Super Bowl squares 2022: How to play, rules you need to know

Super Bowl 56 is here and is poised to be a game for the history books. The Cincinnati Bengals advanced to their first Super Bowl since the 1988 season after taking down the Kansas City Chiefs 27-24 in an overtime thriller in the AFC championship game.

The Los Angeles Rams advance to their second Super Bowl in four years after defeating the San Francisco 49ers 20-17 at the NFC championship game.

With football's biggest day of the year comes parties, fandom, betting, and – you guessed it – Super Bowl squares.

This year's matchup featuring the Rams and the Bengals is on Feb. 13 starting at 6:30 p.m. ET, giving you a little over one week to freshen up on how to play this fun and easy party game!

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SUPER BOWL 56: Everything you need to know

Here's everything you need to know to play Super Bowl squares and which squares are most likely to win on Sunday.

How do Super Bowl squares work?

The game starts with a 10-by-10 grid or 100 individual boxes — each of which is assigned a universal price tag, like $1 per square. Before the Super Bowl kicks off, participants purchase individual boxes — generally as many as they wish — until all 100 of them are accounted for. The numbers 0-9 are then assigned to the columns and rows (usually at random), giving two numbers to each individual cell.

From here, the game can be played in a few different ways. Typically, one axis represents the last digit of the NFC team's score and the other represents the last digit of the AFC team's score. Whoever has the correct digits of the final score wins the pot; If the Rams win 28-21, for example, the winning square would be where the No. 8 on the NFC axis meets the No. 1 on the AFC axis.

What other Super Bowl square options are there?

One of the most popular variations on Super Bowl squares is to pay out 25% of the pot at the end of every quarter, rather than all of it at the end of the game. (Or, in some cases, 20% at the end of the first and third quarters, and 30% at the end of each half). This makes it more likely that there will be multiple winners, albeit with smaller shares of the pot.

What are the best squares to have?

The values on each axis are usually assigned at random, so you might not have a choice here. But if you do, your best bet will generally be some combination of zeroes and/or sevens. In a 2013 blog post, the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective wrote that the single best square to have is seven on the favorite's axis (the Rams are the favorites this year) and zero on the underdog's, with the 0-0 square a close second. The Washington Post lists 0-0 as the best square to have, with the two combinations of seven and zero (7-0 or 0-7) right behind it. Three, four, and one also aren't bad numbers to have from an odds standpoint.

What are the worst squares to have?

Any combination of twos or fives. According to the aforementioned Harvard Sports Analysis Collective post from 2013, the 2-2 square and 2-5 square (two on the favorite's axis, five on the underdog's) are among the worst, because it usually takes some combination of safeties, missed extra points or other general strangeness to get there.

Contributing: Evan Hilbert

Contact Analis Bailey at [email protected] or on Twitter @analisbailey.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Super Bowl squares 2022: Explanation, rules, how to play

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