Now Reading: The Best (and Worst) Numbers to Have in Super Bowl Squares
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The Best (and Worst) Numbers to Have in Super Bowl Squares
The Best (and Worst) Numbers to Have in Super Bowl Squares
Super Bowl Sunday is the perfect mix of football, commercials, snacks… and quietly taking your friends’ money.
Super Bowl Squares is one of the easiest ways for even non-football fans to have skin in the game, but whether you win or lose (usually) comes down to one thing: the numbers you get stuck with.
How Super Bowl Squares Work (Quick Version)
Buy squares on a 10×10 grid. Once the board fills up, the numbers 0–9 are randomly assigned to each team across the top and side.
At the end of each quarter, the last digit of each team’s score determines the winner.
Example: If it’s 14–6, the 4/6 square wins.
It’s simple, it’s dumb luck… and some squares are way better than others.
Tip for rookies: A legit squares pool doesn’t assign numbers until after the grid is full. If your friend posts a board with the numbers already lined up and in order? Smile politely, then buy as many of these squares as you can afford…
Which Numbers Are Good in General?
Football scoring isn’t random. Touchdowns (7), field goals (3), and missed extra points create patterns – and over decades of NFL games, some last digits show up way more often than others.
The Best: 0, 3, 4, and 7
They’re common endpoints for realistic scores like 14–3, 27–10, or 24–17.
The Worst: 2, 5, 8, and 9
They usually require weird stuff – safeties, missed kicks, or very specific combinations – which means fewer chances to win.
The Five Best Squares You Can Get
0/0, 7/0, 0/7, 0/3, 3/0
If you land one of those, feel free to start trash-talking early. Why? Because 0 and 7 are everywhere in football scoring. A deep dive by The Washington Post found that 0/0 has historically been the single best square overall.
The five worst squares are 2/2, 5/5, 2/5, 5/2, and 8/8. Those digits usually require safeties, missed extra points, or other rare scoring quirks to hit – and needing that chaos from both teams makes these combinations long shots in any pool.
So, 0/0 is the best then? Well, there’s a catch…
Final Score vs. Quarter Payouts
If your pool pays out every quarter, 0/0 is king.
But if the really big money is on the final score (which is common), 7/0 or 0/7 might actually be the best combos to get. Games can’t end in a tie like 20–20, so 0/0 needs something like 20–10 or 30–20 to hit late.
FanDuel clocked the “final score” chances of 0/7 or 7/0 at 7%. Then it’s 0/3 or 3/0 and 4/7 or 7/4 at just under 6%.
A final score of 0/0 ranks 15th with just a 2% chance of hitting.
What About 1 and 6?
They’re… not great.
- 1 mostly relies on 21 points (three touchdowns) and doesn’t show up often early.
- 6 is possible early with two quick field goals, but then it’s clunky combinations with specific scoring paths.
Not the worst, but not what you’re hoping for either.
