Circa Survivor Week 4 Breakdown (2024)

We breakdown Week 4 of Circa Survivor, focusing on pick popularity, future value and pick strategy.

Circa Survivor has been wiped out. The four most popular picks in the contest last week lost, and almost 83% of the entries that were alive entering last week were knocked out. That was after a high elimination rate in the first two weeks as well.

As a result, only 4.5% of all entries are still remaining after three weeks. Of the original 14,266 that started, only 642 remain.

We’ll take a look at what this means for the future, and how likely this contest is to go the distance, looking into our projections and historical data in survivor pools.

Then, we’ll dive into Week 4 popularity projections, future value projections, and pick strategy for this week.

How Likely is Circa Survivor To Go 20 Picks?

At the outset of the year, with over 14,000 entries and 20 pick weeks, it was highly likely that you would have to go 20-0 to earn a share of the pot. Now, after massive eliminations early, the math has shifted. But how much?

We took a look at some of the common paths based on teams used most heavily in Circa so far and the odds of survival for those, as well as historical data on survival rates per week (plus accounting for the holiday pick-set weeks).

Here are my estimates for an Over/Under on number of entries remaining at the conclusion of various weeks:

Milestone	Over/Under
Week 6	240.5
Week 8	120.5
Week 10	65.5
Week 12	39.5
Week 14	12.5
Week 16	6.5
Week 18	1.5

Our Optimal Path for the most common combination (SEA-HOU-NYJ) has about a 4-in-1000 of getting through the remaining 17 picks, which would imply about 2-3 entries making it to the end at that survival rate. Of course, not everyone will pick close to optimally.

But we would estimate that it’s about a 50/50 proposition now that there will be a stand-alone winner that emerges by the end of Week 18, or we get a pot split (where all remaining entries are eliminated in the same week) before then.

The chances of a solo champ have definitely gone up, and the odds of an early ending are also now very much in play. If we get one more big week of eliminations like this last one, ending by the Thanksgiving/Sunday of Week 13 combo is possible.

Right now, we would put it at around +/- 39.5 entries being in play for the Thanksgiving picks.

What does this mean for future value planning? You still have to be ready to go 17 more picks, but you might de-emphasize Week 18 (a harder one to project anyway, with differing playoff motivations). The Christmas slate is also a tough one to plan for. Right now, we are projecting all three games to have slight favorites, with under 55% win odds (Kansas City at Pittsburgh; Baltimore at Houston; Chicago vs. Seattle). Passing on using the Chiefs in an earlier week to save them for a Christmas week when they might be closer to 50% to win, and which may not even be a factor or where only a few entries are alive, seems less strategically important now.

Circa Survivor Week 4 Estimated Popularity

We were pretty much dead on with our Browns’ projection last week, and that the Bucs and Raiders would have a little lower popularity than public data suggested. But The Bengals, the top EV choice last week based on average public pick data and market odds, shot up in Circa at the expense of even fewer Raiders and Bucs than projected (by about 4% each).

In the end, it did not really matter, as all four lost.

But the last two weeks shows us that the contrarian and EV-conscious players are over-represented in the remaining field, at least they were entering last week.

With that in mind, let’s turn to our pick popularity estimates for Circa Survivor Week 4. We’ve also included the current public pick rates across all pools and an EV estimate based on projected pick rates and market odds. Note that the EV calculation does not account for future value.

Team	Opponent	Circa Projected	Public	EV at Projected
SF	NE	29%	32%	1.06
HOU	JAC	21%	12%	0.97
NYJ	DEN	21%	17%	1.03
DAL	NYG	10%	13%	1.00
CIN	CAR	7%	6%	0.94
KC	LAC	5%	7%	1.14
ARI	WAS	2%	2%	0.93
PIT	IND	1%	2%	0.71
DET	SEA	1%	1%	0.98
LV	CLE	1%	1%	0.81

It’s an interesting strategic week. Two of the most popular projected teams, the Jets and Texans, are also the two most used teams in the contest among the 642 alive entries. That puts something of a cap on just how popular they can become, especially the Jets (where at most 27.5% could use them if everyone that could do so does).

The 49ers are projected to be popular, are the biggest favorite, and do have future value, factors that would ordinarily lead to a little less popularity in Circa, at least based on how picks have gone so far this year. But if you avoid them, who do you go for? The other options include holiday teams like Dallas, Kansas City, and the team that has killed the most entries so far in Cincinnati.

Future Value, After Week 4

Now, let’s look at the Future Value estimates for Circa Survivor Week 5 and beyond. 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.

Also, this week, we added the contest availability percentages for each team and put asterisks on teams that appear on a Thanksgiving or Christmas game schedule.