Format guide
You pick every game, and then you say how sure you are. Most pools call those weights confidence points; on Pooldit they are units, and it is the same idea either way. A correct pick is worth the units you put on it, and a player who goes 7-6 with their units in the right places beats a player who goes 9-4 with theirs in the wrong ones.
Also called a weighted pool. Play is for dits, an in-app currency — never for real money.
The format
In a confidence pool you make the same picks you would make in a pick’em — a side on every game — and then you do a second, much harder thing: you rank them. Each pick is assigned a number of units, and a correct pick pays out those units instead of a flat point.
That one change moves the entire skill of the pool from *who wins* to *how sure am I*. Everybody in an NFL pool picks roughly the same good teams; almost nobody agrees about which of their own picks is the safest. A player who correctly identifies the one game they are surest about, week after week, will finish above a player who picks more winners and spreads their weight evenly across all of them.
It is the format most long-running office pools eventually drift into, and the one people mean when they say their pool is "weighted". A pick’em pool is the same slate without the ranking; a survivor pool is the opposite trade entirely — one pick a week with your whole season on it.
Units
The commissioner sets the unit budget, and every player in the pool gets the identical budget — the skill is entirely in where you spend it, never in how much you have. Pooldit ships the classic template and a fully custom one.
One 3, two 2s, the rest 1s
The classic weighted format, and the one this site was built to bring back. You get a single 3-unit pick, exactly two 2-unit picks, and every other pick on your sheet is worth 1. A small budget and sharp decisions.
You set the ladder
Choose how many games a week carry a unit weight above 1, then set each of those weights yourself. A 5-3-1 ladder, a 10-8-6-4-2, or whatever shape your group has been arguing about for a decade.
Commissioner toggle
A confidence pool can weight outright winners or picks against the spread. ATS is the harder game by some distance — with real sportsbook lines on every fixture, putting 3 units on a side against the number is a genuine statement.
Leave a premium unit unassigned and Pooldit warns you before it saves your sheet — a 3 that expires unused is the most expensive mistake available in this format. Save through the warning anyway and the unused weights fall to the last-scheduled games of the week.
Scoring
Grading is straightforward arithmetic laid over pick’em: a correct pick adds its units to your total, a wrong pick adds nothing, and the most units in the week takes the week. Because your total is no longer capped by the number of games, a confidence week swings on one result far more often than a pick’em week does.
Ties are correspondingly rarer, and the tiebreakers are the same two on offer everywhere: the last-game total guess, or a straight even split of that placement’s prize.
Worked example
A thirteen-game week on 3-2-2. Every player holds one 3, two 2s and ten 1s — a maximum of 17 units if everything hits.
Dan finishes 9-4, a record that would win a pick’em week outright. But his 3 misses and one of his two 2s misses. He collects 2 units from the 2 that landed and 8 units from his eight correct 1s: 10 units.
Erin finishes 7-6 — two fewer winners than Dan. Her 3 hits and both her 2s hit, so she has 3 + 2 + 2 = 7 units before she counts a single 1. Four of her ten 1s land, for 4 more: 11 units, and the week.
Erin picked two fewer games correctly and won by a single unit, because she was right about the games she said she was right about. That is the entire argument for the format — and it is why running a confidence pool and a pick’em pool on identical picks produces two different season champions.
The stat only this format changes
Every pick made on Pooldit is stamped with the real sportsbook price attached to it at the moment you submitted, and that snapshot is never rewritten. Unit ROI grades your season against those prices: your units are the stake, the real odds are the payout, and the number tells you what your picks would have returned at a book.
In a pick’em pool every stake is 1, so unit ROI is a measure of your picks. In a confidence pool the stake is the weight *you chose* — so unit ROI measures your ranking as well as your picking. Loading 3 units onto heavy chalk shows up as a thin return even in a winning season, and finding real value with your premium units shows up as an edge, in a way that the standings alone will never tell you.
That is the two-axis ladder the rest of the site runs on: Ditpull is how you really stack up against your friends, and unit ROI is how you would have done in Vegas — with every unit scored at real sportsbook odds and not a cent ever staked.
Personal performance data accrues with Players Club membership. Nothing is wagered, deposited or cashed out anywhere on Pooldit — the real odds are shown because they make the picks more interesting and let us grade you honestly, not because anything is at stake here.
Commissioner setup
Step 1
3-2-2, or a custom ladder you define game by game. This is the decision that gives your pool its character, so make it before you invite anyone.
Step 2
Decide whether the units ride on outright winners or against real sportsbook spreads. Both are one toggle, and both are scored automatically.
Step 3
One league or a hybrid — NFL and College Football on the same weighted sheet is a genuinely different pool from either league alone.
Step 4
Weekly versus season prize split, the tiebreaker, and how dits are distributed. Then you send one link and Pooldit runs the rest.
Who it is for
Confidence suits a group that has already run a pick’em pool and wanted more from it. It rewards conviction, punishes hedging, gives everybody something to argue about on Thursday instead of only on Sunday, and makes the standings move in bigger jumps right through to the last week.
It does ask more of your players — every week is thirteen picks *and* a ranking — so it fits a smaller, more committed group better than a fifty-person office where half the entries would go in unranked. If you want the low-effort version, run a pick’em pool. If you want the highest drama for the least weekly work, run a survivor pool.
How a pick’em pool works · How a survivor pool works · Where confidence sits among the five pool types
You pick a winner for every game on the slate, and then you assign each pick a number of units that says how confident you are in it. A correct pick pays out the units you put on it and a wrong pick pays nothing, so the most units at the end of the week takes the week. Everybody gets the same unit budget, which means the pool is decided by where you spend your weight rather than by how much of it you have.
It is the classic weighted template and Pooldit ships it as a preset. Every player gets one 3-unit pick, exactly two 2-unit picks, and every remaining pick on the sheet is worth 1 unit. A perfect thirteen-game sheet is therefore worth 17 units. The small budget is the point — you only get one 3 all week, so choosing it is a real decision rather than a formality.
Yes. Alongside 3-2-2 there is a Custom template where the commissioner chooses how many games a week carry a unit weight above 1 and then sets each of those weights individually. That covers ladders like 5-3-1 or 10-8-6-4-2, or whatever scheme your group has run for years, and every player in the pool receives the identical budget.
Pooldit warns you before it saves the sheet, because an unspent 3 is the most expensive mistake in the format and a sheet saved with every pick left at 1 unit used to slip through silently. If you save through the warning anyway, the unassigned weights are applied starting with the last-scheduled games of the week — the ones you had the most time to think about.
Yes — it is a commissioner toggle. A confidence pool can weight outright winners or weight picks against the spread, using real sportsbook lines attached to every fixture. Against the spread is the harder game, since a heavy favourite is no longer a safe place to park your premium units.
Unit ROI compares what you notionally wagered against what you got back, using the real odds that were attached to each pick at the moment you submitted it. Your stake is the pick’s unit weight, so in a confidence pool it is the weight you chose yourself, and the payout comes from the pick’s actual price. It answers a question the standings cannot: not whether you beat your friends, but what your picks would have returned at a sportsbook — with nothing ever staked, deposited or cashed out on Pooldit.
Get started
Confidence pools are open and free to run through October; from November 1, commissioners will pay $5 a month, and playing in any pool you are invited to stays free for everybody. Pools play for dits, an in-app currency that just keeps score of whatever your group already agreed on — bragging rights, jelly beans, soda refills, whatever. Pooldit never takes, holds or moves real money.
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