Today I wanted to talk about some football pick em contests. Not just any pick em contest but one that the best of the best participate in every year. The Westgate Las Vegas SuperContest and SuperContest Gold. Every year prior to the start of the NFL regular season professional and amateur handicappers alike make their way to the Westgate SuperBook to participate in a season long handicapping contest. Sign ups for these contests must be done in person, however picks can be entered by proxy.
There are two contests offered by the sportsbook. The traditional SuperContest has a $1500 buyin and will pay out the top 100 contestants this year. The payout amounts are determined by the number of entries. Past winners have received anywhere from $207,000 to a record payout of $1.3 million dollars in 2017. Sign ups started July 1st and the deadline is 11am on September 8th. They also began running a new contest just last year, the SuperContest Gold which has a $5,000 entry fee and is a winner take all competition. Last years winner of the SuperContest Gold received $470,000. Last season had 2,748 entries for the traditional SuperContest while the SuperContest Gold had 94 entries.
Each contest works the same way. On Wednesday night the sports book puts out the lines for that weekends games. Once these are locked in they don’t change, even if the line moves prior to the game starting. Contestants must enter their 5 ATS (against the spread) picks prior to the Saturday morning deadline or if they want to pick the Thursday night game, they must enter all 5 of their picks prior to the start of the Thursday night game. If the team you picked covers, that earns you 1 point, if it’s a push, you get a half point, and a loss is worth 0 points. All points are tallied up over the 17 week regular season and whoever has the highest amount of points at the end wins the contest and is awarded the prize money.
This is a contest I started following every year because it gives some insight into what some top handicappers consider the weekends best plays. Just because a lot of people pick one team doesn’t mean it is necessarily the best play, sometimes a high number of contestants take the other side as well. Sifting through the numbers has become a weekly endeavor for me. I write down all the picks, the number of contestants on each side and see if more contestants were right or wrong. In the early days if you found the game with the highest differential, it was almost certainly an ATS winner. However, as the contest has become more popular, some of the teams that are picked overwhelmingly are just public plays that you should stay away from. At times it can be hard to tell the difference. But if you do see a game that everyone likes one side of and a lot of contestants in the contest are taking the other side, take that into consideration. Here are some links with more information about the contests, how to enter, and where you can find the results, standings, and picks each week
http://footballcontest.com/supercontest/#.W0VSfNJKjIU
https://www.westgateresorts.com/hotels/nevada/las-vegas/westgate-las-vegas-resort-casino/casino/supercontest/
https://www.thespread.com/nfl-super-contest-picks-from-the-las-vegas-hilton
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