MACHIAS – Beginners’ luck may have helped a group of eighth-graders at the Rose M. Gaffney School win a statewide stock market contest last fall, but they can credit their stock market savvy for winning the spring version of the state contest.

“Even I was surprised they won again,” said Michael Rottersman, the school’s guidance counselor and adviser of the lunchtime club. “It’s one thing to win once, and they did that last fall. Now they won again.”

The Internet-based game is Stock Market Simulation, a learning program sponsored by the Maine Council on Economic Education. Pupils research and trade stocks over the game’s Web site, www.MaineSMS.com.

Teams around the state for grades 7-9 and 10-12 all started with $100,000 on March 1. After analyzing news and trends in the marketplace and making their buys, pupils finished up 10 weeks later on May 7.

Among 56 entries in the middle school category, the Gaffney pupils finished both first and second.

Last fall, the first time they played the game they beat out 97 other middle school teams all working just as hard to grow their portfolios.

This time, Gaffney entered four teams, that is, the five eighth-graders who were most involved in the game set out four different portfolios.

Noticing that other schools around the state had given their teams nicknames, the Gaffney kids called their four portfolios Mr. Small, Mr. Blackjack, Mr. Big and Mr. Overcoat.

The Mr. Small and Mr. Blackjack portfolios finished first and second, respectively, but arrived at those positions using different strategies. The Mr. Small plan involved shorting tech stocks, and the Mr. Blackjack plan counted on riskier stocks.

Mr. Big, which finished in 50th position, was used to buy big-name stocks such as WalMart and Coca-Cola, plus gold – “a bad idea,” all the boys agreed earlier this week. The Mr. Overcoat portfolio, which finished 32nd, relied on a sly combination of the three other approaches.

The five boys who took part are Edon Lipton of Machias, Matt Marshall of Machias, Avram Reisman of Cooper, Jake Rottersman of Marshfield and Dan Seamans of Marshfield.

The winning Mr. Small portfolio had a value of $108,212 by game’s end. Mr. Blackjack’s value was $105,592. Both outpaced Dedham School’s third-place entry, valued at $104,551.

The three teams from Wells Junior High School finished in the fourth, fifth and sixth positions.

Fourteen of the 56 middle-school teams finished with portfolios worth at least $100,000, their starting value.