Making, changing and locking picks
Tap a team to pick, tap the other to change it, and each game locks at its own kickoff.
Where to make picks
Open the pool and choose the Make Picks tab — the page is at /pools/:id/makepicks, and the pool list and the pool dashboard both link straight to it.
The Make Picks tab inside a pool always leads here. From outside the pool there are three more ways in, and every one of them lands on the same page.
- The pool list at /pools has a Make Picks button on each pool card.
- When picks are due, the amber needs-attention strip at the top of that list carries a Make picks button.
- The week card on the pool dashboard has a button reading Make Picks, which changes to Review picks once you have picked every game.
The page opens on the season's current week. The numbered week chips along the top move between weeks, the current week is the one outlined in green, and adding ?week=N to the address opens a week directly.
A Print button sits on the toolbar above the games. It opens that week's picks in a new tab, laid out for printing.
Survivor pools do not use this page. Their tab reads Make Pick and it opens a separate screen at /pools/:id/survivor/pick, where you choose one team for the week.
Making a pick
Tap either team button on a game's row — in every format except Confidence that single tap saves the pick immediately, and there is no submit button.
The week is a stack of rows grouped by day, under headers reading Today, Tomorrow or the full date. Each row shows a game number, the kickoff time in your own timezone, and two team buttons with the word at between them — the away team on the left, the home team on the right.
The team you tap turns indigo with a coloured border. The counter above the games reads something like 4/16 picked, followed by auto-saved. If the counter moved, your pick is stored.
Each button also carries the team's logo, city, name and season record, and in a Beat the Spread pool that team's point spread.
Confidence pools do not save as you tap. A tap only stages the pick in your browser, and nothing is stored until you press Submit Picks in the Confidence Ranking panel. The counter and the progress bar both count staged picks, so the page can read as a finished week while nothing has been saved. The panel footer is the one place that distinguishes Unsaved changes from Saved.
In a Confidence pool you never type a point value. The panel lists your picked games most confident first and derives every value from that order, so reordering the list renumbers all of them. Drag a row on a computer, or use the up and down chevrons on each row — dragging does not work on a touch screen.
Changing a pick
Tap the other team on that game's row — the new pick replaces the old one straight away, with nothing to confirm and nothing to save, and you can keep changing it until that game kicks off.
There is no edit mode and no separate save step. Changing a pick is the same single tap as making one, and the pool's activity records it as an update rather than as a second pick.
You can replace a pick but you cannot remove one. There is no tap-again-to-clear gesture and no delete control on the row, so if you have picked a team there is no way back to having no pick on that game.
Once the game locks, both team buttons stop responding and a closed padlock appears on the row. Whatever you picked last stands as your pick.
In a Beat the Spread pool the change also re-captures the spread showing at that moment, so the pool records the line you were looking at when you changed it.
In a Confidence pool the change is staged like the first tap, so press Submit Picks again afterwards. Moving a game up or down the ranking panel is a reorder, not a change of pick.
When picks lock
Each game locks on its own, at that game's kickoff or as soon as a score arrives, so an early game can be closed while the rest of the week is still open.
Locking is per game, never per week. Until a game's kickoff has passed you can change your pick on it as often as you like, whatever the rest of the week has already done.
A locked row is easy to read: both team buttons are dead, a closed padlock sits on the row, and the pick you made stays visible beside the live score. When the game goes final the padlock gives way to a result chip on the team you picked.
The Pick Deadline line on your pool's rules card changes none of this. It is displayed but enforced nowhere, so a pool showing a week-start deadline still locks game by game at each kickoff. Treat every kickoff as its own deadline.
A game counts as started as soon as any score arrives or its scheduled time passes, whichever comes first. That is why a postponed game can read LIVE with no score and stay locked until the schedule feed moves its date.
Quick picks
The Quick Pick menu on the toolbar above the games fills every game that has not started yet in one action, from a list of seven bulk options.
The menu offers the same seven options in every pool that shows it.
- All Away Teams
- All Home Teams
- Favored Teams
- Underdog Teams
- Teams with Most Wins
- Teams with Most Losses
- Random Teams
A quick pick only touches games that have not kicked off, so anything already locked is left exactly as it is, and if every game of the week has started there is nothing for it to fill.
