Details: NFL 2020 (pay)

This is a confidence pick 'em pool. Each week, players pick the winner of each NFL game. In addition, you assign a confidence value for each game. The more sure (confident) you are of your pick for a game, the higher value you should give it. Each confidence value is used only once per week. If the team you picked wins its game, you earn the confidence points. If they lose, you get zero points for that game. If the game is a tie, each player earns half points, rounded up. The spread has no bearing on anything.

For weeks with the full 16 possible games, confidence values are 1-16. There are fewer games during weeks with byes; for those, the top value is 16, then on down. So, a week with 14 games will have confidences ranging from 16 down to 3.

You can enter picks for future games at any time, even for future weeks. This will be useful if you're going on vacation, for example. You could, in theory, enter your picks for the entire season at the start. You can change picks until they close (see next paragraph).

Picks for a game close at the top of the hour (i.e. for a 5:30 kickoff, picks close at 5). I will not intervene if you miss a pick. Note that there are several Thursday, Friday and Saturday games over the season. If your user settings allow it and you're missing a pick, you will be automatically reminded by e-mail the day before a deadline. I highly recommend keeping this setting on.

Once a game is closed for picking, anyone can see anyone else's picks for that game.

The tiebreaker - always denoted by this color - is used in case of ties in total points for a week. It is the total combined score for that game - usually the Monday Night game. If the tiebreaker also ends up in a tie, then ... it's a tie. This only really matters for the pay version, but the pool is set up to handle that situation.

There is no tiebreaker for the season. Just tell yourself "I shoulda picked Oakland in Week Four!".

Your worst two weeks of the season will be automatically dropped from the season point totals. This will show on the third week. It is possible (but not likely) to win money on one of your dropped weeks (pay version).

Special Pay-Version-Only section:

Below is the generic table for all pools' payouts. The splits depend on the number of (paid) players:

n 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
1-6 100  
7-10 67 33  
11-15 55 30 15  
16-20 50 30 15 5  
21-25 40 25 20 10 5  
26-35 35 22 18 12 8 5  
36-45 30 20 15 12 10 8 5  
46-50 30 20 14 12 9 7 5 3  
51-9999 25 18 15 12 10 8 6 4 2
n: number of players

For the NFL pool, the total pot is divided between weekly and season winners.

Example: Suppose there are 22 paid players with a $34 buy-in.
The total pot is therefore 22 * $34 = $748.
Half ($374) would go to weekly winnings, and half to the season winners.
There are 17 weeks in the season, so each week would be allocated $374 / 17 = $22 in winnings (it always comes to $1 per player).
From the table above, 22 players means a split of 40/25/20/10/5% of the pot.
So for each week, the top five finishers would get $8.80 / $5.50 / $4.40 / $2.20 / $1.10.
For the season, the same splits would apply to the other $374, for $149.60 / $93.50 / $74.80 / $37.40 / $18.70

I pay out after the season is over. Don't worry, most of the players know where to find me.

All pay players are automatically entered in the free pool. This will require no extra work on your part. Picks for the pay version will be moved to the free one (or vice versa) provided you leave the box checked at the bottom of the Set Picks page. You're welcome to uncheck it and have different picks for the two versions, but I doubt people will do this much. The last thing you want is to do better on the free one and get no extra money for it. :)

Disclaimers

The web hosting is through a third-party company. I don't have physical access to the machine this runs on. Once in a blue moon, something happens to bring it down, and there's little I can do to get it back up except bark at customer service. If it's down for a days near the end of a week (very unlikely), I'll probably just void the week and spread the weekly pot over the other 16 weeks.

If a page doesn't load or looks funny, reload it in a minute. It's highly likely I'm tinkering with something. If it's still wonky after a few minutes, please mail me.

I'm always open to suggestions, especially on how to make the site easier to use or present data in a different way.

-- James
This pool is not endorsed by Monterey Gourmet Foods and should not be played using its precious resources.