Football squares with quarter lines
Four draws instead of one, so the digits change at every break. A square that was hopeless in the first quarter gets a different pair of numbers in the second, and no one sits dead for the whole game.
The grid
| Home →↓ Away | Q14HT5Q34F4 | Q15HT0Q37F2 | Q10HT2Q38F1 | Q16HT1Q33F6 | Q17HT3Q39F7 | Q12HT8Q35F0 | Q18HT7Q36F8 | Q13HT6Q31F3 | Q11HT9Q32F9 | Q19HT4Q30F5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q12HT3Q39F5 | ||||||||||
| Q17HT8Q32F1 | ||||||||||
| Q10HT2Q36F6 | ||||||||||
| Q11HT9Q33F8 | ||||||||||
| Q13HT4Q37F0 | ||||||||||
| Q18HT7Q34F9 | ||||||||||
| Q19HT1Q30F7 | ||||||||||
| Q15HT5Q38F4 | ||||||||||
| Q14HT6Q31F2 | ||||||||||
| Q16HT0Q35F3 |
Draw seed 481625 · each square covers 1 of the 100 score endings
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The digits are drawn
Not left blank for you to write in, and the seed prints on the sheet so anybody can check the draw.
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It says which digits pay
Scores are built out of threes and sevens, so the digits worth having are shaded on the paper.
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Nothing is uploaded
It all runs in your browser, and a shared link carries the sheet in the part a server never receives.
The problem this solves
On a single-draw grid your digits are your digits for three hours. Draw a 2 and a 5 and you can work out before kick-off that you are very unlikely to be involved, which is a dull afternoon paid for at the same price as everybody else's.
Redrawing at each break spreads that luck across four independent draws. Nobody is guaranteed a good square, but nobody is condemned by the first one either, and in a pool where the same people play every week that difference is what keeps them playing.
What it costs you
Simplicity, mostly. One grid with one set of numbers can be pinned to a wall and understood at a glance by somebody walking past; four sets of numbers on the same squares cannot. The sheet prints all four strips, labelled, and it is undeniably a busier piece of paper.
It also multiplies the moment where mistakes happen. Each of the four draws has to be read off the correct strip at the correct break — 1st quarter, Halftime, 3rd quarter, Final — and a quarter settled against the wrong row is the kind of error that is only discovered after the money has moved.
All four draws come from the one seed printed on the sheet, so reproducing the whole game still takes a single number rather than four. That is the part worth keeping if you go this route.
And it changes what people watch. On a single-draw grid the room stops paying attention to anybody whose digits are dead; with four draws, the interesting question at every break is not only who won it but what everybody has been given for the next one. Whether that is an improvement depends entirely on how competitive your group is about a sheet of paper.
Common questions
Do the numbers change every quarter?
Yes. Four independent draws are made, one per break, and all four are printed on the sheet as separate strips so you can see which set governs which quarter.
Is redrawing each quarter fairer?
It is not more fair in the strict sense — every square still covers the same number of outcomes as every other square in each draw. What it does is spread the luck over four draws instead of one, so a bad first draw is not a bad afternoon.