ALA Pool Formats: Explained
Guides to Survivor, Confidence, Pick'em, Credit, and other pool formats
ALA offers pool formats fit for both the most hardcore pool degens, and the casual participants barely paying attention. This guide below explains and compares every format ALA hosts. To understand the settings inside each format, see the glossary and the full list of pool settings.
The formats at a glance
| Format | What entrants do | How it is won |
|---|---|---|
| Survivor | Pick one team each week (or more, if the pool asks). Each team can usually be used once. | Last entry standing. A wrong pick costs a life, and an entry with no lives left is out. |
| Pick'em | Pick a set of games each week: straight up, against the spread, or on totals. | Best win-loss record over the season. Nobody is eliminated. |
| Confidence | Pick every game on the slate, then rank the picks from most to least confident. | Most points. A correct pick earns the rank you gave it. |
| Margin | Pick one team each week. | Highest season total. A win adds the team's margin of victory; a loss subtracts its margin of defeat. |
| Credit | Wager play-money credits on spreads, totals and moneylines. | Biggest balance at the end of the season. |
| Team Wins | Pick a portfolio of teams once, before the season. No weekly picks. | Most points from those teams' wins all season. |
| Brackets | Predict the winner of every round before the tournament is played. | Most points for correct picks. |
| Squares | Claim squares on a 10×10 grid. No sports knowledge needed. | The square matching the last digit of each team's score at each checkpoint. |
Survivor: the knockout pool
Survivor (also called a knockout, eliminator or last-man-standing pool) is the most common office pool for one reason: it takes ten seconds to explain and gets more tense every week. Each week you pick one team. If it wins, you move on. If it loses, you're out, unless the pool gives you another life. The catch is that each team can usually be used only once.
Its weakness is the same rule seen from the other side. Eliminations are permanent, so one upset-heavy weekend can knock out a third of the field in September, and an entrant who is out has little reason to open the pool again. Small groups feel it most: a ten-person survivor pool is often down to two or three entries by October.
Commissioners soften that with extra lives, rebuys and missed-pick insurance. ALA also hosts survivor variants that change what a pick means:
- Losers and spreads. Pick a team to lose, or to cover the point spread, instead of to win. Available in NFL, college football and March Madness survivor.
- Weekly schedules. In MLB, NBA and NHL survivor, a pick covers a team's whole week, and you survive if it finishes at .500 or better.
- TD Survivor. Pick NFL players instead of teams, and advance when your player scores a touchdown.
- Tournament survivor. March Madness and the World Cup, where the pool lasts weeks rather than a season.
The rules and their variations are in Survivor Pool Rules, Explained, and the setup decisions in How to Run a Survivor Pool.
Pick'em: a season-long record
In a pick'em pool, each entrant picks a set of games every week and builds a win-loss record. There are no eliminations in a Pick'em pool.
The commissioner decides how many games are picked (every game on the slate, a fixed number such as five a week, or a number that changes by week) and what a pick is: straight-up winners, picks against the spread, picks on game totals, or a mix. Five picks against the spread each week is the shape the Westgate SuperContest made famous. In NBA and college basketball pick'em, the week can be every day or a window the commissioner chooses, such as Friday to Sunday.
Optional extras include Best Bets, where entrants flag their most confident picks for a separate record that can be worth extra points, and weekly prizes alongside the season prize. See NFL pick'em and college football pick'em.
Confidence: picks plus a ranking
A confidence pool adds a second decision to pick'em. Each week you pick every game on the slate, then rank your picks by how sure you are. With 16 games, your most confident pick is worth 16 points, the next 15, and so on down to 1. A correct pick earns its points; a wrong one earns nothing. A perfect 16-game week is worth 136.
The ranking is the whole game. Two entrants can pick exactly the same winners and finish a week far apart, because one of them put 16 points on a favorite that lost. Over a season, confidence pools reward the people who can tell a safe game from a coin flip, not only the people who pick the most winners.
ALA runs NFL and college football confidence pools straight up or against the spread, and NBA and college basketball confidence pools straight up.
Margin: survivor without the eliminations
A margin pool keeps survivor's one-team-a-week pick and removes the knockout component. Your team's margin goes on your season total: a 24–10 win is worth +14, and a 20–23 loss is worth −3. The highest total at the end of the season wins.
Because nobody is eliminated, margin pools work well for small groups that would burn through a survivor pool in a month. They also change the strategy. A safe favorite that wins by a field goal is worth less than a team likely to win big, and a confident pick that loses badly costs you for the rest of the season. The commissioner decides whether teams can be reused and how a missed pick is scored. See NFL margin pools.
Credit: a handicapping contest with play money
A credit pool posts a board of games with spreads, totals and moneylines, and entrants wager credits on whichever lines they like. A winning wager pays at the posted price, and a losing one is gone. Credits are only a way of keeping score: they exist inside the pool and can't be cashed out for anything.
Some credit pools give every entry a starting bankroll, and an entry that runs out can't wager again unless the pool allows rebuys. Others use the Battle the Bookies preset: no bankroll, a fixed stake on every game, and the goal of finishing the season above zero. Credit pools suit groups who already follow the betting lines. See NFL credit pools.
Team Wins, brackets and squares
Team Wins
A Team Wins pool is all draft and no upkeep. Before the season, each entrant picks a set number of teams from every NBA division or college basketball conference, plus optional wild cards. Every win by one of those teams scores, with more points for the wins that matter more, such as tournament and playoff games. Picks lock once, and the standings look after themselves until the season ends.
Brackets
MLB Playoff Brackets and World Cup Brackets ask you to predict a tournament before it is played. Correct picks score points, and the commissioner sets what each round is worth, so a bracket that calls the champion can beat one with more early-round hits.
Squares
Squares needs no sports knowledge at all, which is the appeal. Entrants claim squares on a 10×10 grid, the row and column digits are drawn, and whoever holds the square matching the last digit of each team's score at each checkpoint wins it. A grid can cover one game or a set of games, for the NFL, college football and MLB.
How to choose a format
- A big group that wants drama for little weekly effort: survivor. One pick a week, and the field shrinks every weekend. Add extra lives if you want it to last past Halloween.
- A small group, roughly a dozen people or fewer: margin or pick'em. Survivor tends to be over before the season is half done.
- A group that watches every game: confidence. You're guaranteed to have some kind of interest in the whole slate.
- A group that follows the betting lines: pick'em against the spread, or a credit pool.
- A group that wants to pick once and forget about it: Team Wins.
- A party, not a season: squares on one game.
Still can't decide? Run two. A group can hold any number of pools, and it tracks every member's results across all of them, season after season.
Formats available for each sport
- NFL: Survivor, Pick'em, Confidence, Margin, Credit, TD Survivor, Squares
- College Football: Survivor, Pick'em, Confidence, Margin, Credit, Squares
- NBA: Survivor, Team Wins, Pick'em, Confidence
- College Basketball: Survivor, Team Wins, Pick'em, Confidence, March Survivor
- NHL: Survivor
- MLB: Survivor, Playoff Brackets, Squares
- World Cup: Survivor, Brackets
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.