Five things. Then it's just you and your opinions.
Bye weeks mean some weeks have fewer than sixteen games. The ranks and the payouts shrink with the slate, so a perfect week is worth less in a bye week. Everyone is on the same slate, so it evens out.
You are picking straight-up winners, not against the spread. If a team wins by one point they won, and your pick was right.
The number on each card (KC -3) is Vegas telling you who they think wins and by how much. It is context for deciding your ranks. It has nothing to do with scoring, and it never affects your points.
Games that are not priced yet show line TBD. Books only post a week or so ahead.
Once a game kicks off, every locked card shows the split: what percentage of the pool took each side. The Grid carries The pool row along the bottom with the majority pick on every game.
It only ever appears after kickoff. Before that it would tell you what everyone else did, which is the whole thing we are protecting.
When the crowd goes down together the card gets a red Pool got it wrong tag. Those are the weeks that shake up a table, because whoever went against it just gained on everybody at once.
NFL games can end in a draw. When that happens, nobody scores points that game, whichever team you took. Rare, but it happens roughly once a season.
Post the highest score of anybody in the pool for a week and this is yours. Rack them up and it starts keeping count. Finish tied with somebody for the week and you both take one, no argument.
Second best that week. Close, but somebody was closer.
A perfect week. Read on.
Sit on top of the season table and your whole row turns gold with a Leader tag on it, in Standings and on the Grid. It is not a trophy, it is a seat, and somebody is always coming for it. Every time a game goes final the table re-sorts underneath you and a small arrow marks who just climbed or slid.
Standings splits in two: This week ranks everyone on the week showing, Season on the whole year with every seal beside the name.
Call all sixteen games in a single week and a gold trophy goes next to your name in Standings, permanently. Do it twice and it carries a number.
Fair warning: flipping coins, your odds are about 1 in 65,000. Knowing ball helps, but not that much. Most seasons nobody gets one.
Anyone can go 11-5. The question is which eleven. Same record, same games, and you might walk away with 100 points or 60. It all comes down to what you put your big numbers on.
Which is why nobody's ever really out of it. Thirty points back with four weeks left is one gutsy Sunday from the lead.
Every tap saves instantly. Bail out halfway through, pick it back up on a different phone, and you're right where you left it.
Lock in is not a save button. It confirms the week is complete: every game picked, every rank assigned, tiebreaker entered.
Enter your email, we send a six-digit code, you type it in. No password to forget. You stay signed in on that device, so you will not do this every week.
Your picks live with your account, not your phone. Sign in anywhere and they follow you.
You only ever hear about games you have not picked. Finish the week early and it stays quiet. Turn categories on and off in Settings.
On iPhone, alerts only work if the app is on your Home Screen. That is an Apple rule, not ours.
Rank 1 is your surest game and pays 16 points. Rank 16 is your coin flip and pays 1. A perfect week is 136.
Staking is optional. Pick a team without ranking it and a correct call is worth 1 point — the same as your lowest rank. Nothing is lost by leaving a game unstaked, but nothing is won either: the points are in the ranking.
Kickoff is one moment in time. Pick how you want it shown. Everyone else keeps seeing their own.
You only ever hear about games you haven't picked. Finish the week early and these stay quiet.
Each game closes the moment it kicks off. Anything you have not picked by then scores zero. There is no late entry.
Your picks stay hidden from everyone else until each game kicks off. The Grid fills in one game at a time as the day goes on.
Closest to the combined points in the week's final game, without going over. That is Monday night most weeks, but it follows the schedule.
Signed in. Your picks live with your account, so they follow you to any device.
Replay the welcome screens. Useful when you're walking somebody through installing it.