Rules & Guidelines

What this game is

The World Cup has reached the knockout stage — the Round of 32. From here every match has a winner and a loser, and the loser goes home. One team keeps winning until they are champions of the world.

Your job is simple: guess who wins.You fill in your guesses before the matches start, and earn points every time you guess right. The person with the most points at the end wins the whole pot. You don't need to be an expert — you just need to guess better than the rest of the office.

All the entry money goes into one pot. Whoever finishes top of the leaderboard takes it. Once the first match starts the game is locked — no late entries, no changes. This protects everyone, because real money is involved.

How predicting works

The knockout stage has five rounds. Teams keep getting knocked out until one is left:

32 → 16 winners → 8 → 4 → 2 → 1 champion

You fill in your guesses round by round, working forward: the 16 Round-of-32 winners, then 8, then 4, then 2, then the 1 champion — and finally the exact score of the Final (e.g. 2–1).

Think of it like a ladder: each round you pick fewer teams, because more have been knocked out. A team you pick to win the Final must be a team you picked through every earlier round — that's the only way it could still be playing. (The bracket builder enforces this for you.)

How you earn points

Every correct guess earns points. Later rounds are worth more, because guessing them right is much harder.

• Round of 32 (each correct team)1
• Round of 162
• Quarter-finals4
• Semi-finals8
• Final (the champion)16
• Exact final score, 90' (unordered)+4 bonus

A perfect sheet is 80 points from the rounds, plus the 4-point bonus — a maximum of 84. A perfect sheet has basically never happened; you only need more points than everyone else.

The bonus — 4 points for the final score

On top of everything, there are 4 bonus points for predicting the score of the Final. Anyone can win them, even if the rest of your sheet went badly. Two things to know:

• It doesn't matter which team scores which goals — predict “2–1” and you win if the Final ends 2–1 either way round.
• The score is counted at the end of 90 minutes only — extra time and penalties do not count for the bonus.

The three golden rules

1. 1

   Every pick is judged on its own.

   A wrong guess only loses the points for that one guess. It never damages your other guesses — getting one match wrong does not knock down the picks around it.

2. 2

   Your champion counts if they lift the trophy, no matter who they beat.

   You earn the 16 champion points if your picked team wins the Final — whoever the opponent turned out to be. The only question is: did your team win the trophy?

3. 3

   Winning and the score bonus are measured differently.

   Whether a team wins and goes through is decided by the real result, including extra time and penalties. But the 4-point score bonus only ever looks at the score at 90 minutes.

Winning & ties

Add up everyone's points; the highest total wins the whole pot. A live leaderboard does all the adding, so you can always see who is ahead.

If two people tie on points, we break it using the predicted final score: whoever's predicted total goals is closest to the real total at 90 minutes wins. (Predict “2–1” and that's 3 total goals.) If they're still exactly equal, only then do they split the pot.

Examples

• A wrong guess does not spread. You picked Mexico to beat Argentina, then Brazil to beat Mexico. Argentina won instead, so Brazil played Argentina — and still won. Your Mexico pick loses its points; your Brazil picks stay fully correct.
• Champion counts no matter the opponent. You picked Brazil as champions and guessed they'd beat France in the Final. Brazil won but beat Spain instead — you still get all 16 champion points.
• Bonus is unordered. You predicted 2–1; the Final finished 1–2. You still win the 4 bonus points — 2–1 and 1–2 are the same scoreline.
• Bonus uses 90 minutes only. The Final is 1–1 at 90', then a team wins in extra time. Predict 1–1 and you win the bonus; the extra-time goals don't count.
• Penalties aren't goals. A 0–0 Final decided on penalties: the shootout winner is champion (16 pts to whoever picked them), but only people who predicted 0–0 win the score bonus.
• Breaking a tie. Anil and Bikash both finish on 47. The real Final had 3 total goals at 90'. Anil predicted 2–1 (3 goals); Bikash predicted 1–0 (1 goal). Anil is closer, so Anil takes the pot.