Run a survivor pool

A survivor pool (also called a survival pool, eliminator or knockout pool) is the simplest format in sports: each week you pick one team you think will win their game. Win, and you advance. Lose, and you're eliminated. The last person still standing takes the whole pool.

The catch that makes it brutal: you can only use each team once all season. Burn the best matchup in Week 1 and you've got nothing left for the playoffs run.

The core rules

• One pick per week. Choose a single team to win their matchup. You're not picking a score or a margin - just the winner.
• No reusing teams. Once you've picked a team, they're off the board for the rest of the season. This is the whole strategy: budget your strong teams.
• Lose and you're out. A wrong pick eliminates you. A tie usually counts as a loss (configurable below).
• Last one standing wins. Survive longer than everyone else and the bragging rights are yours. If everyone busts in the same week, the pool can split or roll to a tiebreaker.

Common options you can turn on

• Lives. One loss and you're out is classic. Set two for a "two strikes" pool that survives the early-week bloodbath and keeps more people engaged.
• Buyback. Some pools let eliminated players buy back in for a set week. Trofeo.live doesn't have a buyback switch yet, so elimination is final unless your group agrees its own house rule.
• Ties. A tied game counts as a loss by default. Flip it and a tie lets the player survive.
• Pick deadlines & lock. Picks lock at each game's kickoff by default - no editing once the ball is in the air - or lock the whole slate when the week opens so nobody picks on later information.
• Missed picks. By default, no pick means elimination. Turn on auto-pick and we submit 15 minutes before the last kickoff they could still have made, choosing at random from the teams they haven't used that are playing an open game.
• Pick window. Players can bank picks for any week that hasn't kicked off, or you can restrict them to the current week so everyone commits on the same information.
• Strategy, in one line: the favorite isn't always the smart pick. Save the juggernauts for later weeks and spend the safe-but-boring teams early.

Tiebreakers

When more than one survivor is left at the end - or everyone gets knocked out at once - you decide in advance how it ends. Leave the tiebreaker off and the survivors share the win, which is how most pools do it. Or turn on winning margin, and Trofeo.live ranks the survivors by the combined margin of every correct pick they made. Set it once and it applies automatically.

Most survivor pools die in a spreadsheet. Someone volunteers to track 40 picks by hand, misses a week, gets a result wrong, and the whole thing falls apart by October. Trofeo.live runs it for you.

• Auto-grading. Results are pulled live and scored the second games end. No commissioner math, no arguments.
• Live leaderboard. Everyone sees who's still alive, who's out, and who picked what - the moment it's locked.
• Public proof. Wins get gassed up, busts get roasted. Every result is screenshot-ready for the group chat.
• No app, no logins for players. You set it up; they join from a link with a name. That's it.
• Run it anywhere. Friends, a league, or the whole office - same setup, your branding.

Set the rules, share the link, and let the eliminations do the talking.