About prediction modes and pool types

When you create a pool, the first choice you make is what kind of prediction it runs on. This decision shapes everything downstream: how picks are entered, how scoring works, and how the leaderboard reads. Here's what each mode means and when to use it.

Pick'em vs bracket vs survivor

Pick'em is the simplest and most common format. Everyone in the pool picks a winner for every game on the slate each week. A correct pick earns a point, points stack across the season, and the highest total leads the leaderboard. It's the format most office and group pools default to, because there's nothing to explain beyond "pick who wins."

Bracket pools are built for knockout tournaments rather than a weekly schedule, think a tennis draw or a college football playoff. Instead of picking winners week by week, you predict how the bracket plays out through its elimination rounds, and your score reflects how far your picks actually advance.

Survivor flips the risk profile entirely. Each week you pick one team to win, but you can't pick that same team again for the rest of the season. Win, and you carry on. Lose, and you're out. It's a sudden-death format, so it suits groups who want tension that builds as the season narrows the field down to one player standing.

The right mode depends on what your group wants to argue about. Pick'em rewards consistency over a full season. Bracket rewards reading a tournament correctly all at once. Survivor rewards nerve, since one bad pick ends your run regardless of how well you've done up to that point.

Score and table modes

Not every prediction is about picking a winner. Two other modes change what a "correct" prediction even means:

• Score predictions ask players to call the exact scoreline of a game, not just who wins. This is a stricter, higher-skill version of pick'em: getting the winner right isn't enough on its own, you're graded on how close your predicted score lands to the real one.
• Table modes move the prediction away from individual games entirely. Instead of picking game-by-game outcomes, players predict how a season's standings will finish, and scoring compares their predicted table to the real one once it settles.

These modes suit different moments in a season. Score predictions work well for pools built around a single game or a short run of fixtures where the scoreline itself is the interesting question. Table modes suit longer competitions where the real debate is "who finishes where" rather than any one result.

When you're setting up a pool, choose the prediction type that matches what your group actually wants to bet bragging rights on: weekly winners, a tournament bracket, a survive-or-go-home format, exact scorelines, or a final table. The mode you pick here determines what the pick screen and leaderboard look like for everyone who joins your pool afterward, so it's worth matching it to your group before you share the link.