My Pool Allows A Bye / Free Pass Week, When Should I Use It?

If your pool uses byes, the product now provides advice for using them. Here are some of the strategy considerations.

Some survivor pools let you use a “bye” at some point in the season. That is, rather than risking a loss by selecting a team, you can choose to use your bye, and automatically advance to the next week.

Byes differ from strikes in that you have to declare you are using them before you know the outcome, and before you select a team for that week.

Our NFL Survivor Picks product now can provide advice to when to use your bye week. As for when to use it, we covered some of the strategy considerations in our strategy article about how the rules of your pool affect strategy.

When it comes to byes, the basic strategy considerations (and the kind of things our pick recommendations are weighing) are that they are best used when:

• The top win odds options that week are relatively lower, and thus usually the overall expected weekly survival rate is lower
• The public pick percentages are more heavily concentrated in 1-2 teams that week
• Your entry has used the best options for that week and has a bigger dropoff in relative value