NFL Survivor Pool

Sorry about the late recap, it’s been busy this week.

17 more bit the dust when the Giants and Panthers both lost at home to underdogs, so we’re down to 168 players after seven weeks.

Just a reminder: In a couple of weeks (starting week 10 and going through week 15), the NFL starts Thursday night games, so if you want to pick in that game, you must get those picks in by Thursday at 5pm ET. Otherwise, the regular deadline for all other games will still be Sunday at 10am ET.

The exception is Thanksgiving weekend. All picks must be in by Thanksgiving Thursday at 10amET, including the ones not being played until Sunday and Monday.

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All picks received have been posted.

A couple players this week tried to use a team that they’ve already used. Sorry, if you can’t keep track of who you’ve already used (or just look at the fraking website before you submit your picks), it can’t be my problem either.

At the top of linesmaker are the Chargers and Colts.

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Well, no point in me pointing out the obvious this week… The Raiders and the Bills put some major hurt in the pool.

Lots of good feedback regarding eliminating buybacks. One thing that some of you may not realize is that it’s not always about getting the biggest pot possible. By having buybacks, it essentially shortens the season for a lot of players to 12 weeks instead of 17 weeks. It greatly increases the likelihood of having multiple winners splitting the pot at the end of the season.

Last year, I did an analysis after week 15 if the season ended after week 15, when there were still 18 players alive in the pool. For each week that we shortened buybacks, the per-player payout increased, and even eliminating buybacks there would still have been six players. At the end of the season, 10 players did end up splitting the pool, but if we did not have buybacks at all, one player would have won the whole thing after week 16.

This year,we have 185 of 367 players still remaining after six weeks. However, if we didn’t have buybacks, there’d only be 124 players.  That means we have an extra 49% number of players still alive due to buybacks.

Well, anyhow, continue to submit your feedback. I’ll take it all into account.

This week’s deadline is Sunday at 10am ET. The Chargers are at the top of the linesmaker odds list.

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Okay, all received picks have been entered.  There are five missing that will get auto-assigned at 11:30.  The teams at the top of the linesmaker odds list are the Redskins and Bengals.

There was a problem with the auto-assignment script last week, where a few people got assigned a team that they had already used. I think I’ve fixed the problem so this week should be okay.

All buybacks have been processed. It looks like the final pool is at $5,240.

Some of you might have missed it, but I think I’m going to eliminate buybacks next year. The only reason that I had buybacks was to keep the pool going longer into the season, but now that we have 300+ players signed up to begin the season, buybacks only increases the chance of having multiple winners after seventeen weeks.

We started with 367 players. Through five weeks, 82 players have been eliminated, so we are down to 285.  Of those 82 no longer in the game, 9 were two-time losers (so they bought back and lost again). The others just chose not to buy back.

However, if we did not have buybacks this year, 99 of those 285 wouldn’t be in the game anymore because they have used a buyback. So after five weeks, we would have gone from 367 to 186 or roughly half. Just some interesting stats.

Go Phils!

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Sorry for the late recap, but I’ve been away most of the week. I don’t even have anything to say about the games since I didn’t catch them.

This is the last week for buybacks. If you lost this week and haven’t used your buyback yet, you can buy back into the game but I must receive your buyback fees and picks by Sunday at 10am ET.

Just a heads up, I am probably going to get rid of buybacks altogether next year. Add your thoughts in the comments below.

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