CES Picks Presents: The Perfect Week & the $10,000 Winner
Tyler Vandiver says he never wins anything. As the Operations Manager at CES Denton, when Tyler started playing CES Picks at the beginning of the 2019 season, he just wanted to compete against coworkers and maybe win a weekly NFL Shop gift card.
But Tyler got lucky.
“It doesn’t matter if I sign up to win a dollar lollipop,” he said. “I am not going to win it. I never win anything.”
However, a few weeks into the season, Tyler did better than just win a few games. One week, he went perfect.
Now, the perfect week in CES Picks is a big deal. It sounds easy. You just have to pick every winning team for that one week. But out of thousands of players throughout the year, you can usually count on one hand the number of people who had a perfect week.
And after all that, you still have to win the drawing to claim the cash prize.
Fortunately for Tyler, every team he picked in a single week won their game, and at the end of the 2019 NFL season, he was entered into the $10,000 drawing. He ended up winning that one, too, and got to take $10,000 to the bank. Literally.
“My branch and I just played for fun,” Tyler said. “We weren’t expecting to make money by any means. Of course, there was the chance to win weekly gift cards, but I never thought I’d win $10,000.”
So, what did it take Tyler to win one of the cash prizes? Well, for one thing, he certainly didn’t stay up late analyzing teams and players. Tyler didn’t look too much into the Xs and the Os. He didn’t even get sucked into any of the hot takes by sports analysts everywhere. Tyler just trusted his gut.
“It’s as simple as clicking a few buttons and hitting submit. I don’t even keep up with professional football all that much. I haven’t played fantasy football in nearly a decade. But I just couldn’t let something like this go by without trying.”
This bold strategy paid off. But it did take him a little while to come to terms with winning the football lottery.
The Winning Call
Zach Litchen, the CES McKinney Branch Manager, was there when Tyler got the call from CES Marketing that he won $10,000.
“He dropped his phone and didn’t talk for 30 or 40 minutes! I kept asking what was wrong,” Zach said. “Eventually, he just sat down and said that he won $10,000. Man, I was even more excited than he was! He didn’t talk for the rest of the day.”
Tyler remembers most of all that he didn’t know how he’d explain this to his wife. They just welcomed their daughter into the world a month before he won, and the money was going to go a long way to help with bills, including his daughter’s delivery.
“When I finally told my wife, she was absolutely shocked. The money was a huge blessing for us,” Tyler said. “We covered our daughter’s delivery, paid off some student loans, some bills, and ended up saving the rest. But when I think about it now, daycare in North Texas is no joke when it comes to price, so this will help with that, too!”
So far, Zach still hasn’t let Tyler live it down.
“We had a bet going on at the end that whoever won out of our group got a free lunch, and the other guys had to pay for it,” Zach said. “It was fun because we were all losing pretty badly. But, a few weeks in, Tyler just started picking the complete opposite teams from me, and he lucked out! That free lunch might actually be on him this time!”
Free lunch or not, Tyler is looking forward to another season of CES Picks. But for now, he’s just focused on his family.
“Hands down, the best thing that has happened to me this year was my daughter being born, but winning the $10,000 is an easy second,” he said. “I do know one thing, though. I’m not missing a game this year.”