Circa Survivor Thanksgiving Week Breakdown (2024)

A detailed breakdown of Week 13 Circa Survivor for 2024, which includes both the Thanksgiving picks and the games that follow.

With the Circa Survivor pool entering a decisive phase, this article provides crucial insights into navigating the Thanksgiving and Week 13B picks.

This is our final full weekly Circa Survivor article for the 2024 season. As noted last week, we will have one final article next week that will provide a summary overview of the remaining weeks.

After last week’s bonkers Washington ending, which knocked out 33 of the remaining 99 entries, there are only 54 entries that have reached the Thanksgiving picks in Circa, playing for over $14 million.

We provide our analysis of the Thanksgiving set of games in front of the paywall, while Week 13B, for the picks on Sunday and Monday, will still be subscriber-only content.

Here’s what you will see in the Week 13 article:

• Rest of Circa Contest Survival Rate Outlook
• Circa Survivor Week 13A Projected Picks and Strategy
• Week 13 Future Value Rankings (subscriber-only content)
• Optimal Path and Entry Values (subscriber-only content)
• Week 13B Pick Strategy Thoughts (subscriber-only content)

Rest of 2024 Circa Contest Survival Rate Outlook

Before we dive into the two sets of Thanksgiving picks, first, we will take a look back. Starting after Week 3 and the early high eliminations, we started projecting how many entries we expected at certain weekly milestones. Part of the motivation was that there were some pretty dubious claims about contest length early on, and we wanted to provide good estimates grounded in historical results as well as this year’s projections.

We made updated projections for how many entries we expected to make it to Thanksgiving each week, for the last nine weeks. As it turns out, the “wisdom of the crowds” turned out to be pretty solid, as last week’s big wipeout was a course correction from some other recent high-survival weeks. On average, our projection for the number of entries left entering Thanksgiving was 48.1, just below the actual 54 that made it.

The closest Thanksgiving projection was right in the middle of that time frame, as we projected an over/under of 54.5 entries alive in our Week 9 article.

With 54 entries left now, our projection is an Over/Under of 13.5 entries that enter the Christmas pick week following Week 16, and then an Over/Under of 3.5 entries that get three more wins to make it all the way. There is still a possibility, now that we are getting close to 50 entries left, that the pool does get decided with a solo champion or before Week 18, but we do not think that is the most likely outcome.

We can revisit that if true chaos happens on Thanksgiving, with Detroit and Kansas City, as those are the kinds of upsets that would be needed to dramatically shorten the expected contest length.

Circa Survivor Week 13A (Thanksgiving) Pick Strategy

For the Week 13A portion of the Circa contest, entries must pick from among the following four games:

• Detroit (-10) vs. Chicago
• Dallas (-3.5) vs. New York Giants
• Green Bay (-3) vs. Miami
• Kansas City (-12) vs. Las Vegas

Kansas City and Detroit have a massive edge on the other picks in terms of win odds. An entry would be more than doubling its expected elimination rate by picking one of the other two favorites.

Here’s how the remaining 54 entries stand, in terms of whether they have Detroit, Kansas City, or both available:

• Both DET and KC available: 5
• DET only available: 12
• KC only available: 32
• Neither DET or KC available: 5

So 44 of the entries can pick only one of them. Five have a choice between the two, and five others will have to pick a different team for sure. Of those five that do not have either Detroit or Kansas City, all five have Green Bay available, and four of the five have Dallas. That means every entry can pick one of the home favorites in this group, if they want to.

Kansas City is going to be the most popular (based on relative availability) and Detroit will be second, and the question is just how many entries that could pick them decide to pick Dallas or Green Bay instead.

Should You Consider an Underdog on Thanksgiving?

First, let’s address whether it makes sense to think about switching a pick to an underdog. The short answer, for 2024, is “no.”

We have seen some big upsets in Circa on Thanksgiving. In 2021, Dallas had over half of the picks, and lost to the Raiders in overtime. In 2023, Detroit had around half the picks, and lost to Green Bay.

