PICK 5 RULES

Each week you choose exactly 5 games from the NFL slate — any five, your choice — and pick one side of each against the spread. Each game can appear on your card once. Which five games you play is as much of the skill as which sides you take: a card full of half-point lines you feel strongly about beats five reluctant coin flips.

Not sure what a spread is or what "covering" means? Read the plain-English ATS guide first — this page assumes the vocabulary.

Every game carries one captured pregame line, frozen before that game's picks lock. Everyone in the pool plays the same number no matter when they pick, and every card is graded against exactly the stored line — never a re-fetched or moved one. If a game has no captured line yet, it can't be picked; it joins the slate when its line does.

The line is shown from the home team's perspective on the pick screen (e.g. -3.5 means the home side is favored by 3.5), and your graded results show the exact spread each pick was judged against.

A card wins the week when every non-voided pick on it covers. There are no points and no partial credit — 4-for-5 scores the same as 0-for-5. If several members go perfect in the same week, they split the week's pot equally.

A week is only settled once every game in it has finished, so results land once, correctly, rather than trickling in and changing.

If a game lands exactly on a whole-number spread, neither side covered — and on an all-or-nothing card, that breaks the card. A push is a real, played result that didn't cover; treating it as a free pass would hand out pots on four correct picks. Captured lines are almost always half-point numbers, so pushes are rare — but when one happens, this is the rule.

A game that is postponed, cancelled, or moved out of the week entirely voids the pick on it — excluded from the card, neither correct nor incorrect. The rest of the card still counts: four correct picks plus one voided pick is a winning card. The schedule failed you; your week shouldn't.

Two edges, both handled: a card whose picks allvoided does not win (no pick was actually played), and if a game moves before its deadline passes you're notified so you can swap in a replacement pick.

A week with no perfect card pays nobody — its pot rolls over into the next week, stacking until someone finally runs the table. Rollover weeks are where Pick 5 pools get loud: the pot on the line grows every week nobody claims it.

The final week (Week 18) has nowhere to roll, so each pool sets a final-week rule at creation. The default is split-season-best— the remaining pot goes to the member(s) with the most week wins across the season. Commissioners can instead carry the pot into next season's pool, or reserve the decision for themselves.

Each pick locks at its game's own kickoff, or when the Sunday afternoon slate begins — whichever comes first. Thursday's game must be picked by Thursday night; Sunday afternoon and Monday games all lock together when the Sunday slate starts. Until a pick locks you can change it freely, and once it locks it becomes visible to the pool. A pick you never make is simply not on your card — and a card without five picks can't win. All times are Eastern.

Pick 5 pools charge one entry fee for the season, set by the commissioner and collected and held by the commissioner — FootballPools never touches the money. The pot members see is the entry fee times the members actually marked paid, and the built-in tracker shows who has settled up. Weekly winners are recorded automatically; the payouts themselves happen inside the group, the same way the money came in.