How Super Bowl Squares Work (and the Best Numbers to Hope For)

Squares (a box pool) is the one football pool anyone can play, because it requires zero football knowledge: no picks, no spreads, no strategy. You buy squares on a grid, numbers get assigned randomly, and the score decides who wins. That's why it owns the Super Bowl party — but it works for any big game.

The rules

• The pool is a 10×10 grid: 100 squares. One team gets the columns, the other gets the rows.
• Members claim squares before the game — usually at a fixed price per square, as many as they like.
• Once the grid is full (or at kickoff), the digits 0–9 are randomly assigned to the columns and, separately, to the rows. Randomizing after squares are claimed is what keeps it fair.
• At the end of each quarter, take the last digit of each team's score. The square at that intersection wins the quarter's payout.
• The final score usually pays the most. A common split is 20% per quarter with 40% on the final.

Why 0 and 7 are gold

Football scores accumulate in 3s and 7s, which makes score digits wildly uneven. Zero dominates early quarters (scoreless and 10-point states are common), and 7, 3, and 4 follow. Digits like 2, 5, 8, and 9 are longshots — a square holding 2-5 is nearly dead money, while 0-0 is historically the best square on the board in the first quarter.

None of this is actionable, and that's the point: numbers are assigned randomly after squares are bought, so nobody can buy the good digits. Your only lever is volume — ten squares is exactly ten times the chances of one.

Running squares without paper

The paper grid at a party works until it doesn't: someone can't attend but wants in, handwriting disputes, the photo of the grid that nobody can zoom, and the host doing digit math during the two-minute warning.

A digital box pool fixes each piece: members claim squares from their phones, the number randomization happens automatically at kickoff (provably not by the host's cousin), and quarter winners highlight themselves as scores come in. The grid stays visible to everyone all game.

Commissioner decisions

• Price per square, and any cap per person so one buyer can't take half the board.
• Payout split across quarters and final — quarter-heavy keeps more people sweating longer.
• What happens to unclaimed squares: decide up front whether a hit on an empty square rolls its share to the next quarter or back into the pot.
• Overtime: does the final payout use the end-of-regulation score or the true final? Decide before kickoff.