This season in Panem is all about archery, white roses and child slaughter.

Oh and blue hair oh, it's so cute.

Hello internet, welcome to film theory.

Where we salute the capital for enacting the law that frankly all of us want to see past,

Halloween every day. Unfortunately, today we're not talking about the Capitol's choice in coiffury.

Or even any of their super high-tech equipment, battle tactics, political strategy.

(Geesh) There's a lot of topics that we could take on here.

No today we're talking about their most memorable catchphrase.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

It's a throwaway line that every on-screen character from the capitol tosses out before the tributes are chosen.

During their press tour, even as they're walking into the games.

Hunger Games fans use it at the movies, while reading the books, in line for the iPhone 6.

It's everywhere. The characters in the capital use it like a way of saying good luck to the tributes.

But in reality, odds have nothing to do with luck, they have to do with math

and it turns out the biggest secret of the Hunger Games is that

this phrase isn't telling you to break a leg, it's telling you how to survive the games.

Believe it or not you can control whether the odds are ever in your favor.

You can turn the games into anything but a matter of luck.

Whether you're the sole survivor or dead on the first day

depends precisely on whether you've made those odds in your favor.

And after today's episode you'll know how to win the Hunger Games, not by skill, or strength, or...

extremely, advanced finger painting skills,

but through the power of probability.

Choose wisely and you have the best possible chances of surviving,

it's like moneyball except instead of money you're betting your life.

And the lives of 23 other innocent children. As you can tell this is gonna be a really feel good episode.

Okay. So say you want to survive the Hunger Games,

step one that ensures that you live one hundred percent of the time.

Katniss: "I volunteer as tribute."

[Angry Buzz sound]

Don't volunteer when your name isn't drawn. Odds are you survive every time.

But, okay, say you want to be a hero, and you've just volunteered as tribute.

Stupid decision, but since you're here you need to move quickly.

When you start the games there are 24 total tributes,

two from each district. As such you're starting odds for winning the hunger games are one in 24.

Which aren't gonna get you very far.

And I can already see you going into the comments and protest because it's definitely arguable

that even from the very beginning not all tributes are created equally.

Rue doesn't have the same probability of winning as say Katniss, or a career, or Foxface.

To that I say... wrong.

In articles already published about the Hunger Games

it's been shown statistically that your odds of winning

are actually equal no matter what your race, age, gender, or district.

Based on the information available on past winners

it turns out that those factors actually don't impact your likelihood of survival.

Winners come from both genders, race and color certainly don't seem to be a big factor in Panem,

and the age ranges of the winning tributes are definitely variable.

Making your starting characteristics in the Hunger Games a statistical wash.

Say what you will about the fascism and game-ified child slaughter. The hunger games aren't prejudice.

Even the careers, those kids train from an early age to be sociopathic killers

with the express purpose of surviving the games,

who you would think have a higher probability of winning...

...actually don't.

The math doesn't lie.

So hey, that's great news for you if you're coming from under the poorer districts,

and if you're a career, well, sorry you just wasted your life.

Alright, so knowing that, you've arrived in the capital fresh off the train as a new tribute.

What are you gonna do?

Cry and contemplate the sweet release of death?

Ha, heck no! Mistake number one that tributes make is wasting this precious time.

If you want to stack the odds ever in your favor

you do it before you're locked in the tube and the game's countdown begins.

This isn't make out with Peeta hour or write sappy letter home time.

You have one week, seven days in the capital to pregame and pregame hard.

No! Not that kind of pregaming!

The pre- Hunger Games pregaming involves two things;

training and eating.

To give yourself the best statistical advantage going into the arena you start by carbo loading.

No, really it sounds stupid, but this isn't the time to work on your thigh gap for your capital approved yoga tights.

This is the time to put on the old Lbs.

Just think of it like Thanksgiving

except it's: I'll be thanking myself next week, when all my friends are dead.

But seriously think about it.

You don't know what type of arena you're entering

but one thing you do know from past games is there might not be any food for weeks.

And you as an active adolescent fighting for your life

are gonna be burning 2000 to 2400 calories a day depending on your gender.

Under the stress of fighting off Jabber-Jays and bad CGI dogs

we can assume that you're gonna be burning far more than that.

Meaning that you want to have some body mass to spare,

as such you significantly increase your odds of survival by putting on five pounds of fat leading up to the games.

This gives you an extra 17,500 extra calories to survive on

or eight and a half days before your body starts shutting down from starvation.

Which honestly may be enough to get you most of the way there.

The Hunger Games isn't always the same length

but we know the 74th game in movie one was 18 days long.

Meaning that technically you could survive almost half that time on practically nothing.

In that same Hunger Games 11 out of the 24 tributes died while trying to grab supplies and food.

So from a probability standpoint being able to survive independently

significantly ups your chances in the long run.

So great your feasting up a storm, our next step is to make sure that you're using your training time well.

You've got three days here in the gym and let's face it,

you're not gonna be building any new weapons skills from scratch,

so don't bother trying to become a master nunchucker in under a week.

Instead, build the skills that result in the highest survival rates.

