Sports pools have their own vocabulary, and some terms mean different things on different sites. These are the definitions ALA uses. Every term has its own link, so you can send someone straight to one, such as insurance.

For every setting a pool can use, by sport and format, see pool settings. For how the formats differ, see every pool format compared.

Pool formats

Survivor pool: A pool in which each entry picks one team per period and loses a life when the pick loses. Teams can usually be used once per season, and the last entry standing wins. Also called a knockout, eliminator or last-man-standing pool. See survivor pool rules.
Pick'em pool: A pool in which entrants pick a set of games each week, and the best season-long win-loss record wins. Nobody is eliminated.
Confidence pool: A pick'em pool in which entrants also rank their picks. A correct pick earns the confidence points assigned to it.
Margin pool: A pool in which each entry picks one team per week and scores that team's margin of victory, or loses its margin of defeat. The highest season total wins, and nobody is eliminated.
Credit pool: A season-long handicapping contest in which entrants wager play-money credits on spreads, totals and moneylines. Credits can't be cashed out; they only keep score. See credit pool rules.
Battle the Bookies: A credit pool preset with no starting bankroll, live lines and juice. Every entry wagers a fixed 100 credits on every game, and an entry that finishes the season above zero has beaten the book. See Battle the Bookies.
Team Wins pool: A pool in which entrants pick a portfolio of teams once, before the season, and score points for every win those teams earn all season.
TD Survivor: An NFL survivor pool played with players instead of teams. You advance when a player you picked scores a touchdown.
Bracket pool: A pool in which entrants predict a tournament's results before it is played, and score points for each correct pick.
Squares: A 10×10 grid for one game or a set of games. Digits 0–9 are drawn for each row and column, and the square matching the last digit of each team's score at a checkpoint wins it.

Picks and periods

Period: One round of picks: a week in football, a weekly schedule in baseball, basketball and hockey, or a day or round in a tournament.
Slate: The games available to pick in a period.
Starting period: The first period a pool scores, so a pool can begin partway through a season.
Lock time: The moment a pick can no longer be changed. A pick always locks by the start of its own game, and a pool can also set an earlier weekly deadline. See when picks lock.
Lock at First Kickoff: A TD Survivor setting that locks all of an entrant's picks for the week as soon as the first of them kicks off, so an early result can't be used to change a later pick.
Selections per week: How many picks each entry makes per period. In team survivor, every one of them has to win.
Max team usage: How many times an entry may pick the same team in a season. Once is the survivor default.
Max opponent usage: How many times an entry may pick against the same team in a season.
Eligible teams: The teams a pool allows entrants to pick, such as one conference, or the AP Top 25, in college football.
Weekly schedule: In MLB, NBA and NHL survivor, and optionally college basketball, a pick that covers a team's whole week. It survives if the team finishes the week at .500 or better.
Best Bets: In a pick'em pool, the picks an entrant flags as their most confident. They're tracked as their own record in the standings and can be worth extra points.

Lives, eliminations and insurance

Life: What a losing pick costs in a survivor pool. An entry with one life is eliminated by its first loss.
Extra lives: Lives beyond the first. Free extra lives keep an entry in automatically after a loss; paid ones are rebuys.
Rebuy: Paying to restore a lost life. In a credit pool, a rebuy restores a busted entry to the starting balance.
Auto-rebuy: An entrant's standing instruction to rebuy automatically after a loss, instead of choosing to each time.
Rebuy deadline: How long an entrant who has lost a life has to rebuy before being eliminated.
End of rebuy period: The period after which rebuys stop. Every remaining entry drops to one life, and its next loss eliminates it.
Insurance: Automatic cover for a missed pick. An insured entry that forgets to pick is given one by the pool's policy, such as the most popular pick it still has available, or a random eligible team. Without insurance, a missed pick counts as a loss.
Total wipeout: Every remaining entry losing in the same period. Under the standard rule they are all co-champions; the alternative revives them with one life and plays on.
Shoot the Moon: An optional MLB survivor rule: an entry whose team loses every game it plays that week (0–6 or worse) gains a life instead of losing one.
Attrition: A TD Survivor mode in which each picked player who doesn't score costs the entry one pick for the rest of the season.

