Canada: Million Dollar Hockey Pool

At milliondollarhockeypool.ca, operated by the Canadian Cancer Society, a $50 entry fee gives you a shot at a $1,000,000 prize. The catch is that you have to select one winner a day for 45 days in a row.

What are the odds of getting a shot at the 1 million dollar prize?

Quote: boymimbo

At milliondollarhockeypool.ca, operated by the Canadian Cancer Society, a $50 entry fee gives you a shot at a $1,000,000 prize. The catch is that you have to select one winner a day for 45 days in a row.

What are the odds of getting a shot at the 1 million dollar prize?

Are the entry fee and prize in Canadian Dollars?

If you pick blindly, I guess 0.5^45.

If you go favourites, you probably want to pick the most lopsided pick each night. Just glancing at a board I see Tamba Bay over Florida at -185 to +165. I used a converter and got 64.9% win and 37.7% loss, which needs to be normalized to 63.3% win.

So if you get the best favourite at around 63.3% each time (sometimes better, sometimes worse, I'm sure), it would still be 1 in 864,635,000.

Good thing there are secondary prizes...

Quote: Ayecarumba

Are the entry fee and prize in Canadian Dollars?

Yeah, but tax free.

I get the same, at about 64% you're looking at 337 million to one. Even at 75% you're looking at 314,270:1. I am sure they self-insured for this one. The longest streak prize is 10,000, a grand prize worth $10,000 (most wins), two segment prizes worth $7,000 (most wins), six monthly draw prizes with a total of 4,250, six monthly wins worth $5,000 each, 27 weekly draws at $500, 27 weekly wins at $500.

So the total prize pool is: 95,250 plus the million dollar winner which is highly unlikely.

You don't have to make a choice every day. You could go days between picking a game, as long as you get 45 wins in a row.

I actually would enter this as it seems like fun, but they penalize you by having to live in Canada.

Quote: dwheatley

, it would still be 1 in 864,635,000.

The prize is limited to citizens of Ontario (13.5 million), 18 and older, and one person can only enter a maximum of 5 times. If they get 100,000 entries I would be surprised. (That is $5 million). So there is almost no chance of someone winning the big prize. They presumably buy insurance against someone winning this prize. In any case they probably get a few million for charity as the guaranteed prizes are worth about $30K. I would think someone would sell them a policy against winning the million dollar prize for $50K.

Quote: boymimbo

You don't have to make a choice every day. You could go days between picking a game, as long as you get 45 wins in a row.

With that rule I wouldn't be surprised if you could bat 70% on average on this. The NHL mostly plays 3X a week, and you would at the minimum pick less than 2X a week. So the closest slate of games per week, you could skip. But even a 70% win pct. every time is....

.7^45 is 1 in 9.34 million.

Bummer.....looks like not open to US players as they require a Province listing in the address.

Quote: Paradigm

Bummer.....looks like not open to US players as they require a Province listing in the address.

I think I read last night on their TOS that it is only open to Ontario residents.