A margin pool keeps survivor's one-team-a-week pick and removes the eliminations. Instead of living or dying on a result, every pick adds to your season total, by as much as your team won or lost by. This page covers how the scoring works, what a missed pick costs and which settings change it.
For how margin compares to the other formats, see Pool Formats: Explained.
The standard rules
- Each week, every entry picks a team. The commissioner can allow more than one pick a week.
- When the game ends, the final margin of the pick is added to the entry's score. A win adds its margin of victory and a loss subtracts its margin of defeat.
- Nobody is eliminated. Every entry plays every week.
- A pick locks when its game starts, or at the pool's weekly deadline if that comes first.
- The highest total at the end of the season wins.
How a pick is scored
The score is the point margin in the final result, with the sign set by whether your team won.
| Final score | Your pick | Adds |
|---|---|---|
| 24–10 | Winner | +14 |
| 20–23 | Loser | −3 |
| 31–0 | Loser | −31 |
| 17–17 | Either team | 0 |
The commissioner can also set more than one pick a week, in which case all of the week's margins are added together.
A worked example
Take a pool that allows two picks a week, with Worst Loss of the Week for missed picks. You pick one team that wins 27–13 and another that loses 20–23. The week adds +14 and −3, so your total moves by +11.
Now suppose you only submit one pick, the 27–13 winner, and forget the other. One pick is missing, so the penalty applies once. If the worst loss of the week was a team that lost by 21, the missing pick scores −21 and your week is +14 − 21 = −7. With a Fixed Number of −10 instead, the week is +4. With an insured entry, the empty slot is filled at the lock and scores whatever that team really did.
Team reuse and usage limits
Margin pools share their settings with survivor pools, so the same two caps are available. Team re-use sets how often one team can be picked over the season. Without a limit, the best team in the league becomes the right pick every week, so a pool that wants a variety of strategies caps it.
Opponent limits cap how often you can pick against a particular opponent, which stops entrants from farming the weakest team on the schedule. The survivor pool rules explain re-use in more detail.
Many pools also allow more than one pick a week. The commissioner sets the number, and every pick's margin counts: a week's picks are added together. More picks a week means more variance, since one bad pick is cushioned by the others but a second blowout loss stacks on the first.
NFL playoffs
An NFL margin pool can extend through the playoffs. Usage limits are the question there, since a team you have already used is the natural pick in January. The commissioner decides with Reset Selections at Playoffs:
- Yes (the default). Max Team and Max Opponent Usage counts restart when the playoffs begin, and the playoffs have their own cap. The playoff cap is set with Max Team Usage [Playoffs], independent of the regular-season cap.
- No. Usage counts keep running across the whole season, so the teams you spent in the regular season may be gone when you need them.
Missed picks
If you miss the lock time or fail to submit picks, you'll typically incur a missed-pick penalty. The penalty is applied once for each missing pick, so a two-pick week with one pick submitted is penalized once. The commissioner chooses between two options:
- Worst Loss of the Week. A missing pick scores the biggest losing margin among that week's games. It is a strong deterrent without being random.
- Fixed Number. A missing pick scores a number the commissioner sets, from 0 (a missed pick is free) down to −99.
Pools can also offer missed-pick insurance. An insured entry has its empty slot filled at the lock with a team chosen by the pool's policy, and that pick scores its real margin instead of the penalty. If the insurance is priced, an entry that did not buy it still takes the penalty.
College football margin pools
College football has far more games than any pool needs, so the commissioner narrows the pool of eligible games to the whole FBS, specific conferences, or Top 25 games, and can exclude games against FCS opponents. Only those games can be picked, and a missed pick under Worst Loss is measured against the eligible games only, so a blowout in a game the pool excluded never counts against anyone.
Prizes and the leaderboard
The leaderboard is a running total, so a margin pool has no knockout moment: the standings change every week until the last game. Commissioners can add weekly prizes alongside the season prize, and can off multiple buy-in tiers and prize pools if they are using ALA's finance-tracking tools.
Play a margin pool
ALA hosts margin pools for the NFL and college football. To set one up, see the settings in Pool Settings, or go straight to Create a Pool.
Keep reading
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.