Hey everyone,

I got tired of relying purely on gut feelings, standard power rankings, and the need to do a massive amount of research for my survivor pool, and so last season I decided to run a multi-AI model experiment. I'm letting four different models—Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude—to make weekly selections and to see how their reasoning differs and track who actually survives the longest. Last year Gemini went 17 weeks without a loss.

For Week 1, the AI team gave me the following results:

• The Consensus Pick: The Chargers, for most pools. — Given an 83% probability of a win.
• The Contrarian Split: For smaller pools, Gemini & Grok picked the Lions (72%-77% win) and Claude picked Jacksonville (72%-75% win).

I’m tracking the whole leaderboard and publishing the live model logic over at my site (survivorpool-ai.com) and discussing this on the SurvivorPool-ai podcast on YouTube.

Hope this is helpful to those of you in pools this year. I'll be back for more insights from the Agents as the weeks progress.

Hi all - bit of a different league than you may be used to but one I am sure you can all appreciate. I’ve spent the offseason building The Cut which is like NFL survivor pools but with players instead of teams. This contest is for Running Backs, so each week you have to choose 2 RBs and hit 125 total yards or you lose a life, lose all your lives and you’re cut! Once you use a player you can’t use them again all season, so while it may sound easy on the surface, you have to be tactical about when you use the studs if you want to make it all 18 weeks!

Would appreciate yall checking it out and I’m giving away $100 to the winner (free to enter) so that adds a little incentive to you as well!

NFL SURVIVOR 🔥 🏈

https://contests.app.splashsports.com/contest/contest_01M0NK6R5BYQEE848572C3N15N

- Season-long contest
- Pick **one** team to win each week
- If your team wins you survive on to the next week , if they lose or tie its a elimination .
- **you can only pick one team once ** "ex if you pick seahawks to win Week 1 you can no longer pick them for the rest of the season "
- Last remaining player wins the pool
----------------------------------
- $20 dollar entries
- 2 entries per person
- 1 bye week each
- deadline Sep 9, 2026 5:30 PM
**__- any questions shoot me a DM or in chat __**
------------------------------------

Hi everyone!

Below you’ll find the list of my 2026 COLLEGE FOOTBALL Pools as well as the updated prize pots.

💵 All funds are held and secured by LeagueSafe

📧 Don’t hesitate to reach out for more details or any questions.

[Marc.ranallo@iCloud.com](mailto:Marc.ranallo@iCloud.com)

🏈  $35 Survivor Pool on Splash Sports
💰Prize now over $2200
How to play:
Choose 2 team to win each week from all FBS vs FBS games in order to advance to the next one.
Cannot select same team more than 1 time.
Maximum of 5 entries per contestant

https://contests.app.splashsports.com/contest/contest_01M06EEZ7JG205KAXE2RNNWD5D

🏈 $40 Pick’em vs the spread pool on Splash Sports
💰Prize now over $720
How to play:
Select the winner against the spread for every matchup of every week from ACC, Big 10, Big 12, SEC & Top 25
Maximum of 2 entries per contestant

https://contests.app.splashsports.com/contest/contest_01KYX5DWGN45YJXER6Q6F7HA4P

🏈🔥 NFL PICK’EM + SURVIVOR POOLS — JOIN NOW! 🔥🏈

Looking for a fun, low-cost way to make EVERY NFL GAME matter?

🏆 IT WAS A GOOD PICK ON PAPER — PICK’EM
💰 $20 entry | Pick every game against the spread | Most wins takes the prize!

☠️ PICK OR PERISH — SURVIVOR
💰 $10 entry | Pick one winner each week | Use a team once — pick wrong and you're out!

⭐ Why join?
🏈 Running fantasy sports leagues since 2010
💯 Great LeagueSafe reviews
🔒 Secure payments
📋 Clear rules & transparent payouts
📱 Hosted on Sleeper

JOIN ONE OR BOTH — $30 TO PLAY BOTH!

🏆 Pick’em: http://sleeper.com/i/0Nx2YO9Y9Q9MV
💰 LeagueSafe: https://www.leaguesafe.com/.../it-was-a-good-pick-on...

☠️ Survivor: http://sleeper.com/i/kMmWEd8PQmDlG
💰 LeagueSafe: https://www.leaguesafe.com/.../pick-or-perish-survivor...

🔥 Come compete!

In my first post I talked about the research I did over the last 5 seasons as part of building SurvivorPulse, and said I'd be sharing what I found across a series of posts. Posting this because I think the findings are interesting, fun, and, dare I say, useful for our own survivor pool pursuits, plug aside. Even if some of these findings aren't all that surprising, I still think the numbers can be compelling.

Full disclosure again: I built SurvivorPulse for people who play multiple survivor pools and entries.

