Your odds of winning Kogan's $1m Super Rugby tipping competition

The Crusader's Scott Barrett in action against the Bulls in Pretoria last season. Photo / Photosport

Kogan Mobile - a relative newcomer to NZ - is offering $1 million if you can correctly pick the result of every game in the first six rounds of the new Super Rugby seasons.

That's 40 games.

And you don't have to guess the score, just tick the team you think will win each match, or if you think it will be a draw.

To a layperson, it sounds do-able, at a stretch.

After all, unlike Lotto, there's an element of skill involved.

But Professor Thomas Lumley from Auckland University Department of Statistics, the odds are longer than you might think.

He gives the example of a colleague, who proved a very capable Super Rugby soothsayer last year.

"David Scott's statistical prediction model gets about two-thirds of results correct. With 40 games that would come to about one chance in 10 million of getting them all," Lumley says.

Founder Ruslan Kogan at Kogan Mobile's NZ launch last September. Photo / Michael Craig

"If you typically average 80 per cent accuracy you'd have 1 chance in 10,000 of getting them all right," he adds.

"But if you're routinely that accurate you could probably be making serious money from betting."

Lastly - not that there seems much danger of a payout, as per Kogan's previous tipping competitions - but Professor Lumley points out the final point in Kogan's fine print. That is: "In the event that there are multiple winners of the Primary prize, the winner who submitted their entry first will be awarded the Primary prize."

And if no one gets all 40 games right, there's no splitting the cash all prize for the best effort. Kogan pays out zero (Kogan does offer every one who enters a pre-pay voucher worth $33.90, and ten entrants selected at random will get a year's pre-pay mobile service).

There is one 100 per cent probably: you'll get special marketing messages. By entering the $1m tipping competition, you agree to get spammed.

Your correspondent digested all of Prof Lumley's advice, then entered anyway.