning
Assuming you have a 50% chance of making one correct pick, you may think the chances of winning a minor prize are low. After all, the odds of getting nine correct picks in a row is (0.5)^9 = 0.20%. However, you get to reset and play the game over and over again, which greatly improves the odds that you will eventually hit a streak. The mathematics behind it is pretty ugly, so instead let’s look at some tables showing the probabilities of achieving certain streaks if you got to make 100, 250, 500 and 1000 selections.
The first table assumes you make picks on selections at 1.91 odds, suggesting you have a 50% probability of winning if you make your selections at random.
50% Chance of Winning Per Pick:
| Streak | 100 Trials | 250 Trials | 500 Trials | 1,000 Trials |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | 8.8% | 21.3% | 38.5% | 62.5% |
| 13 | 0.5% | 1.4% | 2.9% | 5.9% |
| 17 | 0.03% | 0.09% | 0.2% | 0.4% |
| 21 | 0.002% | 0.006% | 0.01% | 0.02% |
| 25 | 0.0001% | 0.0003% | 0.0007% | 0.001% |
Note that you have the ability to make selections at odds as low as 1.77. Using some crude mathematics this works out to an expected probability of 54% if you make your selections at random. This modest increase from 50% to 54% greatly improves your chance of hitting a winning streak.
54% Chance of Winning Per Pick:
| Streak | 100 Trials | 250 Trials | 500 Trials | 1,000 Trials |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | 15.7% | 35.9% | 59.6% | 83.5% |
| 13 | 1.4% | 3.6% | 7.2% | 14.0% |
| 17 | 0.1% | 0.3% | 0.6% | 1.3% |
| 21 | 0.009% | 0.03% | 0.05% | 0.1% |
| 25 | 0.0007% | 0.002% | 0.004% | 0.009% |