PHOTO: Bildbyrån
Anrika Stryktipset turns 90 this year.
It has become a truism that 13 right brings respect.
But why are there exactly 13 matches on the coupon? Here comes the answer!
Saturdays at 4 p.m. have become sacred in Swedish homes for many, many years. Then everyone sits down for the favorite Stryktipset and this year the Swedish classic turns 90 years old.
The ironing tip 90 years
It was as early as 1934 that the Swedes could start betting and since then no one in our long country has stopped, on the contrary it is now more popular than before. But what many people don’t know is that the coupon started with “only” 12 games.
In many, everyone chased the dream of getting a “twelve”, which meant everyone was entitled to the coupon. But then something historic happened in July 1969, when the decision was made to expand the ticket to 13 matches.
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Therefore 13 games
The reason was that they wanted to increase the degree of difficulty to get everyone right and to add another winning group for those with nine, ten, eleven, twelve or thirteen right. Thus, the dividend for each profit group would also be larger.
“When Stryktipset had twelve matches, it was said that you had received a ‘twelve’ if you got everyone right. After the expansion to 13 games, they tried to find a term for this as well. It became ‘tretta’, which for obvious reasons never became very popular,” the authors write Daniel Björklund and David Stark in the newly released book “1X2 – The ironing tip and the journey towards 13 rights” (Pug Publishers).
Later that year, in 1969, the iconic “Tipsextra” began to be broadcast for the first time and further helped to solidify the concept of “13 right” as an institution among all Swedes.
Difference in Norway
But there have been moments of doubt over the years over how many matches should actually be on the voucher. Many have wanted to expand with more matches.
“In 1984 votes were raised for 14 matches at Stryket. ‘Tipstjänst is extremely reluctant to start plotting with this traditional game, the very backbone of the company’s operations’, wrote Lasse Olson (columnist at Expressen), who also chased out a comment from Tipstjänst’s then CEO Richard Frigren: ‘Certainly we have toyed with the idea of increasing to 14 matches on Stryktipset. Well, no, a lot needs to be done before we take that step,'” write Björklund and Stark in the book about Stryktipset.
“An Expressen reader went even further on September 4 of the same year. Bertil Molander from Enskede got a full-page space for his very mathematical submission, which concluded that Stryktipset should introduce 15 matches!”
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There are also others who did not catch the trend of going to 13 games. Norway’s own equivalent of Stryktipset still only contains 12 matches, as the Norwegians thought 13 matches was too much.
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