One team a week. Each team once. One loss and you are out. The whole game is knowing when to spend your best teams.
A survivor pool asks one question a week: which team will win outright? Point spreads do not apply. Pick a team, and if it wins you advance to next week. If it loses, your entry is eliminated. You cannot pick a team you have already used, so an 18-week pool needs 18 different winners.
That last rule is the whole game. Anyone can find the biggest favourite this week. The entries that are still alive in December are the ones that planned which weeks to spend their best teams.
Standard. One life. A loss ends the entry. Most pools also count a tie as a loss, so read yours.
Strikes. Also called lives or mulligans. The entry survives a set number of losses, usually one to three, before it is out. Strike pools run longer and reward taking a small risk early to save a stud for later.
Buy-back. An eliminated entry can pay to re-enter until a cutoff week. Effectively a second entry that starts late with fewer teams burned.
Circa Survivor. The Las Vegas contest run by Circa Sports: $1,000 an entry, up to ten entries a person, and 20 legs because the Thanksgiving slate and the Christmas slate each count as their own week. A loss or a tie eliminates. Survive all 20 and the prize pool is yours, or split with whoever else made it.
Win probability first. You need one thing to happen, so start with the team most likely to make it happen. Our survivor picks page ranks every game by the model’s straight-up win probability, the same number behind every pick on this site.
Then future value. A team that is a 78% favourite this week might be an 85% favourite in Week 11 against a worse opponent. If you have another safe pick this week, take it and keep the stud for the week your board is thin. The teams worth protecting are the ones projected to win the most games, and each has a best spot on its schedule.
Respect the variance. A 78% favourite loses about one week in five. Over eighteen weeks an upset is not a question of if but when. Planning is what keeps a normal upset from catching you with no strong teams left.
Late, be different. Once the field thins, how many other entries share your pick starts to matter. If everyone is on the same favourite and it loses, the field resets together and your pick gained you nothing. Early on, take the safe team. Deep in the money, weigh being contrarian.
Burning the two best teams in Weeks 1 and 2 because they were the biggest favourites. Picking on gut instead of probability. Forgetting a bye week and planning a team you cannot use. Treating a road favourite the same as a home one. And, in Circa, forgetting that Thanksgiving and Christmas are separate legs that need their own teams.
Pro members get a survivor tracker in the dashboard. It knows which teams you have used, so our pick each week is the strongest team you have left, next to the book’s favourite and its price. A season path plans your remaining legs without reusing a team and shows the odds of surviving them all. Picks are graded when games go final, with strikes and tie rules set to your pool, including Circa’s 20 legs.