Pool format
The commissioner sets a variety of picks and markets to choose from. You make your selections and get all X correct — or nobody does, and the pot carries into next week, bigger. It is the parlay your group already argues about in the group text, run properly and scored automatically.
Pooldit is not a gambling site. Nothing is deposited, staked or cashed out — pools play for dits, an in-app currency that just keeps score of whatever your group already agreed on.
How it works
A Pick X Parlay pool is all-or-nothing. The commissioner opens each period with a board of eligible selections — sides, spreads and totals across whichever leagues the pool runs — and sets X, the number every player has to get right: anywhere from 4 to 7, with 5 the usual choice. You win only if every one of your selections lands. One miss and the ticket is dead, however good the rest of it was.
A selection is a market, not a game, so you can take a spread in one game and the total in another — or the spread and the total in the same game, if that is genuinely where your two best reads are.
That makes it a different game from a pick’em, not a harder version of one. In a pick’em, going 11-5 is a good week. Here 11-5 and 0-16 are worth exactly the same. The skill is not volume — it is knowing which handful of the board you are actually sure about, and stopping there.
How a pick’em pool works · All five pool types, side by side
The carryover
Most weeks, nobody gets all X. That is not a flaw in the format — it is the engine of it. When no player sweeps the board, the pot is not paid out: it carries into the next period and sits on top of that period’s pot.
Two or three quiet weeks in a row and the thing on the table is big enough that the whole pool is watching a Thursday night game nobody would otherwise care about. Then somebody finally hits, takes the accumulated pot, and the cycle restarts from zero. A pick’em has no equivalent moment. If several players sweep in the same period they simply share it — there is no tiebreaker to argue over.
Commissioners who would rather the pot moved every week can choose the other setting instead: cascade, which pays the next-best sheets — everyone who got X−1 right, or X−2 if nobody managed that — and only carries when no tier qualifies at all. Carry-over is the default, because the growing pot is why most groups run this format. Either way, anything still unclaimed when the season ends rolls into the end-of-season prize rather than evaporating.
A push, a tie or a voided game is not a win on a Pick X ticket. An all-or-nothing format has to take a position on that, and this is the one Pooldit takes: a leg that did not win did not win.
The odds band
An all-or-nothing pool falls apart if the board contains gimmes. If a -2000 moneyline on a mismatch were selectable, every player would take it, every ticket would include it, and X would quietly drop by one for everybody — the format’s whole tension gone in a single tap.
So each pool has an odds band: a price range, and a market appears on the board only if both of its sides are priced inside that range. A game with a huge favorite has a lopsided moneyline, so that moneyline is out — while the same game’s spread, usually priced close to even on both sides, will normally still be in. The band is applied when the board is built and checked again when a selection is submitted, so a stale browser tab cannot slip a pick in around it.
The default runs from -140 to +140, which keeps every selectable market within shouting distance of a coin flip. The commissioner can widen it for a bigger, more lopsided board, or tighten it until only near-even markets survive — most pools never touch it.
A week, in full
Take a pool running X = 5 on a mixed football board. A dozen markets clear the odds band; you choose the five you would defend out loud.
Four land. The fifth — a total that sat one point the wrong side of the number all afternoon — does not. Your ticket is dead, and so is everyone else’s. Nobody sweeps, so the pot carries: next week it is worth roughly double, the board opens again, and the player who has been sitting out the marginal weeks all season is suddenly the most dangerous person in the pool.
won
The favorite covered comfortably. The kind of leg you build a ticket around and then barely think about again.
won
A Saturday game bolted onto the Sunday slate — the hybrid week that makes a football pool worth running.
won
Inside the band on both sides, so a real decision rather than a free square. It landed.
won
Two offenses that had not moved the ball all month. The board’s quietest game.
lost — ticket dead
A late field goal made it a one-score game instead of a shootout. Four out of five is worth what nought out of five is worth, and the pot carries.
For commissioners
You choose X, the leagues, the markets and the odds band, and set the prize split once. After that Pooldit opens each period, pulls current spreads and odds, locks each selection at its own game’s kickoff, grades every leg as games go final, carries the pot when nobody sweeps, and keeps the ledger of who is owed what — in dits, the in-app currency that tracks whatever your group already agreed on in the real world. The pot itself comes from the pool’s entry dits and the share of them you allocated to periods rather than to the end of the season.
Mixing NFL and College Football together works especially well here: a five-leg ticket drawn from Saturday and Sunday is a far more interesting problem than five games off one slate, and it keeps the pool live for three days instead of one. Any of our leagues can be remixed into the same board — your pool, your rules, your favorite sports.
Players who miss a deadline are covered too. Set an autopick agent — a basic strategy, or one you build yourself out of the conditions you actually believe in — and your selections are in before the lock.
The disclosure
Pooldit is not a gambling site. It never takes, holds or moves real money — there is nothing to deposit, nothing being staked here, and nothing to cash out. A carrying pot is a number in a ledger, denominated in dits, and it settles however your group already decided it settles: bragging rights, jelly beans, soda refills, whatever! That part stays entirely between you, and we never take a cut.
Real prices are shown because an all-or-nothing format needs them. Without a price on each market there is no way to tell a real selection from a free square, and no honest way to grade the judgement behind a ticket afterwards.
The commissioner sets a variety of picks and markets to choose from and sets X, the number of selections each player must get right — anywhere from 4 to 7, with 5 the usual choice. You make your selections from that board and you win only if all X are correct. If nobody in the pool gets all X correct, nothing is paid out and the pot carries into the next period on top of that period’s pot. If several players sweep in the same period, they share it evenly.
The pot carries, which is the defining feature of the format: most periods end with no perfect ticket, so the amount on the table grows week after week until somebody finally hits it, and then the cycle starts again from zero. A commissioner can instead choose cascade, which pays the next-best sheets — everyone one selection short, or two short if nobody managed one — and only carries when no tier qualifies at all. Anything still unclaimed at the end of the season rolls into the end-of-season prize.
Picks. A selection is a single market on a single game, so a spread and a total on the same game are two separate legs of your ticket, and you can build your X however you like across the board. X is set by the commissioner at between 4 and 7, and it defaults to 5.
Each pool has an odds band, and a market only appears on the board if both of its sides are priced inside that band. It exists so the board contains no gimmes: if a huge favorite’s moneyline were selectable, every player would take it and the format would lose its tension. That same game’s spread is usually priced close to even on both sides, so it will normally still be available. The default band runs from -140 to +140, the commissioner can widen or tighten it, and it is enforced both when the board is built and when a selection is submitted.
A push, a tie or a voided game is not a win. An all-or-nothing format has to take a position on that, and Pooldit’s position is that a leg which did not win did not win, so it ends the ticket the same way a loss does. Selections lock at each game’s own kickoff rather than all at once, so the rest of your ticket is still yours to finish after an early game has started.
Yes, and it is the better way to run one. Pick X restricts no league, so you can pull NFL and College Football onto the same board — a five-leg ticket drawn from Saturday and Sunday is a more interesting problem than five games from a single slate — or mix in MLB, the Canadian Football League, Major League Soccer or the English Premier League. The in-app sport picker always shows what is playable now and what is dormant until its season opens.
No. Pooldit is not a gambling site. It never takes, holds or moves real money; there is nothing to deposit, nothing staked on this site and nothing to cash out. Pools play for dits, an in-app currency that keeps score of whatever your group already agreed on in the real world. Real odds are shown to make the selections meaningful and to grade them honestly, not because anything is being wagered here.
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