Confidence Pool
Pick winners — and back your best calls.
A Pick’Em with a twist: each week, entries rank their picks by confidence (1 up to the number of games, each value used once). Nail your high-confidence pick and bank big points; miss it and get nothing. Weekly + season standings with a featured-game tiebreaker, and the pool can run on through the playoffs to the Super Bowl.
Great for:NFL & college season poolsOffice leagues that want more strategyBooster fundraisersAny sport with a weekly schedule
How it runs
Confidence Pool, start to finish.
01
Set the rules
Choose confidence scoring, your entry fee, the weeks, and how picks lock.
02
Build the schedule
Pull each week’s games from the games library and choose the featured tiebreaker game.
03
Rank & score
Entries pick winners and assign confidence points. Enter results and standings update automatically.
Everything you can customise
Features, options & plans.
Tune every detail to fit your group — and see exactly what is on each plan.
＋ Add-on = a paid add-on, included on Pro Commissioner. A Contest Pass unlocks the Pro tools on one contest — it does not include separately-sold modules like Fundraising, or anything account-wide such as extra admins. See full pricing →
One contest, one payment
Running just one pool? Skip the subscription.
A Contest Pass unlocks every Pro Commissioner tool on this one contest — payment reconciliation, your own branding, automatic reminders, auto-scoring and advanced reports. Paid once, no renewal, and it lasts as long as the contest does. Priced by how many entries you need.
Bigger sizes cost less per entry. Outgrow the one you picked and you can resize later, paying only the difference.
Games library
Pick your game — we bring the teams.
On Pro Commissioner, choose your matchup from our synced library: team names, logos and start times come pre-loaded. On any plan you can always type in team names yourself.
More leagues added regularly.
The complete guide
How a Confidence Pool works.
Think of it as a pick’em with strategy: you’re not just picking winners — you’re ranking how confident you are in every pick. Here’s exactly how a confidence pool works, with a scored example, strategy, the rules you can set, and how to run one without a spreadsheet.
What is a confidence pool?
A confidence pool is a weekly pick’em with one extra layer: you don’t just pick the winner of each game — you rank how sure you are. With N games on the slate, every player assigns each pick a confidence value from 1 to N, using each number exactly once. A correct pick earns the points you assigned it; a wrong pick earns nothing.
The most points wins the week, and points accumulate into a season-long standings. Because your most confident pick is worth the most, nailing your “locks” — and avoiding a blown one — is where pools are won and lost.
See a week scored
Say four games are on the slate. You pick a winner in each and rank them 4 (most confident) down to 1:
| Game | Your pick | Confidence | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chiefs vs. Raiders | Chiefs | 4 | ✅ +4 |
| Eagles vs. Giants | Eagles | 3 | ✅ +3 |
| Bears vs. Lions | Lions | 2 | ❌ 0 |
| Bills vs. Jets | Bills | 1 | ✅ +1 |
Three of four hit — but your “2” missed, so it earns nothing. Week total: 4 + 3 + 0 + 1 = 8. A rival who also went 3-for-4 but put their big number on the game you both missed scores far less. It’s not how many you get right — it’s which ones.
How confidence scoring works
Each week you list the games, pick a winner in each, then rank your picks by confidence. Your surest pick gets the highest number; your shakiest gets 1.
- 16 games on the slate → assign 16 down to 1, each number used once.
- A correct pick banks the points you put on it; a miss earns 0.
- Your weekly score is the sum of the points on your correct picks.
- Weekly scores roll up into a season standings to crown an overall champion.
Confidence pool vs. a regular pick’em
A straight pick’em gives one point per correct pick — a blowout and a coin-flip count the same. A confidence pool weights each pick by how sure you were, so your best reads matter most and a missed lock can sink an otherwise great week.
| Straight pick’em | Confidence pool | |
|---|---|---|
| Points per game | Always 1 | You choose (1…N) |
| What it rewards | Accuracy only | Accuracy + ranking |
| Feel | Simpler | More strategic |
Ready to run your own confidence pool?
Spin one up in under five minutes — always free to run, and players rank their picks right on their phone.
Strategy: where to put your big numbers
- Spend your highest numbers on the safest games — big favorites, not the most exciting matchups. The standings live and die on the top of your ranking.
- Rank underdogs low. If you love an upset, give it a middle number — being right on a 3 barely helps, while being wrong on a 15 is a disaster.
- Don’t agonize over your lowest picks; a 1 or 2 barely moves you. Save your energy for the 12-and-up range.
- Biggest beginner mistake: putting a big number on the “fun” pick. Confidence pools reward boring, high-probability picks at the top.
- Check injuries, weather and line moves before you lock — a late scratch can turn a “lock” into a trap.
- Over a season, consistency beats heroics: steady weeks near the top win more championships than one monster week.
Rules and variations you can set
- Straight-up winners or against the spread (ATS).
- Push handling: when a pick ties the spread, score it zero or award half its confidence — your call.
- Weekly winners plus a season-long champion.
- A featured-game tiebreaker — entries predict the total combined points to break ties.
- One entry per person or several, with unique-value enforcement so nobody double-assigns a number.
Running a confidence pool the easy way
ChooseASquare builds each week’s schedule from the games library (any league), enforces unique confidence values automatically, and scores every week the instant results are final — keeping weekly and season standings live.
Players rank their picks by dragging or with up/down arrows on their phone — no number-juggling, no manual math, no spreadsheet. You share one link, set how pushes and tiebreakers work, and let it run. Add the optional Fundraising module and the same pool also raises money for your program.
Is a confidence pool right for your group?
Confidence pools are a perfect step up for office leagues, friend groups and booster clubs that already run a pick’em and want more strategy and season-long stakes. If your group prefers last-one-standing drama, look at a Survivor pool; for a one-game party, Football Squares is the classic. But for week-after-week engagement that rewards real football knowledge, a confidence pool is one of the stickiest you can run.
FAQ
Confidence Pool, answered.
What’s a Confidence Pool?+
It’s a Pick’Em where you also rank how sure you are. With N games you assign confidence points 1 through N — each value once. A correct pick earns the points you put on it; a miss earns zero. Strategy is in where you place your big numbers.
How is it different from a regular Pick’Em?+
Same picks, richer scoring. A straight Pick’Em gives one point per correct pick; a Confidence Pool weights each pick by how confident you were — so your best calls matter most.
What plan do I need?+
Confidence scoring is included on Pro Commissioner. (The free plan runs straight-up Pick’Em.)
How do ties break?+
Each week has a featured game; entries predict its total combined score. Ties break by most points that week, then closest to the actual total, then earliest submitted.
Does it work beyond the NFL?+
Yes — build each week’s schedule from any league in your games library.
Every Pick’Em setting explained — straight-up vs against-the-spread, confidence and bonus picks, picks-per-week and custom win/push points (SuperContest-style), tiebreakers, weekly/season/segment/perfect-week prizes, the prize pot and orga…
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Run a Confidence Pool for your group.
Free to start, set up in minutes — and you keep every dollar.
No player fees · No percentage of the pot · Your money stays yours
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