🛡️ Commissioner setup guide

Survivor Pool — Commissioner Setup Guide

Every Survivor / Eliminator setting explained in plain English — lives & strikes, mulligans, buy-backs, no-pick handling, running through the playoffs and how teams free up, auto-pilot, flexible payouts, tiebreakers, and the organizer cut.

Survivor pool commissioners · 9 min read

A Survivor (or “Eliminator”) pool is the simplest season-long game to explain and one of the stickiest to play: each week every entry picks one team to win, and as long as that team wins, the entry survives. Lose, and you’re out. The last entry standing takes the pot.

ChooseASquare gives you a lot of dials to shape how forgiving, how long, and how lucrative your pool is. This guide walks through every setting the commissioner controls — grouped by where you’ll find it in the create wizard and the console — so you know exactly what each one does and when to use it.

Creating your pool

The create wizard sets the essentials; everything is editable afterward on the Settings tab.

Style: NFL Survivor (auto-loads the schedule and grades winners for you), March Madness (the bracket variant — each tournament round is a “week”), or Custom (any sport/league, where you add each week’s games and enter results yourself).
Format — start week: Which NFL week the pool begins. Start at Week 1 for a full season, or a later week to run a mid-season pool — the schedule loads only the weeks in your window.
Format — how far it runs: To the end of the regular season (Weeks start–18), regular season + playoffs (keeps going through the Super Bowl), or a set number of weeks from your start week.
Lives per entryPro: How many wrong picks an entry survives. 1 = classic single-elimination (one loss and you’re out). 2–3 lives keep more people alive longer — great for casual groups.
Standard vs Advanced setup: Standard applies popular defaults and drops you on the console. Advanced opens the full Settings editor so you can fine-tune every rule below before you share the link.
Name, entry fee & payment: Name the pool and set the buy-in. If you charge a fee, players pay you through the app’s payment step at join (your Venmo/PayPal/cash options are prefilled from your org settings) — you never route money through us.

Lives, strikes & missed picks

Lives per entry (strikes): The number of losses an entry can absorb before elimination. Shown to players as “lives” or “strikes.”
A tie counts as a loss: When on, an NFL tie costs the entry a life just like a loss. Turn off to treat ties as a push (no harm).
MulligansPro: A number of “free” wrong picks each entry can use across the season, on top of their lives. A soft safety net for a friendlier pool.
If a player misses a pick: Choose what happens when someone forgets to pick: it counts as a strike (default, keeps people engaged), auto-assign the week’s biggest favorite, or carry over their previous week’s team.
Auto-pilotPro: Let players opt an entry into auto-picking at lock time if they haven’t picked — by biggest favorite, best record, or random. Reduces accidental eliminations; players choose the strategy on their entry.

Teams, reuse & the playoffs

One team per week, no reuse: The classic rule: once you pick a team, you can’t pick it again all season. Turn reuse on for a looser pool where teams are unlimited.
Double-pick weeksPro: Weeks where each entry must pick two different winning teams to survive — a mid-season difficulty spike you can schedule on specific weeks.
Run through the playoffs: Keeps the pool going past Week 18 — Wild Card, Divisional, Conference Championships, and the Super Bowl load automatically as the bracket is set.
How teams free up for the playoffs: When no-reuse is on: “reset” frees every team again for the postseason (regular-season usage forgiven), “free” removes reuse limits entirely in the playoffs, and “strict” carries the no-reuse rule all the way through.

Buy-backs

Let eliminated players re-enter — great for keeping a big group engaged and growing the pot.

Allow buy-backsPro: Turn on to let eliminated entries pay to re-enter and keep playing.
Through which week: The last week a player may buy back in — after this, eliminations are final.
Buy-back fee: The base cost to re-enter. Set a flat fee, or add a weekly rise so buying back later costs more (a rising fee nudges people to stay alive). Buy-back fees fold into the pot.

Entry fee, pot & organizer cut

Entry fee: What each entry pays to join. The prize pot is entries × fee (plus any buy-back fees), minus your organizer cut.
Allow “pay later”: Let players join now and confirm payment later, or require payment confirmation to join.
Organizer cut: What your program keeps off the top before payouts — a percentage of the pool, a flat total, or a flat amount per entry. Set on the Settings tab; the prize pot everyone sees is always shown net of it. No fundraising add-on required.
Guaranteed pot / floorPro: Optionally guarantee a minimum pot regardless of how many join, or fix the pot to a set amount.

Payouts & tiebreakers

Decide how the pot is split when the season ends — from a simple winner-take-all to layered side pots.

Payout mode: Split among the last survivor(s), or pay top-N finishers.
Flexible payout bucketsPro: Carve the pot into buckets: a “winner” bucket (last survivor), “milestone” buckets (everyone who reached Week N splits a share — keeps eliminated players invested), and a “side-margin” bucket (biggest cumulative winning margin). Percentages you control.
Consolation: A small payout to the last entry(ies) eliminated — a nice touch so the runner-up isn’t empty-handed.
Tiebreaker: How to settle it if multiple entries survive to the end or are eliminated together: split evenly, fewest strikes, fewest wins used, or “keep playing” (the pool revives a same-week total wipeout so it plays to a single survivor).

Picks, privacy & entries

Hide picks until lock: Keep everyone’s weekly picks private until the deadline so nobody copies — reveal after lock.
Pick deadline: Lock all picks at the first game of the week, or lock each pick at its own kickoff (letting players wait on later games).
Entries per personPro: Allow one entry each, a set number, or unlimited — more entries means a bigger pot and more chances to survive.
Commissioner proxy picks: From the console you can set, fix, or clear any entry’s weekly pick — even after lock — for a player who couldn’t get to their phone.

Running the pool

Load the NFL season: One click builds every week and fills in the games from the live schedule (your start week + playoffs if enabled). Custom sports: add each week’s games from the console.
Auto-scoringPro: Finals sync from the live scoreboard daily and apply strikes/eliminations automatically — or score any week by hand from the console.
Finalize & pay winners: Finalizing ranks the survivors, applies your payout rules and tiebreaker, and computes each winner’s cut. Winners then appear in Payout Assist with one-tap pay links and a sent/received handshake.
Who’s left / what-if plannerPro: A commissioner tool that projects each week’s hypothetical results so you can see who survives, when the pool would end, and each entry’s remaining team runway.

FAQ

How many people do I need for a Survivor pool?

Any size works. Small groups (10–20) often run single-life and play a few weeks; large groups (50+) usually add multiple lives, buy-backs, and playoffs so it lasts and the pot grows. Everything scales from one shareable link.

What’s the difference between lives, mulligans, and buy-backs?

Lives are how many losses you can take before elimination. Mulligans are extra “free misses” on top of your lives. Buy-backs let an already-eliminated entry pay to re-enter. You can use any combination.

Can a Survivor pool run into the playoffs?

Yes. Turn on “run through the playoffs” and the postseason weeks (Wild Card → Super Bowl) load automatically. You also control how teams free up for the playoffs — reset everyone’s usage, remove reuse limits, or stay strict.

How do payouts work?

The pot is entries × fee plus any buy-back fees, minus your organizer cut. At finalize it’s split by your rules — winner-take-all, top-N, or flexible buckets (winner + milestone + side-margin) — with your tiebreaker deciding ties. Winners show up in Payout Assist to pay out.

Do players pay ChooseASquare?

No. Players pay you (the organizer) directly through the app’s payment step — Venmo, PayPal, or cash. We never touch the money; your organizer cut is simply what you keep before paying out.

Ready to run yours?

Set it up in a few minutes — every option here is right there in the wizard.

Start a Survivor pool →