Run a draft & keeper league

Draft a roster of names onto teams, score all season, and keep your best picks year to year. It’s the structure behind fantasy and keeper leagues — and the home of the cult-classic “death pool.”

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Licensed module · Friend groups, clubs & commissioners · 6 min read

A draft & keeper league takes the best part of fantasy — the draft, the season-long stakes, the keepers you build a dynasty around — and lets you run it on any pool of names. Pick a scoring system, draft to teams, and watch the standings move all year. One of the oldest and most beloved variants is the death pool: friends draft famous names and score when someone passes during the year. On ChooseASquare that’s an optional add-on, with automatic detection and a commissioner confirming every result.

Why it works

A season-long tradition

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One draft, a whole season

A draft weekend kicks it off, then a single roster keeps everyone invested for months. The draft itself becomes the event — many leagues turn it into a trip.

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Keepers make it a tradition

Protect your best picks year to year and the league builds history, rivalries, and bragging rights — the reason keeper leagues run for decades.

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Any pool of names

Athletes, celebrities, prospects, predictions — if it has a name and something happens to it over a season, you can draft it and score it.

Set it up

Four steps to draft day

Create the league

Set roster size, keeper count, and your scoring rules (flat, age-weighted, or custom). Pick the optional Death Pool flavor if you want automatic death-tracking.

Add teams & draft

Add each manager’s team, then draft names onto rosters — search real people so they’re pinned to a record. Exclusive ownership (one team per name) or shared.

Score the season

Points accrue as scored events happen; standings, hits, and tiebreakers update live for everyone to see.

Roll to next year

Finalize the season, open the next one, and each team protects its keepers. Un-kept names return to the free-agent pool for the draft.

FAQ

Draft & keeper leagues, answered

What is a draft & keeper league?

It’s a season-long game where managers draft a roster of names onto teams and score points as events happen through the season. “Keeper” means each year you can protect some of your roster and carry them into the next draft, so the league builds history over time.

What’s the “death pool” variant?

A long-running party-game tradition: each player drafts famous people, and you score when someone on your roster passes away during the year. On ChooseASquare it’s an optional add-on — rostered names are checked automatically against public records (Wikidata) a few times a day, every death is confirmed by the commissioner before points count, and it runs private with no cash prizes.

Can I use it for things other than a death pool?

Absolutely — that’s the whole idea. The engine is general: prediction drafts, longevity pools, fantasy-adjacent leagues, “who breaks out this year” drafts, and more. Death pool is just one scoring flavor.

How does scoring work?

Choose a preset — flat (one per hit), age-weighted (younger scores more), or custom age brackets — and layer on bonuses like uniqueness (only you had them), first-blood (first hit of the season), and draft-position weighting (rewarding late-round finds). Standings update automatically.

How do keepers and free agents work?

Before each new season’s draft, every team protects up to your keeper limit from last year’s roster. You can require keepers to cost a draft pick (or escalate yearly) and cap how many years a name can be kept. Everyone not kept goes back into the pool as a free agent.

How is it priced?

The Draft & Keeper League is a licensed module — a one-time license per league (flexible term), or included free on the All-Star plan. The Death Pool is an optional add-on on top. It isn’t part of the standard monthly plans.

Start your draft league

Set your roster, scoring, and keepers, draft to teams, and let the standings run all season.

Get started →