Survivor Pool — Commissioner Setup Guide

Creating your pool

The create wizard sets the essentials; everything is editable afterward on the Settings tab.

Style

NFL Survivor (auto-loads the schedule and grades winners for you), March Madness (the bracket variant — each tournament round is a “week”), or Custom (any sport/league, where you add each week’s games and enter results yourself).

Format — start week

Which NFL week the pool begins. Start at Week 1 for a full season, or a later week to run a mid-season pool — the schedule loads only the weeks in your window.

Format — how far it runs

To the end of the regular season (Weeks start–18), regular season + playoffs (keeps going through the Super Bowl), or a set number of weeks from your start week.

Lives per entryPro

How many wrong picks an entry survives. 1 = classic single-elimination (one loss and you’re out). 2–3 lives keep more people alive longer — great for casual groups.

Standard vs Advanced setup

Standard applies popular defaults and drops you on the console. Advanced opens the full Settings editor so you can fine-tune every rule below before you share the link.

Name, entry fee & payment

Name the pool and set the buy-in. If you charge a fee, players pay you through the app’s payment step at join (your Venmo/PayPal/cash options are prefilled from your org settings) — you never route money through us.

Pool format — win, lose, or cover

What counts as surviving. Set it before the first week is scored — once a week is graded these lock, because changing them would rewrite who is already out.

Survivor vs Loser PoolPro

Survivor is the classic: pick a team to WIN each week. Loser Pool flips it — you pick a team to LOSE, and you survive only if they do. Everything else (no-reuse, lives, deadlines, payouts) works identically, so a Loser Pool is a popular second pool to run alongside the main one for the same group.

Against the spreadPro

Instead of a straight win, your pick has to cover the betting line. This is the standard fix for everyone piling onto the same big favorite every week — taking a -13 favorite is no longer a free pass. Pushes (landing exactly on the number) survive without using a life.

When the line freezes

For against-the-spread pools you choose the weekday and time (Eastern) at which that week’s lines are captured — most pools use Wednesday at 12:00pm ET. At that moment we snapshot each game’s current line and it stops moving, so every entry is graded against the same number regardless of when they picked. Lines set before the freeze can still drift; after it, nothing — not even the nightly schedule sync — can change them.

Lives, strikes & missed picks

Lives per entry (strikes)

The number of losses an entry can absorb before elimination. Shown to players as “lives” or “strikes.”

A tie counts as a loss

When on, an NFL tie costs the entry a life just like a loss. Turn off to treat ties as a push (no harm).

MulligansPro

A number of “free” wrong picks each entry can use across the season, on top of their lives. A soft safety net for a friendlier pool.

If a player misses a pick

Choose what happens when someone forgets to pick: it counts as a strike (default, keeps people engaged), auto-assign the week’s biggest favorite, or carry over their previous week’s team.

Auto-pilotPro

Let players opt an entry into auto-picking at lock time if they haven’t picked — by biggest favorite, best record, or random. Reduces accidental eliminations; players choose the strategy on their entry.

Pick remindersPro

The Commish auto-nudges anyone still alive who hasn’t picked before each week locks — by email and push — on the lead time you set (e.g. 2 days out), so nobody gets eliminated for forgetting. Set it on the Settings tab.

Teams, reuse & the playoffs

One team per week, no reuse

The classic rule: once you pick a team, you can’t pick it again all season. Turn reuse on for a looser pool where teams are unlimited.

Double-pick weeksPro

Weeks where each entry must pick two different winning teams to survive — a mid-season difficulty spike you can schedule on specific weeks.

Run through the playoffs

Keeps the pool going past Week 18 — Wild Card, Divisional, Conference Championships, and the Super Bowl load automatically as the bracket is set.

How teams free up for the playoffs

When no-reuse is on: “reset” frees every team again for the postseason (regular-season usage forgiven), “free” removes reuse limits entirely in the playoffs, and “strict” carries the no-reuse rule all the way through.

Buy-backs

Let eliminated players re-enter — great for keeping a big group engaged and growing the pot.

