Interested in fantasy football? More importantly, do you love the NFL? Well, why not make things a bit more interesting this year? Get yourself involved in a Survivor Pool. Mix in a bit of skill with pure luck to see if you can hang around the longest and become the last player standing to grab the trophy, which, hopefully, comes in cash form.
The concept behind a Survivor Pool is a pretty simple one; survive in the pool the longest in order to win. The way in which you achieve this, in most pools, is by correctly picking the winner of a game every week. There is a variation that is the complete opposite; picking a losing team each week.
Survivor Pools is most popular with the NFL as there are fewer teams than college and the teams are followed more widely. However, a Survivor Pool can easily be modified to work in union with other occasions, such as college bowl seasons. In the case of NFL Survivor Pools, you are asked to pick one team per week who you think will win the game. If that team does win, you move onto next week. If that team loses, so do you and you are out. This carries on until one person is left in the pool. That person is then declared the winner and will happily collect their prize.
You basically have two choices to play in a Survivor Pool; you can either set up your own pool, such as at your office, and get people to join or, alternatively, you could choose to join a pool that is already in existence. If you set up your own pool, you decide the rules. If you join an existing pool, then you have to follow the rules set out by the person who set up that particular pool. All rules should be clearly defined and documented in advance of the first game. These rules are also known as the pool configuration. What settings are commonly available for configuration of a Survivor Pool?
There are many sites that will host your Survivor Pools, though few that will host your pools for free. Common settings of all sites include; the maximum numbers of players allowed in the pool, tiebreaker rules should the season end with more than one player still active, if Rebirths are allowed and, if so, how many Rebirths are allowed per team and if there is a Cutoff week. Rebirths allow a team who is out to buy their way back into the pool. Other settings found on some sites include allowing autopicks and how many weeks autopicks are allowed, whether the players need to pick winning teams or losing teams and what the finances are for the league (Entrance fee, Rebirth fee).
Survivor Pools are also known as Last Man Standing Pools, Suicide Pools, Eliminator Pools and Knockout Pools. These aren’t the only fantasy football pools involving NFL teams. You can also participate in Point Spread or Pick ‘em Pools, Confidence Pools and Super Bowl Square Pools. Descriptions of these pools can be found in different articles.
Depending on the amount of people taking part in the pool that you are in and the entrance fee, you could win hundreds of dollars! It is not all about the money, though that is clearly the best prize. It is also about getting involved and enjoying being more than just a spectator in the NFL, so get yourself signed up!