One of the attractions of picking an underdog in these limited-game settings is that you can get a good risk/reward Expected Value (EV) payoff with so many picks concentrated on the other side. But you need to evaluate both risk and reward. When the Las Vegas pickers won in 2021 when half the pool was wiped out, they were a 7.5-point dog, not a 12-point dog like Las Vegas is this year. Green Bay was an 8 or 8.5-point dog in 2023. The difference between a 15% chance to benefit from half the pool being eliminated, and a 25% chance to do so, is pretty large.

For this year, even if we assume that every single entry that can pick Kansas City does so (even those that also have Detroit), here are the EVs:

• DET: 12 picks, 1.13 EV
• DAL: 3 picks, 1.06 EV
• GB: 1 pick, 1.04 EV
• KC: 37 picks, 0.95 EV
• LV: 1 pick, 0.94 EV

So even at the most extreme possible assumption on picks, a Las Vegas pick is no better than about even with Kansas City on EV, and behind every other favorite you could have picked instead. We also do not expect all 37 that could pick Kansas City to do so.

As for the other dogs, Chicago is also higher risk, but Detroit cannot be any higher than 31% of all picks. New York and Miami are short underdogs and could just as easily win, but the issue there is that there will not be a particularly great reward, and you are putting yourself at under 50% to advance.

Projected Thanksgiving Pick Rates

Here are some observations based on how entries could pick:

• Detroit will have a positive EV (over 1.00) even if every entry that could pick them does.
• The break-even where the EVs of Kansas City, Dallas, and Green Bay are similar is at 31 KC, 4 DAL, 2 GB.
• That means that 31 of 37 entries pick KC, and only one that could pick either KC or DET chooses not to do so.

Here is our best estimate of the picks for this week, and the EVs that result (for fun, we assumed one hero would pick Las Vegas):

Team	Picks	Win Odds	EV
DET	15	83%	1.12
KC	29	85%	1.03
DAL	6	64%	0.92
GB	3	62%	0.92
LV	1	15%	0.71

If one entry picked Miami or the New York Giants instead of Las Vegas, those EVs would be at 0.81.

Overall Thanksgiving Strategy

The safe plays are picking Detroit if you have them, then Kansas City if you do not. Detroit has an EV advantage no matter what. Kansas City likely is a positive EV play, as long as we do not get over 31 entries picking them. They are high win odds picks that give you the best chance of advancing.

Of course, in survivor, teams like that can be super valuable if you can be one of the only entries that still has them after they have been all used up. On balance, using Detroit is better now, and most will do that. If a couple of entries still have them, they could be a big pot odds play later, like in Week 16 at Chicago when the rest of the remaining pool will be elsewhere.

Kansas City is probably the better argument for a save, if you think they will be massively popular. They could be a low-owned pick on a completely wide open Christmas slate (we currently project all three games with between 51% and 55% win odds for the favorite there). They could be a high-leverage play in Week 15 vs. Cleveland, when the majority of the pool could be concentrated on Arizona. Still, if you are in pretty good future value shape on your entry overall, playing it safe and taking on your opponents with an above-average entry remaining makes sense.

As for the Dallas versus Green Bay decision, we see that the EV between the two is about even when Dallas is picked around twice as often as Green Bay. Green Bay has more future value, and Dallas has none, so expect Dallas to be more popular. Either is reasonable as a fall-back if necessary, and a better way to play avoiding the most popular pick of Kansas City if you are a contrarian player, rather than outright picking the underdog Raiders.

We will get to Week 13B Strategy below, but first we will turn to our Future Value rankings and future path analysis, as it will play a bigger factor in how we view the second part of Week 13.

Circa Survivor Future Value Rankings

Here are our Future Value estimates for Circa Survivor Week 14 and beyond, and which teams have the most value as higher win odds options over the last six pick weeks of the contest. This Future Value estimate is specific to the Circa contest and looks at how many weeks each team is a survivor option and how likely they are to rank highly in relative win odds for that week.

We have availability percentages in the contest for each team, and put asterisks on teams that appear on a Thanksgiving or Christmas game schedule.