What If My Pool Doesn’t Start Until After Week 1?
For later starting pools, we explain how to adjust the pick popularity numbers to get reasonable estimates of expected value.
Our Survivor analysis is based on three main data points for each team:
- Projected win probability for the current week (PG Win Odds)
- Projected pick percentage for the current week in a standard pool (Popularity)
- Projected value of saving the team for future weeks (Future Value)
For pools that start later than Week 1, our estimates for PG Win Odds should be fine to use as is. And our estimates for Future Value should be fairly useful as well, as those are based in large part on projected future win odds (with some influence from projected future popularity).
However, our estimates for Popularity are based on reported pick percentages from popular Survivor sites. Those consist largely of pools that start in Week 1.
If your pool starts after Week 1, teams that were very popular AND WON in the early weeks will be more popular in your pool than they are in standard pools, going forward (because more people have them available).
To illustrate this, think about a team that’s picked by 50% of the public in Week 1, and wins (as does every popular team that week). In Week 2, they’re only available to 50% of surviving contestants. However, if your pool starts in Week 2, everybody in your pool will have that popular team available.
Let’s cover what is accounted for, and where the potential popularity for a “late start” pool for teams that had early week popularity may not be fully counted.
My Pool Picks (Custom Pick Rankings)
For the My Pool Picks tool, the numbers we display in the Data Grid and in the numbers for your pool will show our general popularity estimates. However, we are attempting to adjust for the potential popularity differences, by accounting for your pool start week. However, we are not displaying a custom number in the grid. So the grades for a team may differ based on the week the pool started, and that is in part due to the potential availability for that team.
Optimal Path Tool
Our “Max EV” path may not be super accurate for your pool, since it relies on the pick% values reported by the national Survivor sites and our Week 1 popularity estimates, and then our estimates for future week popularity. But those future week popularity predictions are a general number based on our past usage estimates for a team, starting in Week 1. So teams that had high usage in early weeks in a late start may have higher popularity than we are showing in the . However, our “Max Survival” paths should still work as normal.
We do now have it set up so that you can indicate when your pool started and generate a Optimal Path from that point on, though, and generate your Optimal Path by accounting for the specific weeks you have made picks, and will make picks in the future.
Season Planner Tool
Similar to the Optimal Path tool, you can indicate when your pool began now. Similar to the Optimal Path tool, the win odds should be the same no matter when the pool began, but the pick percentages (and EV) displayed may not reflect your late start pool because those are a general number projected by accounting for how available a team is, based on usage across all past weeks of the season.