Streak For The Cash Experiment

Since the “Streak for the Cash” debuted on ESPN.com last August I’ve been interested in why people pick the way they do. The object of the game seems simple enough, correctly select the winner in 27 consecutive matchups, and win $1 million. Easy right? Think again, the matchups that are available are hardly locks and only one person has ever completed the streak (to 25 during season 1). ESPN does not have exactly how many people select a given matchup available, but they do give you a couple of percentages to help you along the way.

Most obvious is the percentage of people who chose one option or the other. 38.8% for Team A, 62.2% for Team B. Pretty simple.

Less obvious is the availability of the percentage of the population who are participating in that matchup. Selecting that 62.2% on a hunch becomes much tougher when only 10% of people have bothered picking between the two. You can get this percentage by floating your mouse over the bar that represents how “Hot” the matchup is.

So with a new streak starting tomorrow, April 1st, and no winners this season I’m going to start keeping track of my picks and whether or not that pick was with the majority or against the majority.

There will not be any limits in terms of maximum or minimum games played in a day, week, or the entire season. It will be as if I was playing normally. For those wondering I have a 99-95-6 record this season with a maximum streak of only 7, so I’m not an expert or anything. In fact my record is decidedly average. I regularly fall into ESPN’s trap of guessing on afternoon soccer games, while sometimes doing a bit of research on college basketball games.

Some of my stats to get started:

1Q of 2009 Record:

99 Wins
95 Losses
6 Ties

200 Total Games Played

92 Total Days This Season (Jan 1 – Mar 31)

2.17 Games Per Day.

Longest Winning Streak: 7

Longest Losing Streak: 5

Each day I will post my picks and results here along with whether the pick was with or against the majority. I will also host a copy of the spreadsheet I’m using to keep track of my data. Feel free to keep track of my progress yourself. My username on ESPN.com is Schweikher1 and I belong to Streak group “EZ”.