How it works

Every pool follows one sport league, chosen by your commissioner when the pool is created. Each week, you make a set number of picks (5 by default) against the spread for that week's games -- the goal isn't to guess who wins outright, it's to guess whether a team covers the number.

Everyone in your pool picks independently. There's no rule against multiple people picking the same team in the same week (though being the only one who did, and covering, is its own kind of trophy -- see Lone Wolf below).

Spreads move throughout the week as the betting market shifts, and Kjark pulls updated numbers, not a line frozen from Tuesday. Whatever the spread shows at the moment you submit a pick is the number you're locked into for that game.

There's no single weekly deadline. Each game locks individually at kickoff, so you can submit some picks early and hold others until closer to game time if you're waiting to see how a line moves.

Once a week, you can flag one of your picks as your Mortal Lock. It's tracked apart from your regular picks toward the Mortal Lock Champion trophy, awarded to whoever has the best Mortal Lock record in the pool. Depending on how your commissioner has configured your pool, a Mortal Lock may also carry extra weight in the main standings -- ask them if you're not sure how yours is set up.

You can only submit one Mortal Lock per week, and once it's in, it's locked -- you can't move it to a different pick later in the week.

• Win -- your team covers the spread you picked.
• Loss -- your team doesn't cover.
• Push -- the final margin lands exactly on the number. No win, no loss. By default it counts as half a win toward your win percentage, but your commissioner can configure your pool to exclude pushes from the percentage entirely -- ask them how yours is set up.

Picks are graded automatically as soon as final scores are in.

Depending on your pool's settings, standings rank by total wins or by win percentage. Every pool also comes with trophies -- Mortal Lock Champion, Clean Sweep, Lone Wolf, and any others your commissioner adds. Commissioners can rename and re-describe trophies however they want (inside jokes encouraged), but how each one is actually calculated never changes. Check the Trophies tab on your pool's Standings page for the exact criteria on each one.

One quirk worth knowing if your pool ranks by win percentage and excludes pushes: pushes drop out of the math entirely, so the percentage is wins divided by decisions (wins + losses). That can produce a counterintuitive finish -- a player with lots of pushes can end up ahead of a player with more wins. A 10-2-8 season scores 10/12 = .833, which beats a 12-4-0 season at 12/16 = .750, because the eight pushes count for nothing either way. Commissioners choosing that mode should make sure the group is on board with the trade-off.

Your own picks are always visible to you. Whether other members can see your picks before they're graded depends on your commissioner's settings -- some pools reveal each pick as soon as its game kicks off, others keep an entire stretch-run week hidden from everyone until the season's over, so nobody can scout a hot streak or a pattern late in a tight race.