One winner per week, never the same team twice. How many lives, when the pool starts, whether anyone buys back in — those are your settings, not ours.
On the surface, a survivor pool is the simplest football pool there is. Like most pools, the strategy underneath is what makes it work for every kind of player. Each week, every player picks one NFL team to win its game. No spreads. If the team wins, the player survives to next week. If it loses, the player is out.
The catch is that you can use each team only once all season. Take the best team in Week 1 and you won't have them in Week 12. By November everyone is choosing between teams they don't trust, and that's the game.
The last player standing wins the pot. If the last survivors are knocked out in the same week, they split the pot.
Some people call it a knockout pool, an eliminator, king of the hill, one and done, or last man standing. Same game.
These are the questions that start arguments in November if you haven't answered them in September.
On Tilt, lives, buybacks, start week, picks per week, entries and when picks lock are settings. Ties survive by default; your host can count them as a loss. A missed pick is a strike, picks are straight up, picks stay hidden until they lock, and the last survivors split the pot.
A survivor pool that starts partway through the season. Most pools lose half their players in the first few weeks; a second-chance pool gives them somewhere to go. Everyone starts with all 32 teams available from the start week.
Every entry, every week: who's alive and which teams they've used.
| Entry | Status | Wk 1 | Wk 2 | Wk 3 | Wk 4 | Wk 5 | Wk 6 | Wk 7 | Wk 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Two Putt Tony | Alive | BUF | PHI | KC | DET | BAL | SF | GB | DAL |
| The Shanks | Alive | PHI | BUF | DET | KC | SF | BAL | HOU | LAR |
| Fairway Frank | Alive | SF | BAL | GB | HOU | KC | DET | PHI | BUF |
| Lip Out Larry | Out · Wk 8 | BUF | KC | PHI | DET | BAL | SF | LAR | CIN |
| Sandbagger Sue | Out · Wk 7 | BAL | SF | PHI | BUF | DET | KC | MIN | |
| Cart Path Only | Out · Wk 5 | KC | DET | BUF | PHI | GB | |||
| Mulligan Mike | Out · Wk 3 | DET | KC | BAL | |||||
| Bogey Train | Out · Wk 1 | DAL |
The Grid: every entry, every week, who's alive and who they've used. Sample data.
OFP survivor pools were folded into RunYourPool presets in the merge — buybacks, restart weeks and tiebreak rules reset. Here's what happened, from Splash's own help center.
Second-chance pools are open now. Send the rules you ran and you're first in line; classic pools take Week 1 signups next August.
See how switching works →One life or two? When does it start? Buyback? And the rule your group would riot over.
Second-chance pools are open now. Classic Week 1 pools open next August. Or something else — tell us in the form and it gets built that way.
Ties survive by default; your host can count them as a loss. Or something else — tell us in the form and it gets built that way.
If the last survivors are knocked out in the same week, they split the pot. Or something else — tell us in the form and it gets built that way.
If you allow it: one re-entry by a week you set. Or something else — tell us in the form and it gets built that way.
No. A missed pick is a strike. Or something else — tell us in the form and it gets built that way.
No, ever. You set the fee, hold the pot, pay the winners. Or something else — tell us in the form and it gets built that way.