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How-to guide · Playbook

Death pool software — yes, it exists

Most celebrity death pools are still run on a spreadsheet, a group chat and one exhausted commissioner. This one drafts in a live room, watches Wikidata for every name on every roster, and keeps score on a graveyard board all year — you just confirm the hits.

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Licensed module · you keep 100% of the pot · 7 min read

A death pool — also called a dead pool or a ghoul pool — is simple to explain and miserable to administer. Everyone drafts a list of famous people; when one dies, whoever had them scores. The hard parts are all bookkeeping: keeping the draft honest, noticing a death at all, settling whether a name was already taken, and applying whatever baroque scoring rule your league voted in years ago. That is exactly the work software should be doing, and it is what the Draft Room’s Death Pool mode does.

Why software beats the spreadsheet

Three jobs it takes off you

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It watches so you don’t have to

The pool checks every drafted name against Wikidata several times a day. When someone passes, it queues the hit for you — no more finding out in a group chat three weeks late, and no more arguing about who posted it first.

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A scoreboard people actually open

Every hit becomes a tombstone on your league’s graveyard board, with dates, ages and points. It’s the part that makes a death pool fun to follow all year instead of a spreadsheet nobody reloads.

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Your scoring, not a fixed formula

Flat points, age-weighted (a 40-year-old is worth more than a 92-year-old), or your own age brackets — plus uniqueness bonuses, late-round bonuses and season bonuses. Whatever your league argued into existence, it can be configured.

Set it up

Four steps to a running pool

Create the league

Start a Draft Room contest and switch on Death Pool mode. Set roster size, whether names are exclusive to one team, and how many keepers carry to next year.

Load the names (or don’t)

Pre-load a pool of candidates, or run an open draft where whoever is on the clock searches Wikipedia live and adds anyone. Members build private ranked prospect lists in advance.

Draft together

The live draft room runs a snake or auction draft with a pick clock, auto-picks from each member’s list if they’re away, and an optional 👍/👎 notability vote so the league can reject someone nobody has heard of.

Let the season run

Deaths are detected automatically and wait for your confirmation before points apply. Standings, tombstones and bonuses update themselves.

What’s in it

Everything a death pool commissioner does by hand

Automatic detection, human confirmation

Wikidata is checked several times a day for every rostered name. A match becomes a pending hit that YOU confirm — so a bad edit on the internet never silently changes your standings.

Age-weighted & bracket scoring

Points = a ceiling minus age at death, or your own bands (65 and under = 40 points, 66-80 = 20, older = 5). Or keep it flat: one point per hit.

Stackable season bonuses

Add as many as you like: first death of the season, last death of the season, or the death closest to a date you pick — a birthday, New Year’s Eve, Day of the Dead. Ties pay every tied team in full.

Uniqueness & draft-position bonuses

Reward the team that was the only one on a name, or the one that found them in round 10 instead of round 1.

Mid-season redraft

Set a drop window — every team MUST release two names, or MAY release up to two — then run a short redraft where each team drafts back exactly as many as it dropped. Names lost to a death are never replaced.

Keepers year over year

Each team designates a set number of names to carry into next season’s draft, so a league that runs for a decade keeps its rivalries.

Commissioner controls

Confirm or reverse a death, mark one by hand, undo a pick, skip a team that’s asleep, pause and resume the draft, and see an audit trail of everything.

Entry fees & payouts, if you want them

Charge an entry fee, set the prize split, and collect by Venmo, PayPal, check or cash. ChooseASquare never holds the money and never takes a cut of the pot.

Pricing

What it costs to run

The Draft Room module is $49 per league, per year, and Death Pool mode is an add-on at +$19 per league, per year. One commissioner pays; everyone else plays free. Entry fees, if your pool charges any, go straight to the organizer — ChooseASquare never holds the money and never takes a percentage of a pot.

Promotional discounts run from time to time and are shown on the Draft Room page and pricing page; the figures above are the standard annual prices.

FAQ

Death pools, answered

Is there dedicated software for running a celebrity death pool?

Yes. ChooseASquare’s Draft Room module has a purpose-built Death Pool mode: a live draft room for picking real people, automatic death detection from Wikidata that the commissioner confirms, a tombstone scoreboard, age-weighted or bracket scoring with season bonuses, keeper support, and a mid-season redraft. It replaces the spreadsheet-plus-group-chat setup most pools still run on.

How does it know when someone dies?

Every name on every roster carries a Wikidata identifier, and the platform re-checks those records several times a day. When a death date appears, the hit is queued as pending and the commissioner confirms it before any points move. Automatic detection with a human in the loop — not a bot rewriting your standings off a rumour.

How is a death pool scored?

However your league likes. Flat scoring gives every hit the same points. Age-weighted scoring pays a ceiling minus the person’s age at death, so younger (riskier) picks are worth far more. Age brackets let you write your own bands. On top of that you can add a uniqueness bonus for being the only team on a name, a draft-position bonus for late-round finds, and season bonuses for the first death, the last death, or the death closest to a chosen date.

What is a mid-season redraft?

An optional shake-up part-way through the year. The commissioner sets a deadline by which every team must release a set number of names (or may release up to that number), then runs a short draft where each team picks back exactly as many as it released. Anyone lost to a death is not replaced, so rosters keep thinning as the season goes on.

Can we keep the same names next year?

Yes — set how many keepers each team may designate and they carry into next season’s draft instead of returning to the pool, optionally at a draft-pick cost.

Do we have to draft live, or can we do it offline?

Either. The draft room runs a live snake or auction draft with a pick clock, chat, and auto-picks from each member’s ranked prospect list if they can’t attend. A commissioner can also enter picks by hand.

Can the league vote on whether a pick counts?

Yes. Turn on the notability vote and every pick goes to a quick 👍/👎 with a timer — no vote counts as a yes, and a thumbs-down majority sends the pick back. Or require commissioner approval on every pick instead.

Is a death pool legal?

A private, for-fun pool among friends is how most leagues run, and many are run with no money at all or as a fundraiser. Laws on contests and wagering vary by state and country, so check your local rules before charging entry fees. ChooseASquare is software only: it never holds funds and never takes a cut.

Is it tasteful?

That’s your league’s call and always has been. The tooling is deliberately dry — a graveyard board, dates and points — and there’s nothing celebratory in the product beyond the scoreboard. Pools that want the dark humour bring it themselves.

What does it cost?

The Draft Room module is licensed per league per year, with the Death Pool mode as an add-on to it. Current prices are shown below and on the Draft Room page; both are annual, per league, and the organizer pays — players never pay a platform fee.

Not the pool you meant?

The same engine runs ordinary season-long draft leagues — see the draft & keeper league guide — and the platform also runs survivor, Pick’Em and squares pools.

Retire the spreadsheet

Draft in a live room, let Wikidata do the watching, and confirm the hits when they come.

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