Should I Vary My Picks If I’m Playing More Than One Entry?

If you have more than one entry in a pick'em pool, there are some ways you can choose to diversify your picks.

If you have more than one entry in a single pool, how you handle each depends on your pool rules.

WEEKLY Prize Pools

If you are in a pick’em pool with WEEKLY prizes, and are playing more than one entry, you can use our Top Option, Second Option, and Third Option shown under the WEEKLY prize heading to enter a portfolio of pick sets designed to be played together.

Both WEEKLY And SEASON Prizes

If your prize has both types of prizes, we recommend playing a mix of SEASON and WEEKLY picks. Use the SEASON picks on your entry that’s closest to 1st place in the standings. Use WEEKLY picks on the entry or entries further down in the standings.

SEASON Prize Pools

Unlike for WEEKLY prize pools, we don’t offer portfolio pick recommendations for SEASON prize pools.

Why not?

Well, the main reason is that analyzing full season portfolio strategies is a lot more complicated and difficult than analyzing weekly portfolio strategies. There are more games, there are more decision points (you can alter your strategy every week), and there’s not reliable opponent pick data available for future weeks. We’ve put some effort into coming up with a solution, but we haven’t found a model that works well enough for us to feel justified in using it for official pick recommendations.

We’re still working on it. But in the meantime, here is how you can construct alternate pick sets to pair with the one suggested pick set we show you.

First, check out all three SEASON prize pick sets (labeled Maximize Profit, Win Something, Avoid Bad Finish). If these pick sets differ (which is more likely to happen in the last few weeks of the season), then you can simply use these differing pick sets together.

If those pick sets are the same (which is often the case earlier in the season), then you’ll need to start with the recommended pick set, and flip one or more games (picking the opposite team from what we recommend in the initial pick set).

Your goal should be for each of your entries to differ by 1 to 3 picks. Here are some hints on how to pick the games to flip, based on the type of pool you are in.

Game Winner / Non-Confidence Pools

We show projected win odds for each game in this type of pool, so you can use the win odds to guide your choice of which games to flip.

If there are several games with win odds near 50% (including below 50%), you can flip up to three of them to create a second pick set.

If the lowest win odds are 60% or higher, you should limit yourself to flipping only 1 game. Generally that should be the game with the lowest win odds. The exception is if the lowest win% pick is labeled a Value Pick in the Notes column, In that case, if there is another game with almost as low of a win%, that isn’t labeled a Value Pick, you can flip that one.

Game Winner / Confidence Pools

The advice here is the same as in non-confidence pools, with one additional note — if you flip a pick, move it to the bottom of your confidence rankings. If you flip more than one pick, the exact order you use them in at the bottom isn’t important.

Against The Spread / Non-Confidence Pools

In this type of pool, instead of showing win%, we show a Confidence label of (from most to least confident) Model Pick, Coin Flip, or Low.

If there are picks with Low Confidence, you should choose your games to flip from among that group. If there are no Low Confidence games, but there are Coin Flip games, you should flip the Coin Flip games.

If there are only Model Pick games, then try to pick games where the Notes column does not say Value Pick.

If there are only Model Pick games labeled Value Pick, then you should only flip a single game per alternate pick set. Pick any game where you don’t like our original pick. If you like all the original picks, flip a big underdog to a big favorite instead.

Against The Spread / Confidence Pools

The advice here is similar to the non-confidence advice, with a couple differences.

First, use the confidence points (Conf column) to help you choose which games to flip, when there are multiple games with the same Confidence labels. In other words, if there are 5 Coin Flip games, and you want to flip 3 of them, flip the 3 with the lowest number of confidence points.

Second, if you flip a pick, move it to the bottom of your confidence rankings. If you flip more than one pick, the exact order you use them in at the bottom isn’t important.