How to Start an Office Pool (That Isn't About Sports)
Every office has a bracket guy.
You know the one. March rolls around and suddenly Dave from IT is a tournament director, printing brackets, collecting $5 buy-ins, and sending passive-aggressive emails about deadline compliance. For three weeks, the office has a shared obsession. Then April hits, Dave goes back to resetting passwords, and the fun evaporates.
Here's the thing: the bracket isn't what makes office pools fun. It's the shared prediction. The trash talk. The "I told you so." The little leaderboard that turns coworkers into competitors.
You don't need sports for that. You don't even need Dave.
Here are 8 office pool ideas that work year-round — no ESPN required.
1. The Departure Pool (a.k.a. Office Dead Pool)
What it is: Predict which coworkers are going to leave the company — and when. Nominate someone you think is updating their resume, pick a date, and earn points based on how close you are when they actually go.
Why it works: Everyone's already playing this game in their heads. Every watercooler conversation about "did you see Karen's LinkedIn update?" is an unscored prediction. This just adds a scoreboard.
How to set it up: Office Dead Pool has been running this exact game since 2002. Sign up, create your company pool, invite coworkers, start predicting. The site handles scoring, leaderboards, and the important question of who earns the title of Gossip King.
Best for: Offices with any amount of turnover (so... all of them).
2. The Baby Pool
What it is: When a coworker is expecting, everyone guesses the birth date, time, weight, and sometimes the name. Closest guess wins.
Why it works: Low stakes, universally fun, and it's one of the few office pools where nobody feels bad about participating. The stakes are joy, not money.
How to set it up: A shared spreadsheet works. Or a whiteboard in the break room if you want to go old school. The key is locking in predictions before the due date — no last-minute changes when someone goes into early labor.
Best for: Offices that actually like each other.
3. The Oscar / Emmy / Grammy Pool
What it is: Predict winners across award show categories. Similar mechanics to a sports bracket, but for people who think "the spread" is a type of cheese platter.
Why it works: Award shows are event-driven, which means concentrated engagement. Everyone has opinions about movies they haven't seen, and those opinions are more fun when points are attached.
How to set it up: Print a ballot with all the categories. Everyone fills one out. Score one point per correct pick. Tiebreaker: whoever correctly predicted the biggest upset.
Best for: Offices with strong opinions and weak attention spans.
4. The "When Will It Happen?" Pool
What it is: Pick a recurring workplace event and predict when it'll happen next. When will the coffee machine break again? When will the CEO use the word "synergy" in an all-hands? When will someone microwave fish in the break room?
Why it works: It's hyper-local humor. These predictions are only funny to people who work at your specific company, which makes them stickier than any generic game.
How to set it up: Keep a running list of predictable annoyances. Let people claim dates. When the event happens, whoever was closest wins bragging rights (or the last good parking spot).
Best for: Offices that bond through shared suffering.
5. The Stock Price Pool
What it is: If your company is publicly traded, predict where the stock price will be on a specific future date. Closest guess wins.
Why it works: Everyone already checks the stock price. This gives them a reason to have an opinion about it. Warning: this one can get heated during earnings season.
How to set it up: Pick a date 30-90 days out. Everyone submits a price prediction. Seal the predictions. Open on the target date. The person who was off by the fewest cents wins.
Best for: Publicly traded companies where people care about the stock (or pretend to).
6. The New Hire Bingo
What it is: Create bingo cards with common new-hire behaviors: "Asks where the good lunch spots are," "Mentions their previous company unprompted," "Gets lost finding the bathroom," "Sends an all-company email by accident." First person to get a full row wins.
Why it works: It's collaborative observation humor. You're not mocking the new person — you're celebrating the universal experience of being new. (Okay, you're mocking them a little.)
How to set it up: Make a 5x5 bingo card template. Randomize the squares. Distribute before the new hire's first day. Honor system on marking squares — or designate a bingo judge.
Best for: Offices with regular new hires and a healthy sense of humor about onboarding.
7. The "Dead Project" Pool
What it is: Every company has projects that are clearly doomed. The initiative nobody believes in. The product feature that keeps getting "reprioritized." Predict which project will get officially killed first — and when.
Why it works: It's cathartic. Everyone knows which projects are on life support, but nobody says it in the sprint retro. The pool lets people say it with plausible deniability.
How to set it up: Nominate the projects everyone suspects are doomed. Predict death dates. When leadership finally sends the "we've decided to sunset this initiative" email, score the predictions.
Best for: Companies with more projects than resources (so... all of them).
8. The Meeting Length Pool
What it is: Before a meeting starts, everyone secretly predicts how long it'll actually run. Not how long it's scheduled for — how long it'll actually take. The person closest to the real end time wins.
Why it works: It makes bad meetings bearable. Instead of suffering through minute 47 of a meeting that was supposed to be 30, you're silently rooting for your prediction. It transforms "this is a waste of time" into "I'm about to win."
How to set it up: Group chat or Slack thread before the meeting. Everyone posts their prediction. Timestamp the actual end. Closest wins.
Best for: Every office that has ever scheduled a "quick 30-minute sync" that lasted an hour.
The One That Runs Itself
Most office pools need someone to organize them. Someone to collect predictions, track results, settle disputes, and send the "FINAL REMINDER: Submit your picks by Friday" email. That's fine for a one-time event, but it's why most pools die after a week.
Office Dead Pool is the one that doesn't need Dave from IT. The game tracks predictions, manages voting, calculates scores, and maintains the leaderboard automatically. It's been doing it since 2002 — originally as a paper list passed around during the dot-com bust, now as a proper web app with the same dark humor and competitive edge.
You need three people from the same company to make it interesting. You need zero sports knowledge.
Office Dead Pool is a free workplace prediction game. Nominate coworkers, predict departure dates, earn points. The best predictor becomes The Gossip King. What is an Office Dead Pool? | See the rules
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