This article is part of our NFL Picks series.
Circa Pools Q1 Results
Did you have a tough quarter in your NFL pools? Maybe got eliminated in Survivor by Week 2? I lasted all the way to Week 3 in the one Survivor I entered but I should mention it was a double-elimination format.
Circa Survivor Results
Yes, if you dropped out early rest assured, so did just about everybody. Circa Survivor V started with a record 14,266 entries and after 4 weeks, just 480 (3.36%) remain.
How does this compare with the early results in the previous 4 Circa Survivors? As you surely can guess, not at all well. Circa Survivor III in 2022 set the previous low water mark with 19.9% remaining after 4 weeks.
For anyone somehow still alive here, congrats. You now have an entry worth an implied value of $29,721. Depending on the specifics of which teams you have already used, you may have a ticket worth more than that. The most likely "chalk" that still survived has burned the Bills, Texans, Jets and Niners, so anyone still alive that has used up lesser teams could potentially fetch a bit more.
And no, Circa will not start up a 2nd Survivor redo this year. As CEO Derek Stevens noted on last weekend's Contest Show on VSiN, there are countless regulatory and technological hurdles to getting a contest up and running in short order. Not to mention players need to sign up in Nevada. Survivor and Millions start accepting entries in May and do not close until the day before the first NFL Sunday. But hey, for anyone totally eliminated by Week 3, they did offer an Empathy Package.
Circa Millions Results
Circa Millions players have gotten off to a relatively ugly start as well. Despite the fact that the pool attracts an ostensibly sharper crowd than the typical bettor, and Circa Millions lines freeze on Thursdays, the pool as a whole has hit on just 46.4% of picks so far.
The Top 5 picks each week have gone a combined 6-14. I have shares of two entries and have gone respectively 10-9-1 and 9-11, blah.
Circa awards quarterly prizes to the top 5 finishers, with $150,000 going to 1st place, down to $10,000 for 5th. Ties split. In addition, they award a booby prize of $25,000 for each quarter to the lowest total of anyone that submitted all 20 picks.
Four entries tied for the win with 16 points. They will split up $215,000. Six more entries ended with 15.5 and will split $10,000. As for last place, one entry hit just 2.5 and will take him the entire $25K. Hey, very tough to do that.
Can we glean much from the picks so far this season? Not really. The pool has skewed to favorites, same as the betting public at large. And favorites have not done well this season. Line edges available in contests do not exist in actual betting. They make sense to play in a contest for the most part (Game Theory considerations may counsel otherwise at times as you can gain more on pools by avoiding popular picks).
The line edge picks have not done well this season. Just in Week 4, the Browns, Falcons and Packers all fit this category and none of them covered. That will almost certainly mean revert over time and will drag the overall results of the pool back a shade over .500
