Glossary
Survivor pool
A pool where each entrant picks one team to win each week and is out after a single wrong pick; the last entrant standing takes the pot.
Also called: NFL survivor pool, eliminator pool, last man standing pool
What a survivor pool is
A survivor pool is a season-long contest in which every entrant picks one NFL team to win outright each week. If the team wins, the entrant survives to the next week. If it loses or ties, the entrant is eliminated. The catch that makes it a game of judgment rather than a game of picking favorites: a team can be used only once all season, so burning the strongest team in week one leaves nothing for week twelve. The pool ends when one entrant is left, or when the season ends and the survivors split whatever is in the pot.
An example
A 200-person office pool at $20 a head puts $4,000 in the pot. In week one, most of the field picks a heavy favorite, it wins, and 185 survive. In week four an upset takes out 60 people who all picked the same team. By week ten there are nine left, and by week fourteen there are two, who agree to split the pot rather than ride out the rest of the season. That is the shape of almost every survivor pool ever run: a slow burn, a few brutal weeks, and a long wait to find out whether it was worth it.
Why people love it, and what it costs them
The appeal is the simplicity and the stakes. One pick, no spreads, no lineups, and every week is sudden death. The cost is time: the drama is spread across eighteen weeks, and an entrant who goes out in week two watches the other sixteen from the sidelines with nothing riding on them. Pools are usually run by a commissioner in a spreadsheet or on a hosting site, the pot is usually held by a friend, and payouts happen at the end of the season.
How Speed Survivor is different
Speed Survivor keeps the survivor format and throws out the calendar. Instead of one pick a week for eighteen weeks, you answer twelve live yes-or-no questions during one game, one about every five minutes of game clock. Instead of eliminating on a wrong team, it runs cuts that remove the bottom of the field at set points, and in single-life contests a wrong answer ends your run. Instead of a friend holding the pot, the prize pool is funded by the entries and held by a third-party custodian, and Speed Labs may add to it. And instead of waiting until January, the last players standing split the pot the same night.
A full season's worth of survivor drama, from the first pick to the split, inside one three-hour game. How it works has the whole thing step by step.
Play tonight's game.
Use code SPEED when you sign up. iOS now, Android through the app link.
