How a survivor pool works
Pick one team to win each week. Pick wrong and you’re out. Last one standing wins.
How it works
These are the same in every league.
- 1
Pick one team to win, every week
One pick per week, no more. You are picking the team you think will win their game.
- 2
Your pick locks at kickoff
You can change it right up until that team's game starts. After that it is final. If we don't know when a game kicks off, it is treated as already started — missing data can never let a pick in late.
- 3
You can take a pick back
Clicking the team you already picked clears it and leaves you with no pick for the week. Picking a different team just moves the pick. Either way, only before kickoff.
- 4
Nobody sees your pick until it's locked
The league sees that you have picked, never what. Your team is revealed once its game has started. Withdrawing puts you back to showing no pick at all, so the roster can't be used to signal.
- 5
Each team only once
You cannot pick the same team twice. Spend the good ones wisely — that constraint is what turns an easy week 3 into an impossible week 14.
- 6
Lose and you're out
If the team you picked loses, your season is over. There is no buy-back.
Rules each league sets for itself
Every league starts with these defaults, and its admin can change them.
You are picking a team to WIN, and a tie is not a win. If your game ends level, your season is over.
If you have no pick once the week's last game has kicked off, you are out. Set a reminder — nobody is going to chase you.
Lose your pick and your season is over. Some leagues hand out a second chance or two — this one does not.
Whoever is still alive at the end of the regular season wins. Playoff games are not pickable.
Nobody new can join once the first week 1 game kicks off. A league created after the season has already started is not affected.
How a season ends
Usually somebody is the last one standing. When a whole field goes out together, these decide it instead.
Somebody outlasts the field
One player left standing, and the season is theirs. The ordinary ending, and the one everybody is playing for.
Everyone left goes out in the same week — and there is a week left to play
Overtime. Everyone who went out in that week gets one more week, played by the ordinary rules: pick a team to win, and the teams you have already used are still spent. Survive it and the season is yours. If more than one of you survives, the best season point differential takes it. If nobody does, it goes to season point differential across the whole overtime field — so somebody wins it even if every last pick lost.
Everyone left goes out in the same week — with nothing left to play
The best season point differential among them wins. Your point differential is the margin of every game you picked: your team wins by 10 you are +10, loses by 3 you are −3. It is on the standings all season, so this is never a number nobody saw coming.
Two players end up level
They both win. A tie on point differential is not broken by anything else — no countback, no coin toss — because there is nothing left that would separate them fairly. The site will show co-winners and the league settles up between themselves.
When a game doesn’t go to plan
Rare, and worth knowing before it happens to you.
A cancelled or abandoned game voids your pick
No win, no loss — and the team goes back into your pool, because they never actually played. You can pick them again later.
A postponed game is not a missed week
While a game is still to come, its week stays open. A postponement moves the kickoff rather than cancelling the game, so it never counts against you.
Weeks before you joined don't count
If you join partway through the season, only weeks that begin after you join can be missed.
If everyone left goes out in the same week, the pool is not over
It is decided instead — see How a season ends below. Nobody loses a pool to an empty scoreboard.
In overtime, a cancelled game does not carry you through
This is the one place the void rule flips, and it flips because it has to: everywhere else a cancelled game cannot hurt you because there is always another week, and overtime has no other week. You are still in the field, so if nobody survives you are back in contention on season +/- like everybody else. It only costs you if somebody actually won.
Money
This site does not collect, hold or pay out money. A league admin can display a prize pool figure so everyone sees the same number, but it is a note, not an account. Anything you settle up is between you and the other players.