Lines and scoring

Straight up: Picking the winner of a game outright, with no point spread.
ATS (against the spread): Picking a team to cover the point spread, rather than simply to win.
Point spread: The margin a favorite is expected to win by. A 7-point favorite has to win by more than 7 to cover; the underdog covers by losing by fewer than 7, or by winning.
Push: A result landing exactly on the spread or total, such as a 7-point favorite winning by 7. A pool grades a push with its tie rule.
Hook: The half point in a spread or total such as 6.5. A line with a hook cannot push.
Force Hooks: A setting that moves any whole-number spread, and in some pools any whole-number total, half a point up or down so that no pick can push.
Static line: A spread or total set once for the period and never moved, so every entrant sees the same number. Picks can be changed until they lock, and in a credit pool a wager can be taken back until its game starts.
Live line: A spread or total that follows the betting market all week. A pick is graded on the line and price it was confirmed at, so entrants who back the same team at different times can hold different bets. A confirmed pick is locked and can't be taken back.
Closing line: The line a game has when it kicks off. A credit wager is graded on the line you took, not the closing line, but a missed-pick insurance fill is placed at the closing line.
Block lookahead lines: A live-line pool setting that keeps a game off the board until the betting market re-opens for it, after both teams' previous games are finished. Without it (Always Synced), a game is available whenever sportsbooks have posted a line, even for a later week.
Total (over/under): The combined score both teams are expected to reach. Entrants pick whether the real total goes over or under it.
Moneyline: A wager on which team wins outright, priced by odds. Used in credit pools.
Juice: The price built into a line, such as risking 110 to win 100. A credit pool can include it or pay even money.
Confidence points: The ranks an entrant assigns in a confidence pool. With 16 games, the most confident pick is worth 16 points and the least confident 1.
Missed picks scoring: How a pick left empty is valued when its game locks. In a confidence pool the unpicked game still uses up a point value: Min. Points gives it the lowest value left, Max. Points the highest. In a margin pool each missing pick scores the week's worst loss or a fixed number.
Confidence weights (Max to Min): How an NFL confidence week's point scale is anchored. Max to Min always tops out at 16, so a bye-week slate is worth more per pick; Min to Max runs from 1 to the number of games.
Playoff weights: How a confidence pool values playoff rounds, which have fewer games than a regular week. Keep the Anchor tops out at 16, Match the Slate at the round's game count (so the Super Bowl pick is worth 1), and Scale by Multiplier applies a commissioner-set factor to that scale.
Show point spreads: A setting for straight-up confidence pools that displays each game's current spread on the Make Picks page. It is display only; picks are still made and graded straight up.
Reset selections at playoffs: In NFL survivor and margin pools that include the playoffs, whether team and opponent usage counts restart when the playoffs begin, with their own playoff caps. When off, usage keeps counting across the whole season.
Margin of victory: How many points a team won by. A margin pool adds it to the entry's total, and subtracts the margin of a defeat.
Tie rule: The setting that grades a tie, and in spread pools a push, as either a win or a loss.

Credit pools

Wager: A stake of credits on one line, such as a spread, a total or a moneyline. It is stamped with the line and price at the moment you confirm it.
Starting balance: The credits every entry begins the season with. It is one running balance that never resets from week to week. Battle the Bookies starts at zero.
Risk and to win: Risk is the credits staked on a wager; to win is what a winning wager adds. At a −110 price, risking 110 wins 100. A loss subtracts the risk and a push returns it.
Exceed credit balance: A setting that lets an entry wager past zero and finish the season in the red. When it is off, an entry that runs out of credits is done unless the pool allows a rebuy.
Weekly minimum: The total credits an entry must have at risk each week. Missing it by any amount charges the Failure to Hit Minimums Penalty.
Missed pick penalty: In an All Games credit pool, the credits charged for each game left unplayed, as soon as that game ends. A game that never had a betting line is never charged.
Max wagers per game: How many wagers an entry may place on a single game, across every market. Zero means no limit; Battle the Bookies sets it to one.
Allow both sides: Whether an entry may take opposing sides of the same market on one game. With juice off, doing so is a guaranteed push.

Running a pool

Commissioner: The person who creates and runs a pool: chooses its settings, invites its entrants and manages it through the season. See how to run a survivor pool.
Entrant: A person playing in a pool.
Entry: One set of picks in a pool. An entrant may run several entries if the pool allows it, each with its own picks, lives and team usage.
Max entries: The most entries one entrant may run in a pool.
Group: A set of people who play pools together. Every pool belongs to a group, and the group tracks its members' results across pools and seasons.
Buy-in: What an entry costs to join, if the group plays for money. ALA records buy-ins but never collects them.
Tiered buy-ins: Several buy-in levels in one pool, each with its own side pot, all sharing one set of standings.
Bonus Pool: An opt-in side pool in MLB and NBA survivor that awards prizes for statistical achievements by an entrant's weekly pick, settled among the entrants who opted in.
Finance tracking: ALA's optional ledger of a pool's buy-ins, rebuys, insurance fees and prizes. It records money; it never moves any.
Pool fee: ALA's software fee for a pool, paid by the commissioner and priced by the number of entries. Entrants never pay ALA. See pricing.
How To Play page: Every pool's own rules page, listing the settings that apply to it.

Keep reading

ALA Pool Formats: ExplainedGuides to Survivor, Confidence, Pick'em, Credit, and other pool formats
:: Survivor PoolsThe standard rules, the common variations, and the multitude of options you can configure.
How to Run a Survivor PoolA commissioner's checklist, from choosing the rules to crowning the last entry standing.

Ready to set one up? Create a pool. Creating one is free, and the commissioner's pool fee is due 7 days after the pool starts.

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