10 Ideas for Fun Office Pools
August 14, 2013 by
Spicing up the water cooler conversation is no small task. If you are not afraid of a little friendly competition with your coworkers you won't want to miss these 10 simple ideas for organizing an office pool at your workplace.
(in no particular order)
#1 Office Lottery Pool
Get several of your coworkers to pitch in a small amount of money each week to be put towards the purchase of lottery tickets. If you win a million, a thousand, or even a single dollar … you can divvy up the proceeds and invest in more tickets or take the money and run! (careful, though … there is a reason that it's called cardboard cocaine)#2 Major Golf Tournament Pool
Major golf tournaments come around four times each year … the Masters, the US Open, the British Open (a.k.a. the Open Championship), and the PGA Championship. Have your colleagues choose a team of golfers from the tournament and add all of their scores together to determine who has the best team collectively. Below is an example of a major golf pool that was created and managed right here on EasyOfficePools.com.You can create a golf pool on our website by going to the Create Golf Pool page.
Check out our PGA Fantasy Pools page for more details.
#3 Baby Office Pool
Is anyone in your office having a baby? A fun pool that lots of people run is to guess the date / time that the baby will be born, how much it will weigh, gender, etc. You can fill in a grid of dates and times and make it interesting by putting a coffee or mundane task on the line as a wager. There are many free websites out there if you google "office baby pools" that will even help to manage these online.#4 Football Squares or Super Bowl Squares
Most popular for Super Bowl Squares, but extendable to any football game, you could use a 10 x 10 grid (example below) and have coworkers write their initial in the squares. Once the 10 x 10 grid is filled in you randomly assign 0-9 digits to each row and column.At the end of each quarter, use the last digit of each team's score to determine who gets the prize for that quarter. For example, consider you had three players with initials of SH, TO, and LP. The winners of the prizes would be those highlighted in yellow if the game score at the end of each quarter was as follows:
End of Quarter 1: Patriots 7, Steelers 0
End of Quarter 2: Patriots 10, Steelers 3
End of Quarter 3: Patriots 13, Steelers 14
End of Quarter 4: Patriots 16, Steelers 14
Create Squares
Enter two teams and a list of people
Enter Your Info
All names get distributed randomly
Random Numbers
All 100 squares get assigned name
Save Squares
Save your randomly generated squares
Share Link
Copy link and share your squares
If you wanted to make things interesting you could charge a certain amount for each square.
#5 March Madness Office Pools
Do these need any explanation? By far the most popular pools in offices everywhere across America are during the NCAA Final Four tournament each year. So popular ,we've dedicated an entirely separate article to these pools.Here's our fill list of March Madness Office Pool Formats.
The objective of these pools is to gather a group of people and have everyone fill out the Final Four bracket with the team who they believe will win. The person with the most correct picks wins the spoils. Most formats award more points for having correct picks during the later rounds of the tournament as compared with correctly picking opening round games. Head over to ESPN, Yahoo, or CBS websites and you'll find elaborate options dedicated to managing your NCAA brackets.
#6 Reality TV Contests
If you aren't too good for (or really addicted to) a little reality TV drama then this might be the pool for you. Take any reality TV show that has a weekly or regular elimination of contestants (for example, Survivor, Big Brother, American Idol, The Voice, The Challenge, etc.). You can have each of your coworkers draft a team of reality show contestants. Each TV contestant can only be on one person's team, and the person who has the winner on their team wins the office pool.#7 Death Pool
This one is kind of grotesque and controversial, but nevertheless, very popular. Everyone in the office death pool chooses one or several human beings that they think are going to be the first to die. If your person dies first you win the pool. Old celebrities or other well-known figures are common choices in your office draft.#8 MLB Home Runs Pool
Separate the 6 biggest home run hitters (i.e. the players likely to get the most home runs) from the rest of the Major League Baseball players. This makes up the two tiers from which each participant will draft their team of sluggers. Each person chooses one player from the 6 Slugger Tier and also chooses 5 more players from the rest of the MLB players. At the end of the year, add up the best 4 of your six home run hitters to get your point value. You could even award prizes based on each person's team within a single week or month if the 162 game season is too long for you.Manage this pool on Easy Office Pools so you don't have to collect the stats every day.
#9 Office Pool for the Oscars (or Emmy's, MTV Video Music Awards, etc.)
Choose who you think is going to win the Oscar for each of the categories presented (i.e. Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Picture, etc.). Whoever chooses the most correctly wins! Make this one a bit more complicated by assigning weighting for the different categories. For instance, the three mentioned above may be worth two points whereas Best Screenplay or other obscure categories are only worth one point (sorry to anybody responsible for Screenplays out there J).#10 Kentucky Derby Pool
Create a board with a list of all the horses slated to race in the Kentucky Derby (this could be done for the Preakness or any other race too). Have all of the pool participants sign their name by the horse that they believe will win. Everybody antes the same amount of money and whoever selected the winning horse divvies up pot. If 9 out of the 10 participants select the favored horse, and she wins, they will have to split the winnings 9 ways, but if the person that selected the underdog wins they get the proceeds to themselves.See full details, excel templates, and screenshots ...
#11 Make Up Your Own Office Pool
(I know I only committed to 10 with the title of the article ... here is a BONUS!)Taking any random event and turning it into a pool is not too difficult. I currently have a bet with my coworker guessing that the Minnesota Twins will not lose 100 games in the 2013 MLB season. We could have easily opened that up to more people and had everyone guess the exact number of games that they will use. For example, I would guess that they'll lose between 80 and 90 games whereas Dan would take 90 to 110 games and Bill gets 60-80 games.
It could also be fun to organize a pool around an important date related to a work effort or event. Maybe there is a huge project that you are hoping to get delivered but it's up in the air whether it will be delivered on time. You could guess the date that it delivers. You get the idea … anything with a key date could be turned into an office pool.
IF YOU HAVE A GREAT IDEA FOR AN OFFICE POOL NOT LISTED ABOVE PLEASE SHARE BY COMMENTING BELOW!
Hopefully you found this article useful and can breathe some new energy into your company by getting your competitive juices flowing … or by taking some easy money from Sally and Tommy who know nothing about college basketball J
Cheers!
Comments
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College Football Pick’em Pool! Either with the spread or against the spread!!!
Weekly golf pool, that lasts all season. pick one golfer each week, can’t use again, get the dollars they earn.
How about a World Cup pool ?
Good idea John thanks for sharing!
I wish there was a hockey goal scoring pool. I run through my excel but wish this site would track it.
Miss the homerun derby on here.
Also run a NFL Superbowl madness pool. All through excel.
I have plenty of ideas
Thanks for sharing the ideas, Rick!
NASCAR pool!!!
Would love to see a “one and done” format for the 2021 golf season!