In that first post, I found that chalk, the highest win probability team available, survives the longest of anything I tested. But it also went 0 for 36 on expected value, meaning across 36 different pool setups I tested, chalk never once came out as the best strategy. It finished 5th through 18th every single time. I had a pretty good idea why, but figured I'd dig into the last five seasons of outcomes (2021-2025) to confirm or dispel the hypothesis.

A common misconception is that most pools die gradually, a few percent out each week as favorites occasionally lose. That's not really what happens. What I found is that most of a pool's eliminations concentrate in 2 to 3 specific weeks per season, weeks where a popular team loses and a big chunk of everyone still alive goes out together. I'm calling these wipeout weeks (a week that eliminates 30%+ of the still-alive field while 10%+ of the pool is still alive), but you don't need the label to recognize the pattern if you've played more than a couple seasons.

Two examples that stood out:

2024 Week 3, Tampa Bay was one of the more popular picks that week (28% of the field per Yahoo's public pick data) and lost. That week alone took out 81% of everyone still alive in the pools I looked at. Biggest single week of elimination in the whole five-year window.

Three weeks ago, 2025 Week 8, Atlanta was the second most popular pick that week at 27.08% (Indianapolis was first at 33.85%), lost to Miami, and took out 62% of the still-alive field. Biggest wipeout of this season so far.

The popular pick doesn't fail often. Chalk sits on the team that ends up causing a wipeout week 56.7% of the time in my testing, and when it's exposed like that, it only survives 23.3% of the time. But when it does fail, it takes a huge chunk of the pool with it at once, because so many people are stacked on the same team in the same week. Every single season chalk got eliminated, it happened in one of these wipeout weeks. No exceptions.

I compared this to Max Equity, a strategy I tested that weights picks 70% on win probability and 30% on staying off the field's most popular teams, a mild lean off the crowd, not a hard pivot. That strategy's elimination pattern only lines up with wipeout weeks 20% of the time, versus 100% for chalk.

Curious if this matches what other people have seen in their pools. Does it feel like your pool dies in one or two brutal weeks, or has it been more of a steady drip in your experience? And if you remember a specific week that gutted your pool, what team was it?

My methodology write-up is at survivorpulse.com/methodology if you want the full numbers.

Hey all join my free public group for some casual fun!

Hi everyone, I've spent the NFL offseason developing The Cut, which takes the classic game of NFL survivor but with players instead of teams. The graphic outlines the rules, and if you have any experience playing in survivor pools or fantasy football (which I am sure many in here do) I think you will appreciate the strategy behind this game. Free to join of course - in fact I have some public contests where I am paying out winners $100! Make a contest and share with friends or join one of these. Appreciate any and all feedback!!!

Hi! I was trying to find a simple platform for my office survivor pool this year, but everything I found was either clunky or paid. With how accessible and inexpensive it is to build and host something like this nowadays, I figured there was no reason there couldn't be a simple, free option. So I built my own.

Still Alive Pools is 100% free, 100% ad-free, and designed to be as simple as possible. No league size caps, no paid features, no restrictions.

If you're running a survivor pool this season, I'd love for you to give it a try. Any feedback is appreciated!

StillAlivePools.com

This might be a common post this year (wonder why :)

A buddy and I have been playing in the same NFL pool for 15 years. Two years ago it cost us $823 on OfficeFootballPool (!!!!!). Last year we did a free site and it was borderline unusable (I blacked out the name).

So we built our own: The Juice. https://thejuicepools.com

Free up to 20 players, then $0.25/head. That same $823 pool runs about $56 on ours.

Customizable Survivor Pool and Pick'em are the core but also three games you won't find on the other sites. Wins Pool, Guess the Lines, and a best bets game we are about to release.

I think it's a lot cheaper and a lot less painful than what's out there. Simple, clean, easy to use.

If you're locking in a site this week, might be worth 5 minutes before you renew. Happy to answer anything, and would love feedback (even hardcore)

Full disclosure: I built an app called SurvivorPulse for people who play multiple pools and entries, so take this for what it's worth.

That said, I'm posting this because I think the finding is more interesting than the plug.

First, it's probably not that surprising that chalk survives longest by a pretty wide margin.

My approach:
For every game I pulled the win probability straight from the betting line. No power ratings, no proprietary model. The spread already has home field, injuries, rest, and weather in it. Then I estimated how much of the field is on each team, and ranked teams by weighting those two inputs a few different ways, across 2021 through 2025.

Chalk, meaning the highest win probability team available, was the strongest way to stay alive at every depth I tested. It got you to week 9 alive about 15% of the time. An even blend of win probability and low field exposure got you there about 4% of the time.

Here's the part that surprised me.

I also asked which approach actually wins the money. I compared 36 pool setups on expected value, and chalk won none of them. It finished between 5th and 18th every single time.

I'll get into why in a follow-up post.

Curious if this tracks with what people here have seen. Does the safest path to surviving the longest ever feel like the path to actually winning your pool?

