We would be crazy to guarantee that or set that expectation.
Playing in NFL survivor pools is less risky than playing the lottery, but it's still a huge gamble. Probably more than any other pool, the format of survivor pools greatly exposes every player to the cruel whims of randomness.
Just look at the numbers. It's relatively rare for any NFL team to have an 80% chance or greater of winning a game. So even if you play it safe and pick the most likely teams to win each week, you'd typically have about a 1-in-5 chance of your pick losing every single week.
Translation: Even playing it as safe as possible, the life expectancy of a typical survivor entry is around 3 weeks. It's pretty crazy when you think about it.
In addition, years of research has demonstrated that in most survivor pools, the majority of players is too conservative early on. So taking some additional risk with your picks in the opening weeks often increases your expected winnings.
That moves optimal strategy for survivor pools even more toward a highly volatile, "boom or bust" type of approach. But if you're playing to maximize winnings, like we do, you do what the numbers say. It's much better to win once and come in dead last the next nine years, than to do pretty well (but not win anything) for ten years straight.
Every week, there is a very real chance that our top recommended pick will lose, whether it's Week 1 or Week 15. All of our customers need to be prepared for this.
So if you are serious enough about survivor pools that you'll buy our NFL Survivor Picks product, we strongly recommend playing multiple entries in your pool(s). It provides added insurance against bad luck early on, helps protect your investment in our service, and also lets you take greater advantage of all the research we do.
In the long term, our survivor picks should provide a very strong ROI, and our overall performance over the past five years is a solid indicator of our skill level. But such a highly volatile game format demands realistic expectations and an over-many-years perspective.