In a previous post I argued that, since it is not difficult to be a 'rational, informed football tipster', one's success in a football tipping competition (at least if you are of the rational, informed football tipping variety) is mostly due to luck.
However, when I was telling someone else this theory, they added a wrinkle that I found interesting. This person said that your chances of winning may be improved by not being too rational or informed. Their argument was (or at least how I have subsequently interpreted it) that a person who thinks about it too much would tend to pick closer to the consensus, whereas actually winning the competition involves a degree of risk-taking, either through a small lack of knowledge or some other reason.
I suppose that a degree of risk-taking is needed to actually win was implicit in my argument (otherwise how do you differentiate yourself from everybody else), but I had not thought about it in exactly this way. Anyway, if it seems that the winner of your tipping competition is often a person with an OK, but slightly tenuous, knowledge of football, this may well be the reason.
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