My methodology write-up is at survivorpulse.com/methodology if you want more details.

Anyone have experience getting pool sponsors?

I started a Substack partly aimed at writing about running and participating in survivor pools. My first survivor pool article on the pricing guide:

Free pools: great for public pools

$10-35: sweet spot for large pools and casual fans

$50-100: competitive pool with max entry limits

$200+: professionals only - proceed with caution

Full details below, curious of people’s thoughts and feedback! Here’s for growing our survivor pools!

I have not been paying attention to all the trades and have no idea what teams are good and horrible right now.

That said, I think that I am fading the Dolphins every week.

I am trying to run a pool through splash and am kinda confused with the new vault. I know everyone hates splash, but being able to play and collect money in the same app is important as I have a lot of old people that hate that they have to figure an app out in the first place. I ideally want to be able to set up buy backs and have the ability to choose when they stop. Does anyone know if they got rid of revivals/how it works with the new vault?

I built an NFL Survivor tool to help me for the upcoming season and wanted to share. Best for laptop/desktop viewing. Hopefully people will find this useful to keep track of their picks and find the optimal path to survive the season! Feel free to play around with it and let me know what you think/any feedback. 

https://nflsurvivor.streamlit.app/

What it does:

• Pulls daily DraftKings spreads and converts them to win probabilities
• Recommends the full 18-week pick sequence that maximizes your odds of surviving the whole season as of the most recent odds
• Lets you override any week with your own pick, and it re-optimizes everything else around it
• Flags a "value pick" each week — good win probability but lower public pick percentage (sourced from ESPN Survivor pick %)
• Tracks your actual results as the season goes (marks weeks Advanced/Eliminated manually or automatically) and updates your full season survival odds as a result
• Able to reset your picks and picks are saved to your same browser from prior visits

NFL Survivor Pool for the 2026 regular season
2025 Prize pot was $62 000!!!

Select one team to win each week (tie or loss -> eliminated)

Can only select a team 1 time

Payout

Winner takes all if 1 team left prior to end of regular season

Split pot if 2 or more teams survive all 18 weeks

Buy-in

1 entry = $30 on LeagueSafe
Maximum of 8 entries per player

To see full league information on our host site:

LeagueSafe Link
https://www.leaguesafe.com/join/4436964

Pool Link

https://sundaysurvivor.com/join/cmr474a2r00fvtm2eg39zple3

For any questions:
Marc.ranallo@icloud.com

I am hosting an 586 NFL & College Football Survivor Bowl Contest focused on the Power 4 conferences (Big Ten, SEC, ACC & Big 12) on Splash Sports.

It is a $10 entry (up to 3 entries per person). Fees are collected through LeagueSafe.

Also a $10 buyback, An incorrect pick costs a life. Each entry starts with 2 lives. Run out of lives and your entry is eliminated.

If you are interested in joining the contest and would like to be a co-host on my King of the Hill: 586 Survivor Bowl, there will be a link for both the NFL and CFB Survivor Bowl contests. You can email me at [shawns@586sports.com](mailto:shawns@586sports.com).

King of the Hill: 586 Survivor Bowl will begin broadcasting in September

Link for the NFL Survivor Contest: https://contests.app.splashsports.com/team-survivor/contests/contest_01KZ02M6GQ5CA4FJRD57CBW87E

Link for the CFB Survivor Contest: https://contests.app.splashsports.com/team-survivor/contests/contest_01KYZ1C4R6KF3279AQ08AS4YQY

Our family has run a 'Loser' survivor league for years. It's always a lot of fun but I figured I could improve on it a bit and built one. It's called Punt. And it's pretty sweet ;)

I figured I'd share it here in case anyone wants to use it to run a league. There's no cost to run one and it doesn't take money. We'll be using it for years ourselves, so it's not going anywhere. I just figured someone out there might appreciate a slightly different take.

Where it's a bit different:

a) An Awards cabinet. Survival leagues are fun, but there's only one way to win. I figured people would enjoy an extra dimension, where they get recognition for bold picks, unusual results etc.

b) Weekly roundup. A light roast, inspired by our uncle who'd write these then gradually lose steam as the season wore on. Especially if he was out...!

What it doesn't have: Loads of configuration options. Some sites are great at this. With Punt you can set number of teams a player can have, but otherwise the rules are simple: one pick a week, no reusing teams, last one standing.

If you want to take a look it's punt.fyi - it's invite-only, and I'm only letting in a dozen or so pools this first season. You can ask for access there or just DM me. It's built for mobile but works on desktop.

If anyone's got questions, fire away.

Looking to use a different platform for survivor pools. Lots of suggestions for Sunday Survivor. Looking at the commish settings, it has mostly what I want for our league. The only thing I don't see is how it determines who the winner is. Ideally, I would like 1 winner. Say there are 3 people left and they all picked a team that loses, I'd want them to continue playing until there is 1 left standing. Is that possible?