Based on the 27 known winners from the movies and books

11 of them won primarily because of their passive survival skills.

Most of them, again, by not starving to death.

This makes your first stop on the circuit edible plants and insects as well as fire starting.

Really sexy skills I know.

Well, we'll see who has the last laugh when you're not dying on poison berries.

Also among the 11 survivalist victors several won by hiding for most or all of their game.

So camouflage, ropes courses, and tree climbing are also top priorities.

Giving you both offensive and defensive tactical advantages,

and speaking of offense, let's talk weaponry.

Let's assume you're a quick study

and you got all those other skills under your belt.

The other major statistical advantage comes from studying blades.

Of the 27 known victors an astounding eight of them won thanks to their use of blades.

That's almost thirty percent of the total.

Whether it was knives or even swords.

Realistically, you're not going to become a swordsman in a week

so learning to use a regular knife is going to be your best bet.

On top of being the victors' choice of weapon

it also statistically is the most likely weapon to appear in the game.

There are 25 known weapons that have appeared in the Cornucopia across the two Hunger Games we see on screen.

If you specialize in any other weapon like come on,

slingshot, scythe, you have a 1 in 25 chance of running across that weapon.

But the Cornucopia has housed three different types of knife blades.

Single sided knives, daggers, and throwing knives.

Choose to specialize in knives and you've just tripled your chances

that any weapon you come across will be a weapon that you can use.

Sure, you may find a dagger instead of a throwing knife,

but any blade that you have will serve roughly the same purpose.

Namely killing other children.

Uh...yay?

but since they're also so versatile other tributes will be carrying knives as tools.

Meaning, that if you come across a dead body the odds are much higher that they're gonna be carrying a knife

than any other sort of weapon.

I mean honestly. What are you gonna do with a trident?

Roast three marshmallows at the same time?

Knives are also one of the best offensive weapons to use to avoid getting killed by someone else.

Five of the 27 winners are known as brutality based victors.

Meaning that they fought using brute strength and their raw athleticism.

These are usually your careers or just your standard issue psychopaths.

Statistically you want to do everything possible to avoid getting in close to these tributes

because they do all they're killing melee style.

On the other hand you still need a method for taking them down if you need to.

Because the odds are not in your favor for killing them up close, remember me mentioning throwing knives?

You can double your knife use to train for throwing knives.

Giving you a weapon that can be used at any distance.

Whether you're throwing from 20 feet away, or just you know...

[Psycho Music] generally stabbing!

The last word of warning here is that you need to make sure that you're not reducing your odds.

Avoid wrestling, weight lifting, and heavy weapon training like axes.

These are gonna build your bulky muscles which won't give you a statistical advantage,

but will increase your metabolism.

So you end up burning more calories when you reach the arena, reducing your time to starvation.

And that's it. Your time has arrived. You're well trained, ready to get into the Arena, right?

You are gonna grab the last of those Capitol cream puffs,

run into the arena, grab your knives, stab everyone, and then spend your days on Victor's Row

in abject guilt and isolation.

Truly a winner is you!

Well if you're gonna live to see that day happen you'll need to survive the first 10 minutes of the games,

which we all know are the deadliest.

So you've just come up the pipe, the clock is ticking down,

and you're faced with one of the game's most important decisions.

Do you run into the cornucopia or not?

If you're unprepared you have 10 seconds to make that decision,

but lucky for you, you've watched this video and know the right answer.

Heck no!

Statistically it makes zero sense.

In the 74th Games 11 out of the 24 tributes died at the Cornucopia.

In the next year's Quarter Quell 8 out of 24 died.

That's an average forty percent death rate!

Which immediately says that if you don't get involved in the Cornucopia

your probability of winning instantly doubles,

going from 1 in 24 odds to almost 1 in 10.

That's huge. Sure there may be a major weapon stash there

but the hand hand athletes and the careers have a huge statistical margin here.

Of the Cornucopia deaths across two movies

almost eighty five percent of the kills were committed in close quarters by careers.

They're not starved.

They're working at close range, and they're hyped on adrenaline.

So it's literally the worst time to engage those guys.

Yes, this significantly decreases your likelihood of picking up a weapon right off the bat,

but for the first several days of the arena lack of weapons doesn't matter.

Your priorities in the game are the same as your training priorities.

Survival first. In an ideal scenario you want to pick off a supply bag, box, satchel,

whatever, from a totally unoccupied corner of the cornucopia.

It's definitely possible because we've seen it done twice in the first movie.

You're not going to interact with another tribute while doing this and seriously if it looks like it's a contest

it's statistically better to abort than fight it out. So play it safe, stay alive, and run away.

And with that, congratulations!

You've successfully lived past the deadliest 10 minutes of the games.

You're now a well-nourished survivalist ready to outlast the other frightened children,

but seriously what do you do now? Where do you go?

Do you stalk other tributes?

Or do you run for cover? Should you build an alliance or go it solo?

Are Tracker-Jackers edible?

And most importantly of all, what is the one almost foolproof strategy

that will guarantee you survive far longer than anything else you could possibly do in the games?

Longer than anything we've discussed today.

Well Katniss put an arrow through that subscribe button