Last man standing

What last man standing means

Last man standing describes the finish of an elimination pool: everyone else has been knocked out, and the one entrant still alive takes the prize. The phrase has also become a name for the whole format, especially in the UK, where football pools of this kind are usually called last man standing competitions rather than survivor pools.

In practice many pools never reach a single survivor. Two or three entrants may be eliminated in the same week, leaving nobody, and the pool rules have to say what happens then: often the last group eliminated together shares the pot, or everyone still in comes back to life. Other pools run out of season before they run out of entrants, and the survivors split the pot.

An example

A hypothetical pub competition starts with 80 entrants, each picking one team a week to win. By the ninth week three are left, and all three pick the same favorite, which loses. The rules say a wipeout brings the last group back, so all three survive into week ten, where two go out and the third is the last one standing.

How Speed Survivor is different

Speed Survivor does not wait for one entrant to be left. The field thins as the game goes, through wrong answers in single-life play and through cuts that remove the bottom of the field at set points, and the players still standing at the final whistle are ranked by points and paid down a ladder of payout tiers shown before the contest locks. So there is still a last group standing, and first place still takes the largest share, but reaching the end with a good score pays even if you are not alone there. How it works covers the whole contest.