2009 Survivor Pool is open for sign-ups
The 2009 pool is now open!
It’s that time of the year! Training camps for all NFL teams have commenced, so it’s a good time to start thinking about football again!
As many of you know, I’ve been running an annual NFL Survivor Pool since 2002. This will be the eighth year!
What is a Survivor Pool?
For those of you that don’t know what a Survivor Pool is, another common name for it is a Suicide Pool.
The basic concept is that each week, you pick one NFL team to win their game that week (a tie is considered a loss since you’re picking a team to win — it’s happened once in the last five years). If your team wins, you move on. If your team loses, you’re out. The catch is that you can only pick each team once.
You can get the full rules by clicking on the Rules link above.
You can enter up to five times, with each entry considered a distinctly seperate player. Each entry is $10.
If you lose during weeks 1 through 5, you have the option of “buying back” into the game for $15. Each entry has the option of buying back once. Buy backs are discontinued starting with week 6. I know buy backs are unpopular with some folks, but it also has the effects of increasing the pot size as well as prolonging the game if there are a lot of upsets at the beginning of the season.
Returning players
Not too much is different than last year. The major change on the website is hiding of players’ last names and an online sign-up form. (What I was finding is that people who email me out of the blue sometimes get marked as spam by Gmail because of certain keywords.)
Other than that, the game itself remains the same. $10 for each entry, $15 for buybacks during the first five weeks.
Signing up
Use the new sign-up form here.
To pay the entry fees, I still recommend Paypal. However, you MUST send the payment with funds drawn from a checking account so no fees are taken out of the payment. If I don’t receive the full payment with no fees deducted, it will be returned to you.
Let me know if there are any questions using the comments form below. Welcome to the game!
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:59 pm
I run a much smaller survivor pool at my company–just 10-12 of us the past 5 years–$50 entry, we pick losers instead of winners. How did you end up using this website? I’ll probaly join. I like the buy-back feature. We offer a mulligan(can be wrong once), and a bye week after week one(you don’t have to pick that week).
September 4th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
This started small, as you can see from the previous years… Before I started this one with a few friends, we all belonged to another pool with essentially the same rules. But then in 2002, he decided to completely change the pool and quintupled the entry fee, and we decided to quit his and start our own. It’s slowly grown over the years by word of mouth mainly.
Last year, it kinda exploded for some reason, and this year it’s even bigger. I’m not really sure where some of the new players are coming from.
The website itself is home-grown. It started small, basically a web version of the Excel spreadsheet we used to use to keep track of the pool. But each year, I’ve added on to the functionality.
September 4th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I’d like to join–what email address do I use for Paypal??
September 9th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I signed up yesterday, but still have not recieved anything about who to make a paypal payment to. Can you let me know what I need to do next to make sure I get in the pool. Thanks.
September 9th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I would like to play in your contests. Thank You T. Woody
September 9th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I would like 2 entries what address do i use for paypal and what is the processing fee 2 dollars right.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
nevermind no fees i see
September 9th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
how do i sign up?
September 9th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Tom,
The payment info isn’t sent automatically. I still do some manual processing… Patience.
September 9th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Skip,
Use the signup link at the top of the page.
September 10th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
how do i pay to play if i dont have paypal
September 10th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
would it be faster if i get a paypal card?
September 10th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
If you had signed up before this week, you probably could have gotten the entry fees in via check, but it’s pretty much too late to enter w/o having a paypal account. Sorry.