Creating and running a pool
One form makes the pool live; everything after that happens in the pool's settings.
Creating the pool
Creating a pool is one page at /pool/create with four stacked cards to fill in, and the pool is active and joinable the moment you press Create Pool.
Start from the + New Pool button in the header of your pools list, or the dashed New pool link in the sidebar. There is nothing to step through: the whole form is one page, with a Summary panel on the right that echoes your choices back and always reads Access: Private · invite only.
- 1 Name the pool. The field is required and takes 3 to 50 characters; the placeholder suggests something like Office Football Pool 2026.
- 2 Choose the sport. NFL is already selected. NBA and More sports are greyed out with a Coming Soon chip and cannot be picked.
- 3 Choose the duration: Full Season, or Partial Season with a start week, an end week and a running count of the weeks you have selected.
- 4 Choose the format. Beat the Spread is preselected, and any format an admin has not switched on shows as a disabled Coming Soon card.
- 5 Press Create Pool. The button stays disabled until both a sport and a format are selected.
There is no launch step and no draft state. The pool is live as soon as the form is submitted, and the Pool Created Successfully modal has exactly one button, Continue to Pool Settings. If you want members held out while you finish setting up, pause the pool — there is no launch button to go looking for.
You never choose a season. The pool attaches to whichever regular season the league currently has marked as current, and if there is no current season, creation is blocked with a message and you land back on your pools list.
Once the season is under way, Full Season is disabled with a Not available label and a notice tells you which week the season is in. Partial Season is then badged Recommended, the earliest start week you can choose is the current one, and weeks already played are shown as completed. The server applies the same two rules, so a pool cannot be backdated into a played week.
If you already have a finished pool, the right rail offers Import pool. Importing copies that pool's settings, rules and scoring, and brings the old roster across as Imported members, who still have to be invited before they can play.
What you can't change later
The format is fixed once the pool exists, the season was never yours to choose, and no pool you own can be switched to public — the name, the scoring detail and the member cap can all still be edited.
The create page says it on the Format card: this cannot be changed after creation. Rules & Scoring then shows the format read-only for the life of the pool. If you picked the wrong one, the only remedy is to delete the pool from the danger zone at the foot of the General section and create it again — deleting stays available until the season completes. There is no conversion between formats.
Visibility is the one that catches owners out. The Access & Privacy control offers Private - Invite only and a disabled Public - Coming soon, and a public value submitted anyway is turned back to private when it saves. Public pools are created and run centrally, so there is no path from your own settings to a pool that strangers can browse.
The member cap has a deadline. You set the maximum yourself, anywhere from 2 to 30 and never below the number of members already active, but once the pool's games have begun the field locks at whatever you settled on and reads locked - games started. Decide the size of the pool before kickoff.
Setting the rules
Everything you configure after creation lives in the pool's settings at /pools/:id/settings — work down the side nav and press Done on the last section.
Creating the pool takes one short form. Setting it up does not, and that is the part to leave time for: rules, scoring, winners, capacity and invitations are each their own section. The success modal drops you straight into them, a slim previous-and-next footer moves you between sections in order, and the last one shows a Done button that returns you to the pool.
- General — name, description, schedule, and the delete button.
- Rules & Scoring — pick deadline and auto-pick, with the format shown read-only.
- Survivor Rules — survivor pools only.
- Winners & Awards — places, awards and tie policies.
- Access & Privacy — who can join, and the member cap.
- Members & Groups — invitations, the roster, and member groups.
- Playoff Pool — start a playoff competition from this pool.
- SportBucks Planner — not shown on survivor pools.
The side nav is not the same on every pool. Sections appear and disappear with the format, so read the list above as the longest version rather than a checklist you have to finish.
When the rules are settled you can freeze them. Finalize Rules, confirmed through the Finalize Pool Rules dialog, stamps a Locked badge on Rules & Scoring and makes those cards read-only. Leave it until you are sure, because it is a deliberate lock rather than an ordinary save.
Owners and managers
The owner is the account that created the pool and is the only member whose changes are accepted; a manager can open every settings page, but each save is refused.
Owner is not a role. A pool has one owner — the account that created it — and members hold one of two roles, manager or player. The creator joins the roster as an active manager as well as being the owner, which is where the confusion starts.
Promoting someone to manager gives them the settings and management pages, not the ability to save on them. Editing pool details, rules, access and capacity, inviting or removing members, approving join requests and pausing the pool all authorize on the owner or a site admin, so a co-manager's save comes back refused. Treat a manager as a reader of the settings screens, not a second commissioner.
Promote to manager from the row actions in Members & Groups, at /pools/:id/settings/members. A manager can be changed back to a player from the same place, except the pool's only manager, and managers cannot be removed from a pool at all, so promote sparingly.
Pausing a pool
Pausing is the status chip in the settings header, only the owner can move it, and while a pool is paused members are sent to a Pool Paused page and cannot make picks.
The chip sits at the top of the pool's settings page. It reads Pool active — Members can make picks and view standings, or Pool paused — Picks and standings are hidden from members, with a toggle beside it. Switching it off asks you to confirm first.
Owners often go looking for a launch button and find this chip instead. Because the pool is live from the moment it is created, pausing is how you hold members out while the rules are still moving.
- A member who opens a paused pool lands on a Pool Paused page instead of the dashboard.
- The owner keeps full access, and sees an amber Pool is paused banner with a link back to settings.
- Only the owner or a site admin can move the chip. A manager can reach the page and read it.
Pausing is an update to the pool, so it stops being possible once the season is complete. A finished pool cannot be paused or resumed.
How many pools you can own
You can own a limited number of active pools at once, and the create page tells you when you have reached the limit and stops you creating another until a slot frees up.
The limit counts active pools you own. Pools you were invited to do not count against it, and neither do pools that have finished, so completing a season or deleting a pool frees a slot.
At the limit, the create page shows an amber banner naming your current count and the maximum, and the submit button changes from Create Pool to Pool Limit Reached and stops working. The same check runs on the server, so resubmitting the form does not get round it.
The maximum is a site-wide setting rather than a fixed platform rule, so read the number off that banner rather than from anywhere else. Site administrators are exempt from the limit.
Importing a previous pool creates a new pool too, so the same limit applies to imports. At the limit, complete or delete an existing pool before you import.
Finishing a season
A pool finishes when its season completes, and from that point it is frozen: settings changes, pausing, member removals and deleting the pool are all refused.
Finishing is not something you do, and it does not track your own week range. It follows the league season the pool is attached to: every game in that season has to be played. A pool that ran weeks 6 to 12 therefore counts as live for weeks after its last pick, and then stops accepting changes the moment the season itself is complete.
- Settings can no longer be saved, and the pause chip stops working.
- Members can no longer be removed, and players can no longer change the name they use in that pool.
- Join requests can no longer be approved, and the card that lists them is gone.
- The pool cannot be deleted either, so a finished pool stays in your history.
Two things get easier. The finished pool stops counting against the number of active pools you can own, and it becomes available on the create page's Import pool list, so next season can start from the settings and roster you already tuned.
A finished pool does not disappear. It sits on the Completed tab of your pools list, and the freeze stops changes to it rather than access to it.
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