FAQ

One. You pick a single team you think will win, and if they win you move on to next week.

The one exception is after a tie — see the tie questions below.

However you like. Most people take a strong team against a weak one and try not to spend their best teams too early — a team you use in Week 2 is not there for you in Week 15.

Each game shows a point spread, and you are welcome to use it as a guide. It is only a guide — how game lines work explains what it does and does not mean.

No. Once you have used a team, they are gone for the rest of the season, win or lose. This is the whole strategic tension of survivor: burning Kansas City in Week 2 feels great until Week 14.

Yes, and it is worth doing if you are going to be away. Every regular-season week is there with its kickoff times, so you can look ahead as far as you like.

A future pick reserves that team. If you try to use them sooner, the app will tell you they are already committed to a later week rather than silently letting you double-book.

You will see point spreads on future weeks, and you are welcome to plan around them — but they move. Injuries, weather, who is actually playing. A number three weeks out can look quite different by the time that week arrives, and it keeps changing right up to kickoff, which is when it locks.

Any time before the pick locks. Tap your selected team again to remove it, or simply pick a different one — choosing another team replaces the first. Once it locks, it is final.

12:55 PM Eastern on Sunday for the main slate.

Any game kicking off before then locks separately, five minutes before its own kickoff. A Thursday night game kicking off at 8:15 PM locks at 8:10 PM that Thursday. A London game at 9:30 AM locks at 9:25 AM.

Everything still to be played at 12:55 on Sunday locks at that moment, together — the Sunday afternoon games, the Sunday night game and the Monday night game all shut at once. So a Monday team has to be chosen by Sunday lunchtime, not Monday.

Every game on the pick screen shows its own lock time. Do not rely on the Sunday deadline if you are picking a team that plays before Sunday afternoon.

The server decides, not your browser. Your clock, your phone's timezone and a slow connection all fail in the direction of thinking you had more time.

That said, if something genuinely went wrong — the page hung, the app errored — write to the commissioner. There is a way to correct a pick, it is logged, and it is there precisely for this.

You are not eliminated for forgetting. You are assigned the strongest available favorite — the biggest favorite by the league's locked spread among the teams you have not used.

That only happens once, at the Sunday deadline, and only from the games that lock then: the main Sunday slate, Sunday night and Monday. If you miss a Thursday, Saturday or early-Sunday game, nothing is assigned for it and nothing happens to you — an automatic pick is never a team from one of those earlier games.

It is a published rule, not the commissioner's opinion: the same inputs produce the same answer, for everybody, every time. It is often a perfectly good pick. It is never a pick you chose, and it spends that team for the rest of the season.

How it actually plays out:

• You forget entirely. At the Sunday deadline the biggest remaining favorite is assigned to you. They win, you survive, and that team is gone from your list.
• You forget, and the assigned team loses. Exactly as though you had picked them yourself: a rebuy if one is available to you, otherwise your season is over. Forgetting is not a defense.
• You forget while owing two after a tie. You are assigned two teams, not one, and both have to win. Two more teams come off your list.
• You forget and the assigned team ties. Same as any tie — you survive and owe 2 winners next week.

No. A tie keeps you alive. But it raises the price of staying alive: next week you must pick 2 teams and they must both win.

Two separate teams, two separate games. If either one loses, you are out.

It doubles again. Each tie multiplies your requirement by 2.

This only arises if every other pick that week won. Owed 2, one tied and the other won → you need 4 winners next week. Owed 2 and both tied → 8. It escalates quickly, which is the point: a tie is a reprieve, not a free pass.

If one of them lost, none of this applies — a loss ends the week whatever the others did. You rebuy if one is available to you, and you are out if it is not.

You are out. Any loss ends your entry, regardless of what the other picks did. A loss is never canceled out by a win or a tie elsewhere.

That is a loss. There is no Week 19 to pick two winners in, so the reprieve has nowhere to go. You do not advance on a tie.

Depends which entry you bought.

$80 entry: you get 3 rebuys included, free, usable through Week 8. After that week they expire whether you used them or not, and you cannot buy extras.

