How Pools work
What's a Pool?
One pick, every week, from that week's real NFL games, and you can never pick the same team twice. Get it wrong and you're out, or take a strike if your host allows more than one. Outlast everybody else and you win.
Two ways to play
Same weekly pick, opposite goal. Your host locks in the format before the Pool opens.
Pick a team to win. A loss costs a strike.
Pick a team to lose. A win costs a strike.
The no-reuse rule
Here's the twist that makes this a game and not a coin flip: once your entry picks a team, that team is done for the season. Burned. You can never pick it again, win or lose.
Week 1 feels easy. Week 10 feels like a squeeze. Every team you pick is burned for the season, so the choices narrow each week. Four picks in, those teams are gone even if all four results went your way. The slate narrows too. Bye weeks remove teams from a given week, and your used-teams list keeps growing.
How you play
1. Join before kickoff. Entries close once the first week's last game starts. No buying back in.
2. Make your pick. One team, from that week's real slate.
3. It locks at kickoff. Change it as often as you like until your team takes the field.
4. Live to pick again, or take a strike. Get the result you need and you're through to next week.
What picking looks like
One entry, one week of the slate.
Lions Your pick
The Lions are this week's pick. You can change it until kickoff. The Chiefs are crossed out because they were burned in an earlier week and can't be picked again this season.
House rules
Your host locks in a few settings before the Pool opens: how many strikes it takes to eliminate you (one, by default), whether ties and missed picks cost a strike or let you slide, and how many entries one player can hold (five, by default). Details on all of it below.
Strikes default to one: sudden death, one wrong pick and you're out. Hosts can allow more: three strikes means you can take two hits and still be alive. A tie doesn't clearly satisfy "your team won" or "your team lost," so the host decides which way it breaks. Some Pools count it as a strike, others let every entry survive. Forget to make a pick and it's the same deal: an automatic strike, or an Auto-Pick at the week's first kickoff that you can still change like any other pick, right up until it locks. Multiple entries are allowed too, up to a cap your host sets: five is the default. Each extra entry is its own lifeline: its own picks, its own strikes, its own used-teams list.
How you win
A Pool ends one of three ways: one entry outlasts everyone and wins, the whole field goes down together in a wipeout and those entries tie for first, or the season ends with more than one entry alive and the survivors tie for first.
The host sets an entry fee (per entry, not per player) and decides what share of the pot goes to winners. 90% is common, with the rest covering the house or a cause. Not playing for money? Pools work just as well for bragging rights.
Add your Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App once. Players get a pay button with the amount filled in when they join. Winners add a handle, and you pay them in one tap. When a player taps pay, Settle Up marks them pending for you to confirm. Sunday Squares never holds the money.
Every week gets harder
The field thins fast, and nobody comes back.
How a Pool plays out
A 20-entry Survivor Pool, week by week.
Chalk city. Every favorite wins.
Three Sunday upsets. Seven strikes taken.
The unbeaten teams are used up. Five gone in one weekend.
A Thursday night stunner. Down to three.
One entry survives Monday night. Pool's over.
That's the Pool. Simple to start, brutal to finish, and somebody's always sweating a Monday night score.