ATROPOSSurvivor pool glossary
The vocabulary of serious survivor strategy, with the numbers attached. Deeper treatments: making picks, split-adjusted EV, the wipeout rule, anchors and books.
Survivor pool
A contest where each entry picks one NFL team per week (sometimes two). A win advances the entry; a loss eliminates it; each team is usable once per season. Last entries standing split the prize pool.
Eliminator / knockout / last man standing / suicide pool
Alternate names for the identical survivor format — one pick a week, lose and you're out, no team reuse. The name signals origin (ESPN: eliminator; Vegas: survivor; UK: last man standing); the strategy transfers unchanged.
Chalk
The most popular, usually safest pick of the week. Chalk survives the most and splits the most: in 500,000 simulated seasons of a $21M contest, pure chalk returned 0.36x the entry fee.
Ownership / pick %
The share of the field's entries on a team in a given week. The core leverage statistic: when high-ownership chalk loses, the surviving minority inherits the field's equity.
Devig (no-vig)
Removing the sportsbook's margin from a moneyline to recover true win probability. Two-sided -350/+280 devigs to roughly 76/24. All serious survivor math starts from devigged numbers.
EV (expected value)
Average outcome weighted by probability. In survivor: P(reach a paying outcome) x expected share of the pool in it — not survival probability. See split-adjusted EV.
Split-adjusted EV
EV that accounts for co-survivors splitting the pool and for wipeout endings. Atropos's core objective; maximizing raw survival is measurably wrong (0.36x vs 1.76x).
Future value (FV)
The value of holding a team for its later scheduled spots. Must be discounted for line drift (±13 points at a 12-week horizon), your own survival, and contest-over risk.
FATE
Field-Adjusted Team Equity — Atropos's proprietary field-adjusted metric for each team's future value. Built from simulated season paths and field behavior (scarcity, hoarding, availability), it replaces raw future value everywhere in the app.
Hoarding
Field behavior of saving a standout team for a known future spot, then firing it en masse. In 2026 simulations, ~95% of a standout team's remaining holders play it in its best week — the hoard arrives together and splits together.
Double-pick week
A week requiring two teams, both of which must win. The Splash World Championship has eight, five consecutive in weeks 12–16 — the deadliest stretch in the format.
Wipeout rule
If the entire field is eliminated, the pool is split by the last cohort eliminated. 53.6% of simulated 2026 seasons end this way, which makes dying last a paying strategy.
Wipeout week
The week the field fully dies. Modal wipeout weeks in the 2026 World Championship simulations: 15 and 16.
Anchor
A deliberately chosen week-1 (or current-week) team that a block of a multi-entry portfolio is built around, so the portfolio's fates decorrelate.
Route
A full-season plan: one team assigned to every remaining pick slot, respecting the use-once rule. Optimizers evaluate routes, not single weeks.
Book
A portfolio of routes across multiple entries, constructed so entries don't duplicate and don't die together. Graded by simulating the full contest.
Leverage
Holding a position the field doesn't: comparable win probability at a fraction of the ownership. The measurable source of survivor profit.
Winshare
A team's share of the week's win equity: (win% − 50) / Σ(win% − 50) over the slate's favorites. A quick view of how much of the week's safety one team carries.
Crowd multiple
Ownership divided by winshare. Above 1: the field is over-concentrated on the team relative to how much safety it provides — a fade signal.
Inventory
The set of teams an entry hasn't used yet. Late-season survivor is an inventory game: week-13 choices are made by what you did in week 4.
Ghost / no-pick
An entry eliminated for failing to submit a pick. A real hazard rate in big contests, visible in every season's data.
Field model
A statistical model of how opponents pick — herding, home bias, hoarding — used to price ownership before picks are revealed.