You can save yourself reading 644 words of Pension Plowman pontification and sign up for the Monkey League here.

Or you can read the blog and take your decisions at the end.

Here’s why I’m promoting our Monkey League!

I love our Monkey League and so do about 150 of my colleagues and sundry devotees , many of whom have found pleasure -season long- from this  Simian challenge.

We are poor mis-guided fools who believe every season we know more than the monkeys/bookies/markets.

If you , like some of us, fancy yourself- or if you – like most of us- like a good laugh at ourselves and our mates – read on!

Here’s how it works!

The Monkey League asks you to test your football knowledge by beating the bookies who predict the winners and losers in each of our four major football leagues.

All you need to do is pick 2 “good” teams and 2 “bad” teams from each of the four English divisions. Each team is handicapped by the Billy Hill odds pertaining at the start of the season.

For example;-

So betting on the trophy teams to do well is no more likely to succeed than betting on the likes of Yeovil Town to do badly. In fact betting on Yeovil Town last season delivered average results even though they finished plum last in the Championship.

All the handicap scores are listed on the entry form as are the teccy bits about points deductions as and when teams go bust.( In fact betting on teams going bust is one way of winning!)

You don’t get to change your mind so you don’t need to do anything  throughout the season except watch aghast or thrilled as you teams let you down or do you proud.

Here’s the point!

No matter how good you think you are, you will be humbled. There are 1000 monkeys out there, each with random selections generated by their computer like minds. For you to beat them you need skill or luck.

Each year, those who finish in the top ten are filled with pride and the following year that pride is shown as hubris as they tumble into the lower reaches of the league being trounced by anonymous monkeys!

Nobody has ever been able to do it year in, year out!

So all that skill turns out to be luck!

A comparison we would never make!

I once entered a competition (and won it) – with my definition of “alpha”.

My answer was that

“alpha’s what’s left over when your luck runs out”

and the amount of alpha on display from the 150 monkey thrapping contestants suggests that nobody’s got any alpha at all.

Now of course “alpha” is usually applied to stock-pickers and fund-pickers who are able to choose a fund manager who regularly outperforms its peers- beats at least 750 out of the 1000 monkeys and is therefore regularly top-quartile.

But we would never draw a parallel between expert footy pundits and expert stock and fund pickers.

Stock and fund pickers would never advertise their short-term prowess at beating the markets – would they?

Stock and fund pickers would never keep schtum when last year’s “best idea” turned into this year’s dog – would they?

Stock and fund pickers would never accept that Billy Hill and the boys who make sports markets are able to cream it by taking a little spread on everybody’s bet – would they?

If we accepted  that they would, we would have no choice but to poke our investment consultants in the ribs, and tickle their feet and sing them silly songs.

Which we would never do!

The best thing about the monkey league- is it is not played with money. Betting on winners and losers is a mug’s game- though we will never learn!

So to enjoy a happy season, avoid the bookies, put your bets on the Monkey League and if you are going to invest in any stock- bet on the bookies winning!

 So here’s how to enter

The competition is free to enter, and there is a bottle of champagne for the winner.

The whole thing is organised by our actuaries who find the completion of the macros that drive the algorithms, so satisfying that they delight in the delivery of weekly updates to you!

You will also receive humorous commentary and quizzes , usually with a statistical bent, allowing you to further waste valuable working time!

 To enter – you don’t have to work for First Actuarial- and you don’t have to be a monkey (though it helps).

If you would like to enter full details can be found here.