Allow buy-backsPro

Turn on to let eliminated entries pay to re-enter and keep playing.

Through which week

The last week a player may buy back in — after this, eliminations are final.

Buy-back fee

The base cost to re-enter. Set a flat fee, or add a weekly rise so buying back later costs more (a rising fee nudges people to stay alive). Buy-back fees fold into the pot.

Entry fee, pot & organizer cut

Entry fee

What each entry pays to join. The prize pot is entries × fee (plus any buy-back fees), minus your organizer cut.

Allow “pay later”

Let players join now and confirm payment later, or require payment confirmation to join.

Organizer cutPro

What your program keeps off the top before payouts — a percentage of the pool, a flat total, or a flat amount per entry. Set on the Settings tab; the prize pot everyone sees is always shown net of it. Available on Pro Commissioner and Organization; the full pot pays out to winners on Free.

Guaranteed pot / floorPro

Optionally guarantee a minimum pot regardless of how many join, or fix the pot to a set amount.

Payouts & tiebreakers

Decide how the pot is split when the season ends — from a simple winner-take-all to layered side pots.

Payout mode

Split among the last survivor(s), or pay top-N finishers.

Flexible payout bucketsPro

Carve the pot into buckets: a “winner” bucket (last survivor), “milestone” buckets (everyone who reached Week N splits a share — keeps eliminated players invested), and a “side-margin” bucket (biggest cumulative winning margin). Percentages you control.

Consolation

A small payout to the last entry(ies) eliminated — a nice touch so the runner-up isn’t empty-handed.

Tiebreaker

How to settle it if multiple entries survive to the end or are eliminated together: split evenly, fewest strikes, fewest wins used, or “keep playing” (the pool revives a same-week total wipeout so it plays to a single survivor).

Picks, privacy & entries

Hide picks until lock

Keep everyone’s weekly picks private until the deadline so nobody copies — reveal after lock.

Pick deadline

Lock all picks at the first game of the week, lock each pick at its own kickoff (letting players wait on later games), or lock at a named kickoff slot — Thursday Night (8:15pm ET), Sunday Early (1:00pm ET), Sunday Late (4:05pm ET) or Sunday Night (8:20pm ET). A slot deadline is the usual choice when you want people to be able to keep editing past the Thursday nighter; the deadline is re-applied automatically each week even after the schedule syncs.

Entries per personPro

Allow one entry each, a set number, or unlimited — more entries means a bigger pot and more chances to survive.

Commissioner proxy picks

From the console you can set, fix, or clear any entry’s weekly pick — even after lock — for a player who couldn’t get to their phone.

Running the pool

Opening a week

Nobody can pick a week until you open it, which also emails everyone still alive that the slate is ready. Use “Open all weeks” to open the whole season at once — everyone gets a single email, not one per week.

Let The Commish open weeks for you

On the Weeks screen under ⚙ Week settings, switch on auto-open and the next week opens itself — either a set number of hours before it locks (48 by default), or as soon as every game in the week before it is final. It only ever opens the NEXT unopened week, checked hourly, and never one whose lock has already passed. You can still open any week by hand.

Removing a week or a game

“Remove week” takes a week out of the pool — refused if anyone has already picked in it. Nothing is renumbered: week numbers here are the LEAGUE week, so the pool simply skips that one and the nightly schedule reload will not put it back. Each game row also has a ✕ to drop a single game; that removes any pick made on it, and the game stays in the schedule so you can load it again.

Load the NFL season

One click builds every week and fills in the games from the live schedule (your start week + playoffs if enabled). Custom sports: add each week’s games from the console.

Auto-scoringPro

Finals sync from the live scoreboard daily and apply strikes/eliminations automatically — or score any week by hand from the console.

Finalize & pay winners

Finalizing ranks the survivors, applies your payout rules and tiebreaker, and computes each winner’s cut. Winners then appear in Payout Assist with one-tap pay links and a sent/received handshake.

Who’s left / what-if plannerPro

A commissioner tool that projects each week’s hypothetical results so you can see who survives, when the pool would end, and each entry’s remaining team runway.

FAQ