Football Pool Cancelled Games Contingencies
Many managers and players have asked how to handle cancelled or postponed games. Cancelled games will be immediately removed from the schedule and all pick sheets. Postponed games will automatically be added to the schedule when the new game date is released by the NFL. However, if the postponed game is rescheduled for the same week (e.g. for Monday night), the site Administrator will determine on a case-by-case basis whether or not to keep the game on the schedule.
Below is how the site software will automatically treat cancelled games.
Survivor Pools
Players who pick a team of a game that gets cancelled in the same week will move forward to the next week. However, they will not be able to pick the team again (assuming the default of 1 pick per team is set), and they will be weakened in the season-ending tie-breaker since number of wins is the first tie-breaker. The player will also not advance in a last-man-standing scenario where all remaining players lose in a given week.
Note that if a pick was made in a past week for the current week (future picks premium feature), the pick will be marked as a loss.
Survivor Players: Your manager may opt to handle cancelled games differently than the site default described above, so be sure to double-check with them.
Survivor Managers: If a player picks a team of a cancelled game before the game is removed from the pick sheet and the game hasn’t been played yet, its up to the manager to clear the pick and ask the player to pick another game.Pickem Pools
Cancelled games will be as if the teams were on a bye week and the pick will simply be discarded.
Tie-Breaker set to Last Game of Week
For leagues with tie-breaker configuration set to Last Game of Week, the player is presented the last game at the time they make their picks. Hence, if a game is rescheduled to occur after the last game, then players who submit picks after the rescheduling will be placing their tie-breaker on a different game. We believe this is the fairest way to handle the tie-breaker, as the player always knows which game they are placing their tie-breaker. Over/Under between games can vary widely, so if the tie-breaker was literally forced on the last game, then players who picked early would be at a disadvantage by having their tie-breaker switched to a different game (e.g. from a low-scoring to high-scoring game). Nevertheless, for those managers who prefer to force their league to use the literal last game, there is a solution described in the forum here.Tie-Breaker Game Cancelled
If the game that a player placed their tie-breaker on is cancelled and the player doesn't change their tie-breaker pick in time, the website will debit them 20 points against the tie-breaker (e.g. they will be "off" by 20 on their tie-breaker).Leagues configured to pick X number of games
If you configured your league to pick X number of games (e.g. 10 games) a week instead of the full schedule, there can arise a situation where players who picked a cancelled game will have one less opportunity for a win. The best way to manage this situation is for the manager to allow those players to submit to the manager (via email, text, etc) an extra pick the following week, that the manager would then submit for them. This is possible since managers are able to submit more than the required number of picks.
Confidence Pools
If a game is cancelled before the league's pick deadline, players who picked the cancelled game before it was removed from the schedule will have their points adjusted due to an unfair advantage of being able to use a higher weight value than those players who picked after the cancelled game but before the pick deadline. All weights used above the weight value of the cancelled game will be adjusted downward by 1 weight. For example, in a 16 game week, if 10 was put on a team of a cancelled game, the team with 16 will be set to 15, 15 to 14, 14 to 13, 13 to 12, 12 to 11, and finally 11 to 10, with all weights below 10 remaining the same.
If a game is cancelled after the league's pick deadline, the pick for that game will simply be discarded and no weight adjustments will occur.
Tie-breaker game behavior is the same as Pickem leagues above.
Play Money Pools
Similar to pickem pools, the pick will be discarded and any play money placed on the game will return to the player. The $100 play money minimum requirement for the week will be waived for any portion bet on a cancelled game. Tie-breaker game behavior is the same as Pickem leagues above.
Recommendation to managers
Set your league deadline to no earlier than Sunday at 11am MST. If you want players to have full flexibility to make changes to games that haven’t started yet, set your deadline to 8pm Monday. For more details on the league deadline setting, click here. Ultimately it’s up to each individual manager to decide how to handle cancelled games, as managers have quite a bit of flexibility in the settings to override the defaults. If you decide to not rely on the site defaults, please be sure to let your league know of how you plan to handle cancelled games.
If you have any suggestions please let us know. There is a discussion of how to handle cancelled games in the forum here.
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