Circa Grandissimo: High-Stakes NFL Survivor Contest Strategy

Circa Grandissimo is a new $100K-entry NFL survivor contest for 2025. We break down how its small pool size changes optimal strategy.

New for 2025, Circa Sportsbook has launched a second, higher-stakes survivor contest in addition to its flagship contest. The name of the new contest is the Circa Grandissimo.

It is billed as the “ultimate high-stakes NFL survivor contest” with:

• A $100,000 entry fee
• A maximum of two entries allowed per person
• A $1.5 million guarantee

Other than that, the other rules of Circa Survivor still apply. This includes details such as the Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks, the pick deadlines, and the standard survivor rules of picking exactly one team and only being able to pick them once.

However, this high-stakes contest should require a vastly different strategy from that used to win the Circa Survivor contests in recent years. We’ll break down the Circa Grandissimo strategy below.

Circa Grandissimo: Small Pool NFL Survivor Strategy

The primary difference, and it’s going to be a massive one, is the size of the pool.

The original contest grew from just over 1,000 entrants in 2020 to more than 14,000 last year. Even with all the survivor losses early last season, we still did not get a solo Circa Survivor champion, as eight winners eventually got to 20-0. (You can see our breakdown of the winners and strategies that worked here.)

In fact, so far, we have yet to get a solo champion in Circa Survivor, and the odds are reasonably low that we do, given the expanding size of several thousand entries. That’s not the case in the Circa Grandissimo.

Circa Grandissimo Pool Size

The Circa Grandissimo will have a very large entry fee barrier, but a small contest size. If it hits the guarantee amount of $1.5 million, that means 15 different entries in the contest. Perhaps it grows to 20 or 30 total entries. Regardless, it’s hard to envision that this is going to be an extremely large contest.

At PoolGenius, where our NFL Survivor Pool Picks product offers customized pick advice and tools to win survivor pools, the median pool in our database from last year was almost 250 entries. The Circa Grandissimo will likely qualify as a very small pool by total size, while the main Circa Survivor contest is among the largest.

How Small Pool Size Impacts Strategy

Here are some key ways the contest strategy is different:

• You probably won’t need to go 20-0. With fewer entries, it’s unlikely this contest goes the distance of the entire season. Getting to/through the Holiday weeks is probably enough to win this contest.
• Future value is different. Because you will likely need to pick fewer teams in fewer weeks, the estimated future value is different than larger contests. You likely won’t need to “save” as many teams for the last handful of weeks.
• Win Odds and EV (Expected Value) become more important. These two overshadow future value in smaller NFL survivor pools.
• Less concern with pick popularity. With smaller pool sizes, we see more variation in pick popularity numbers, and pool picking behavior can be extreme.
• Endgame strategy. You get to the “end game strategy” of trying to read opponents and figure out specific picks much quicker.

Here are a few quick examples to show how each strategy shift plays out.

Future Value and Contest Length

We don’t know how many entries the first Circa Grandissimo will have. But even small changes in size (say, 15 vs. 20 entries) can noticeably impact how long the contest lasts. That’s very different from the main Circa Survivor, where an increase from 15,500 to 15,600 entries barely moves the needle.

How Long Will Circa Grandissimo Last?

We have studied survivor pool length, and can draw some conclusions from that. Based on survivor pool data over the last decade, here’s a rough estimate for when smaller contests typically end:

• 10 entries: average end around Week 9

• 25 entries: around Week 12

• 50 entries: around Week 14

Some years go longer. Others end early, especially when there’s a wipeout week.

Take the 2024 season as an example: fewer than 5% of Circa Survivor entries were alive after just three weeks. Yet the contest still made it to the end. If the Circa Grandissimo had existed with only 20 entries, it likely would’ve ended by Week 4 due to those wipeout weeks.

That’s an extreme example, but based on the data we gathered, the contest (with 20-25 entries) is estimated to last until around Week 12.

Thanksgiving May Not Matter

If the Circa Grandissimo ends before Week 13, then the Thanksgiving and Christmas pick weeks may not even come into play. In fact, we estimate there’s less than a 50% chance the contest will reach Thanksgiving if it has fewer than 25 entries.

As a result, you may not want to value the weeks after Thanksgiving as much as you would in the larger contest.

Let’s use the 2025 Buffalo Bills as an example: As noted in our 2025 NFL schedule reactions, the Bills face New Orleans in Week 4—a juicy matchup. In a large NFL Survivor contest (with hundreds or thousands of entries), you might save Buffalo for later, where they play Cleveland (Week 16) and the Jets (Week 18). But in Grandissimo, holding out that long is risky. Week 16 would be the 17th pick in the contest, and there’s a good chance the contest ends well before then.

So, rather than playing for a future that might never arrive, Grandissimo strategy favors taking strong win odds early, before it’s too late.

Win Odds, Pick Popularity & Expected Value

In a small pool like Circa Grandissimo, pick popularity becomes volatile. While public data gives us a general sense of which teams will be popular, that doesn’t always translate to a 15 to 20 entry contest. Here’s why:

• Tiny field, big swings. In a large contest, your pick is just one of thousands. But in Grandissimo, every pick matters more. One or two other entries choosing the same team can swing pick popularity by 10% or more. That makes predicting pick popularity far more difficult.
• Contrarian picks get riskier. In contests this small, trying to go contrarian can backfire fast. If just one other person makes the same “sneaky” pick, it can completely tank its expected value. Your pick heavily impacts the math, so taking too much risk often becomes a negative EV move.
• Focus on win odds, not future value. Because the contest likely ends earlier, win odds now should be prioritized over future value later. High-confidence picks are more valuable, especially if others have already burned that team. In some cases, you’ll still want to avoid overly popular teams, but the threshold for when that matters changes drastically in smaller pools.

In conclusion, it makes sense to treat the Circa Grandissimo like a tactical sprint, not a marathon. Nailing the right picks early and correctly assessing your risk tolerance will matter more than ever.