$20 entry: nothing is included. Every rebuy is bought separately, and only through Week 5 — after that a loss ends your season at any price. There is no limit on how many times you may buy back in inside that window, but each one costs money. Week 1 costs $10; Weeks 2–5 cost $30.

No. This is the single most common wrong assumption in the league.

Your used-team history follows you for the whole season. If you burned six teams before being eliminated, you come back with those same six gone. A rebuy buys you back into the game, not a fresh start.

No. A rebuy resets you to one pick per week. The doubled requirement died with the entry that incurred it.

A paid rebuy activates when the commissioner confirms the money arrived, not when you send it. Included ($80 entry) rebuys are instant because there is nothing to confirm. If it has been a while, nudge them — PayPal notifications get buried.

Entry fees go into a PayPal account and back out to the winners. Nobody takes a cut. No rake, no house percentage, no fee, no administrative skim of any kind.

The commissioner never receives money for running this. The only money that ever comes back to him is a winner's share, on exactly the same terms as anybody else — because he pays the same entry fee and plays the same season. If he does not win, he is paid nothing, ever.

The app itself never touches money in either direction. It works out who is owed what and keeps the record; a human sends every payment by hand.

After any week, any survivor can propose splitting the pot. It only happens if every remaining survivor agrees — one no and it is off, and the season continues.

Silence counts as no. If you do not vote before the next week kicks off, the proposal dies.

Yes, and this has happened before. Three left, two want to stop, one wants to play on — so the two paying people give up some of their share to buy him out.

Propose whatever numbers you all agree to. The only hard requirements are that the amounts add up to exactly the pot, that every survivor says yes, and that the money goes to surviving players only — see Winning and splitting in the rules.

Whole cents will not always divide evenly, so somebody may come out a penny or two behind. Settle that between yourselves however you like; nobody has ever fallen out over two cents.

The pot splits evenly between everyone still alive. Surviving players only — the same rule that governs an agreed split.

Whole cents will not always divide evenly, so one person may end up a penny or two ahead of another. Nothing is ever dropped: the payouts always add back up to exactly what was collected. If the difference bothers anyone, settle it between yourselves — hand the odd cents to somebody, flip for it, whatever you like.

Within one business day of the season being settled, sent by PayPal. No exceptions and no other method — if you are owed money it arrives in PayPal, to the address on your account.

Each payment is sent by hand and ticked off as it goes. If you are owed money and have not seen it, ask — there is a checklist and it will say plainly whether yours has gone out.

Everyone's picks appear once picks lock — 12:55 on Sunday for the whole slate, earlier for a team playing before then. A Monday night pick locks Sunday along with everything else, so it is visible then too.

Before then, standings still show whether someone has picked — “pick made, hidden until it locks” is deliberately different from “no pick yet”. You can see who is dragging their feet without seeing their hand.

A line is the oddsmakers' estimate of the gap between two teams. “KC -7.5” means Kansas City are favored by seven and a half points. The bigger the number, the more one-sided the game is expected to be.

It is a guide and nothing more. It is a forecast of how people who do this for a living think a game will go — not a prediction of the final score, not a promise, and certainly not a result. Big favorites lose outright every single week of the season.

Lines have no bearing whatsoever on whether your pick survives. Your team wins or it does not. A team favored by fourteen that loses by one is a loss; a team nobody rated that wins by a field goal is a win. The margin is irrelevant.

They are shown for exactly two reasons: so you have something to weigh when you are choosing, and because the automatic pick given to somebody who missed the deadline is decided by them — the biggest available favorite. That is the only place a line changes anything.

No. Your team wins or it does not, by any margin. The only thing a spread decides is which team is assigned to somebody who missed the deadline.

Because it genuinely is different — spreads move right up until a game starts, and the app shows the most recent one it has captured.

What gets frozen is the number attached to your locked pick, and it freezes when that pick locks: five minutes before kickoff for an early game, and at the Sunday deadline for everything still to be played. From that moment the line recorded against your pick never changes, however far the real market moves afterwards.

That frozen number is what decides an automatic pick, which is why it matters that it cannot drift after the fact.

Write to the commissioner — the form at the foot of this page. Corrections are possible and are logged with a reason, so raising it costs you nothing and a genuine mistake can be fixed.