All seven options appear whatever the format, which is why a Pick 'Em pool — a format that shows no spreads at all — still lists Favored Teams and Underdog Teams. The menu is not filtered to your pool's format.
Quick Pick is hidden entirely in Confidence pools, because a Confidence week has to be submitted as one ranked set rather than game by game.
If you are in more than one pool on the same season, a banner above the games offers to copy your picks across, and a floating Copy Picks button follows you down the page. Choosing a quick pick then opens a dialog where you tick which other pools to apply it to, with a switch for whether to overwrite picks already made there. A toast afterwards reports how many were applied and how many were skipped for each pool.
That dialog sometimes words an option differently from the menu item you chose. It is the same option; only the wording differs.
Autopick
Autopick is one pool-wide setting the pool's owner turns on or off — where it is on, the app fills any pick you missed shortly after that game starts, and no member can turn it on or off for themselves.
A background check runs every minute for games that have gone live and creates a pick for each active member who does not have one. Autopicked picks are labelled wherever they appear: a blue AUTO badge and a bolt icon on the team button, and a bolt in the weekly standings grid.
The owner chooses one strategy for the whole pool — always the home team, always the away team, the favourite, the underdog, or random. On a game with no spread, favourite and underdog both fall back to a coin flip.
There is no member-level autopick setting. You cannot switch it off for yourself, and you cannot switch it on if your owner has left it off. Your one control either way is making your own pick before the game kicks off.
Autopick only runs in current NFL regular-season weeks. Pools built on basketball, baseball, hockey, UFC or college basketball get no autopicks at all, and postseason weeks are never filled in, so do not count on it catching you.
Random is one coin flip per game applied to everyone who missed that game, not a separate flip per person, so the whole roster ends up on the same team.
In a Confidence pool an autopick also receives a point value, taken from the values you still have free that week, so one missed game does not strand the rest of your ranking. If you join a spread or Pick 'Em pool after games have started, autopicks can be filled in behind you for the games you missed; Confidence, survivor and playoff pools never get that backfill.
If you miss a week
A completed game you never picked is scored as a loss and still counts in your weekly accuracy, but it does not remove you from the pool and does not change any other week.
A missed game is loud after the fact. The whole row turns amber, a NO PICK chip sits beside the kickoff time, and a bar across the bottom of the row says no pick was made and it counted as a loss.
Weekly accuracy is your correct picks out of the games already played, not out of the picks you made, so blanks pull the figure down rather than being skipped. The number of games you missed shows in amber under your weekly total.
Nothing else follows from it in the formats that use this picks board. You stay in the pool, the weeks either side are untouched, and you pick the next week as normal. Survivor pools pick on their own screen and their own rules apply there.
Confidence pools are the exception. If a game kicks off before you picked it, that week can no longer be submitted at all — the ranking panel reads Submission unavailable and the server refuses the week. There is no way round it afterwards; autopick, in a pool that has it on, is what prevents it.
Where a pool has autopick on you will usually see AUTO picks instead of blanks. Autopick does not run in every pool, so do not assume your gaps were filled.
Reading your results
Results land on the picks page itself — the row switches to FINAL, both scores appear, and a green check or a red cross lands on the team you picked.
The winning score shows in full ink and the losing one is dimmed, and the button you picked is tinted green when you were right and red when you were wrong. Live games update themselves without a refresh, with a pulsing green dot and the word LIVE on the row.
What counts as right depends on the format. In a Beat the Spread pool your pick is graded against the line rather than the scoreboard, so a team can win its game and still lose you the point. In Pick 'Em and Confidence pools picks are graded straight up, and a tied game is a push — no point, but still a pick you made, which is why records in those pools can carry pushes as well as wins and losses.
Check whether your pick covered
To compare with everyone else, open the Weekly Standings tab. Its grid shows every member's pick game by game, with winners highlighted and a bolt on any pick that autopick filled.
Other members' picks stay hidden until their game starts. A grey check mark means that person has picked, and the team appears once that game kicks off. The reveal is per game, so early games can be showing while later ones are still covered. Your own row is always visible to you.
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