Spot the ball tips

#1: It’s all about the eyes

It might be one of the most obvious spot the ball tips one can give, but the importance of it has to be still stated even if it’d be a bit obvious for some. Just make sure you are taking into consideration all players and where they are looking at, and consider which players are the most important ones (not all players in every picture would be always looking at the ball, so don’t be fooled by an eyeline that won’t be considered at all for judging).

#2: Start using a ruler!

Second most important of spot the ball tips is definitely using a ruler to define the players’ eyelines. You can seriously up your game with a real ruler and not using the drawing tools the games provide. And this goes for all online spot the ball competitions! As you’re supposed to match your skill with the judges’ skill, and as they use rulers themselves to judge… You should be using one too! For example a 12″ Goniometer (Amazon Link) works really well for defining two player’s eyelines at once.  But any clear ruler that has a line in the middle or is thin itself like a stick goes, as long as you can easily define where the players are looking.

#3: Watch the judging videos

As mentioned in the previous tip and on the page on how to win spot the ball, matching your skill with the judges’ is how you win the competition. So you should by least watch a couple of the latest judging videos in order to fully understand the judging process and that may give you more insight on what to look for in the pictures when you are playing yourself.

#4: Zoom in!

Most websites running spot the ball games allow some sort of zooming into the pictures so you can see the picture better and you should take full use of this. You can just press Ctrl down on your keyboard and scroll with your mouse for a quick zoom – or select it from the menus. This is crucial because on most screens the pictures and especially the players’ eyes look a bit different when zoomed in and not. And not seeing the picture correctly obviously would affect your chances of winning greatly for the worse! (PS. You can try zooming and see how much it helps in our free Spot the Ball Quiz)

#5: Play every time!

As with most competitions, you need to be ‘in it to win it’. Spot the ball competitions are no exception, but they also have a different type of a trade-off that justifies playing every time: If the picture used in the competition is easy for you, you can more accurately guess where the middle of the ball will be. But, this will probably be the case for other players too! And if the picture is a difficult one, it might not be as easy for you to guess where the ball will be. But, as this is again probably the case for lots of other people – there maybe isn’t as many players getting close to the final coordinate! So you actually have better chances of winning, assuming you can skillfully get close enough the final ball coordinate!

So no matter if the picture is easy or not, you should always play. Just hone your skills to increase your chances of winning and playing every time pays off eventually!

#6: Don’t just play one spot!

If two or more players happen to correctly guess the winning coordinates, or are all as close to the winning coordinate, this is called a tiebreaker situation. In a tiebreaker the winner is defined by their second closest coordinate. This means you always should play a minimum of 2-3 spots per game to not only increase your chances of winning, but also to try and secure your win as well.

#7: You can and should play more than once (sometimes)!

Spot the ball is all about subjectivity and how the picture is interpreted, but sometimes how you see the eyelines or interpret the pictures can change from day to day. And you should be vary of this and make use of it accordingly. You could play for example once at the beginning of the week and use a first gut-feeling without studying the picture too much. And then play a second time in the week by studying the picture a lot more, and by coming back to the picture for a second time with a fresh pair of eyes you can get two very different results and increase your chances of getting it right! Of course if you are dead-certain you are in the right area there is no use of trying to play elsewhere, but if this is the case you can still play in the same area to increase your chances of winning if you want to give it a go multiple times.

#8: Play for  the prizes you want to go for only!

Buy only tickets for the cars or prizes you want to go for and most prefer. Because it’s the winning ticket that decides what prize you get. As an example, if you were to play for £10,000 in BOTB’s lifestyle competition and the tickets cost 60p each, but then you decide to give a few extra goes on the £5,000 and ‘save’ 30p per ticket and then you would happen to win the £5,000…. You would be possibly a bit annoyed with yourself. Or even worse if you were to win the Dream Car Competition and have spent £100’s on Bentley Continental tickets and decide to pop a single Volkswagen Up! ticket and win with that ticket… You would be so annoyed with yourself! (No offence to Volkswagen Up!)