A Pick 5 card has one way to win — every pick correct — but three different ways a single pick can fail to be correct, and they are not treated alike. A loss breaks your card. A push breaks your card. A void doesn't touch it. The differences are precise, they're deliberate, and understanding them will save you a Monday-morning support message someday. Here's the complete taxonomy of what can happen to a Pick 5 pick, and the reasoning behind each rule.
First, the card
Each week you pick exactly five games against the frozen spread. If every pick that actually got graded is correct, your card wins the week's pot (splitting it with any other perfect cards); otherwise the pot rolls into next week. Every rule below is in service of one question: which picks actually got graded, and did all of them cover?
Loss: you played and missed
Nothing subtle here. Your team failed to cover the frozen line — favorite won by less than the number, or your underdog lost by more than it — and your pick is wrong. One loss ends the card's chances; the other four picks still get graded and shown (four covers and a miss is a very different week from one-for-five, even if neither pays), but the pot is off the table.
Push: you played and tied the number
A push happens when the final margin lands exactly on the spread — a 3-point favorite winning by exactly 3. It's only possible on a whole-number line, which is why you'll almost never see one here: the line source we freeze attaches a half point to nearly every spread, and a margin can't land on half a point. Seasons can pass without a push in your pool.
But rare isn't never, so the rule is explicit: a push counts as a loss in Pick 5. The card demands five covers; a push is a real, completed game in which your team did not cover. It didn't fail badly — but "didn't fail badly" is not what the card asks.
Why not call a push a wash and grade the card on the remaining four? Because that quietly converts a five-pick contest into a four-pick one, and hands out pots on cards that never did the full job. Four correct picks plus a push is a good week. It's not a perfect card, and the pot — especially a pot that's been rolling for three weeks — should only ever go to a perfect card. Whatever you think of that trade-off, it's the same for everyone: with one frozen number per game, either the whole pool pushed on that game or nobody did.
Void: you never got the game you picked
Now the genuinely different case. Sometimes the schedule itself fails: a game is postponed, cancelled, or moved out of the week entirely after picks were made. Your pick on that game can't be graded — not because of anything you judged wrong, but because the contest you judged never happened.
That pick is voided: removed from the card's math entirely, neither correct nor incorrect. The rest of your card plays on, and the perfect-card test applies to what remains. Go four-for-four on your surviving picks with one void, and your card wins — you covered everything the week actually let you play. (The one degenerate exception: a card whose picks all voided doesn't win — an unplayed week can't be a perfect one.)
If a game you picked is voided, we tell you — a notice on your dashboard and an email — rather than leaving you to discover it in the standings. And when it happens before the week locks, you can simply come back and rebuild your card around games that are still on.
Push versus void, side by side
The two cases look similar on a results page — "that pick didn't count against me, right?" — and they are opposites:
| Push | Void | |
|---|---|---|
| What happened | Game played, margin hit the number exactly | Game never played (or left the week) |
| Whose "fault" | The result — a completed game that didn't cover | The schedule — no contest occurred |
| Effect on your card | Counts as a loss; card is broken | Excluded entirely; card judged on the rest |
The principle underneath: you own the results of games that happen; nobody owns a game that doesn't. A push is football. A void is logistics. Cards are broken by football only.
Where the pot goes when nobody's perfect
Perfect cards are meant to be hard, so many weeks end with no winner — and the pot doesn't vanish, it rolls over, stacking week on week until somebody runs the table and takes the accumulated pile. The rollover is Pick 5's signature: a three-week pot turns an ordinary Sunday slate into an event.
The one place a pot can't roll is off the end of the season. If the final week produces no perfect card, your pool's final-week rule — chosen by the commissioner at setup — decides it: split the pot among the season's most frequent weekly winners (the default), carry it into next season's pool, or leave it to the commissioner to resolve. Ask which rule your pool uses now, in September; it's the kind of detail nobody cares about until there's a January number attached to it.
And in Pick All?
Pick All grades against the same frozen lines and the same results, but there's no card to break — every correct pick is simply a point, most points wins the week. So a push there just earns no point, and your results page says "push," not "loss," because with sixteen graded picks the distinction is worth showing. A void in Pick All works exactly as in Pick 5: the game leaves everyone's count entirely.
Same three words, one philosophy across both formats: losses are real, pushes are real, and voids never happened. Know the difference before the week it decides your pot.