How to Handle Pools that Exclude Thursday Picks
Some pools don't use Thursday night games, so we explain how you can still use our picks to help with such a pool.
Some of you play in pools that exclude Thursday games from consideration, and only use games played on Sunday and Monday. We have a question about this in My Pool Picks when setting up your pool, and if you click “Yes” to the question about excluding Thursday games, it will give you a message that the product does not support pools with that rule.
Let’s go through why that is, what it means, and possible ways that you can still use the product in the pools that have such a rule.
Why Don’t You Customize for Pools that Exclude Thursday Games?
One big factor with Thursday games is pick popularity and how it could have downstream impacts on both expected value and future value. Every year is different, and some years, there are some pretty big survivor games on Thursday night. Since the vast majority of pick popularity data that we collect is from pools with standard rules, it sometimes isn’t very representative of pools that exclude Thursday games.
This doesn’t only affect the current week, but also future weeks. For example, if a team playing on Thursday night in Week 1 has 15% popularity nationally, that means the team in question will be more available in the future in no-Thursday-game pools compared to standard pools, because no one in no-Thursday-game pools used them in Week 1. Further, that 15% has to go somewhere, which could lead to increased popularity for the bigger favorites in weeks where the Thursday game has a top team in it.
Here are some examples of games in the 2025 season that could have a different impact and value proposition in leagues excluding Thursday games:
- Philadelphia Eagles vs. Dallas, Week 1
- Buffalo Bills vs. Miami, Week 3
- Philadelphia Eagles at NY Giants, Week 6
- Denver Broncos vs. Las Vegas, Week 10
So How Can I Use Your Product?
We can’t access your pool website directly and monitor every single entry’s picks. Our advice is based on public pick popularity data from a variety of sources, and it does a generally good job of predicting pick distributions. However it probably doesn’t completely mirror your pool, even a standard one, on a particular week. With pools that exclude Thursday games, that image just becomes a little murkier.
So if you are comfortable with recognizing that our pick popularity estimates may not reflect your pool in some weeks, particularly when a Thursday team has some public popularity, or a team now might be more popular because another tantalizing matchup is unavailable in the future, you can still get lots of good data, input, and logic that should help you.
You just might need to use some other features in our product, besides the specific My Pool Picks recommendation, to maximize it. For example, if you are playing in a Thursday pool and get a sense of how entries tend to distribute picks, you can use the EV Calculator. Just do the following to get adjusted EVs for your pool:
- Set the Thursday game to 50% win odds for both teams and popularity of 0;
- If the Thursday game had a team with some pick popularity, distribute the missing popularity proportionally to the remaining popular picks, or if you have specific knowledge of how your pool picks, use that to change the popularity estimates;
- Generate your new EV, and compare that to the pick rankings and current week EV for your pool, and note which teams moved up or down.
In that way, you can use the EV Calculator tool to adjust for some of the popularity changes.
But What About It Suggesting a Team That I Cannot Use?
The biggest problem comes up when it suggests a team that plays on Thursday for your pick, but you cannot use it. There are some potential solutions here:
Wait to Generate Your Picks Until Thursday Night Kickoff
Another work-around, if you do not need any pick recommendations for other pools that could involve the Thursday game, is to wait until the Thursday Night game has kicked off (or anytime after that), and generate your pool picks for the first time that week. That way, the Thursday game will not be included in your pick options since the game will have been locked.
This solution wouldn’t work, though, if you had a portfolio of picks and needed to see other picks by Thursday night.
Swap Picks Between Pools
If you are getting a portfolio of picks across a variety of pool types, and one of your pick recommendations is to use a Thursday team in a pool where you cannot, you can swap that pick with a pick in a different pool that does allow Thursday picks.
Ideally, you should swap picks with an entry where the Thursday game is ranked highly, and where that entry’s original pick is ranked highly in the no-Thursday pool.
Use The Next Highest Ranked Team
In some cases, neither of the above solutions will work. Maybe the entry in question only has a couple good options, and neither of them are available to other entries in your portfolio. In this case, your best option is to look at the pick rankings for that pool, and use the highest graded team as your pick instead.
Hide The Pool In Question (Fool The System)
There’s one final option that’s a little tricky, but allows you to use exactly the suggested picks for each pool in a portfolio that includes pool that both can and cannot use Thursday games.
On the My Pool Picks page, after Week 1, each pool you’re still alive in should have an “I won this pool” link. If you want to generate picks for your pools that can use Thursday games, you can click “I won this pool” for the pool that can’t use Thursday game. Then when you generate picks, the system will ignore that pool.
After Thursday, you can revive the no-Thursday-picks pool by clicking the “I did not win this pool” link. Then when you regenerate your Survivor portfolio, and Thursday picks in other pools will be locked, and the system will generate new (non-Thursday) picks for the pool in question.
Note that we said “after Week 1” above. The “I won this pool” link isn’t available before Week 1 — how could you have won a pool before it started? For Week 1, the way to implement this solution is simply to wait until after Thursday to create any pool where you can’t pick Thursday game. If you’ve already created the pool, simply delete it and recreate it after Thursday.