How to play football squares

What football squares is

A squares pool is a board of 100 boxes — 10 rows by 10 columns. Every box belongs to one player, who bought it before the game. Each row is worth a digit from 0 to 9, and so is each column. One team's score is read off the rows, the other's off the columns.

When a score is checked, you look at the last digit of each team's points. Those two digits meet at exactly one box, and whoever owns that box wins that portion of the pot. Nothing else matters — not the spread, not who wins the game, not whether you know a single player's name. That's why squares is the pool the whole office, family, or group chat can actually join.

It's most associated with the Super Bowl, but the format works for any sport with a running score: college football, NBA, and March Madness pools all run the same way.

Setting up the board

Draw a 10×10 board. Write one team's name down the left edge and the other's across the top. Leave the number strips blank — this part matters, and we'll come back to it.

Set one price per square and keep it the same for everyone; a $5 square across a full board makes a $500 pot. Then let players claim squares by writing their name in any empty box. Most pools let a person take as many as they like, though capping it (say five per player) keeps one person from owning the board.

A 5×5 board with 25 squares is the standard smaller version for a group that can't fill 100 boxes. It works identically, except each row and column covers two digits instead of one.

Drawing the numbers

Never assign the numbers before the squares are sold. This is the one rule that keeps a squares pool honest. If the digits are visible while people are still picking, anyone who knows that 0, 3, and 7 are the best digits in football will take those boxes and everyone else is playing a worse game without knowing it.

So: sell every square first, close entries, and only then draw. Shuffle the digits 0–9 and write them across the top in that order, then shuffle again — a separate, independent shuffle — and write them down the side. Two draws, not one. Once they're down, they're final for the game.

How a square wins

At the end of each quarter, take each team's score and keep only the last digit. Suppose the away team leads 17–14: the away digit is 7 and the home digit is 4. Find the 7 on the away axis, find the 4 on the home axis, and the box where that row and column cross is the winner.

Scores over 10 need no extra thought — 24 is a 4, 31 is a 1, and 0–0 is a perfectly normal winning combination. Most pools pay out four times: end of the first quarter, halftime, end of the third, and the final score. Four separate winners, four separate boxes, one board.

Which numbers are actually best

Football scoring isn't uniform, so the digits aren't equally valuable. Touchdowns with extra points move a score by 7 and field goals by 3, which pushes final scores toward a handful of digits. Historically, 0 and 7 are the strongest, with 3 and 4 close behind; 2 and 5 are the weakest, and a 2–2 or 5–5 square almost never hits.

This is exactly why the draw has to come last. Handing out the numbers randomly, after the money is in, is what makes an uneven game fair — everyone takes the same chance on a good or bad square.

Common variations

• Reverse squares. A second pot on the same board with the axes swapped, so the digits 17–14 also pay the 4/7 square. Doubles the number of winners without a second board.
• Touching squares. The four boxes directly above, below, left, and right of the winner take a small share. Softens the all-or-nothing feel of a single box.
• Season-long boards. Players claim their squares once and keep them all season, with the numbers redrawn every week. Same squares, a fresh game each Sunday.
• Every-score-change payouts. Instead of quarters, a small amount pays out on every scoring play. More bookkeeping, but the board stays live all game.

Running it online

On paper, the host does all of this by hand: chasing names, drawing digits, and recomputing the winning box at every quarter while the game is still on. That's the part SquaresHQ takes over. You create a board, share one link, and players claim their own squares from their phones. The number draw is a button — and it locks entries the instant it runs, so the ordering can't be gamed. Enter a score and the winning square is highlighted for you, with a running history for the whole game or the whole season.

Prefer paper? There's a free printable squares grid you can set up and print in a minute. Hosting online is free on the Starter plan, with no limit on how many boards you run. The FAQ covers the rest.