Maybe you’ve been playing fantasy sports for a while and have been asked to play in your first trusted group. Or maybe you are completely new to fantasy sports games. In any case, a trust fund is actually quite an interesting way to bet on the games. We say “bet” because you are choosing a team to win each of the games each week, even though you are not actually placing a bet.
The game is quite simple. In a standard confidence pool, you’re asked to pick the winners of each NFL competition for the week (yes, all 16 games; fewer during bye weeks). It then weights each selection with a number of confidence points between 1 and 16 (higher is better). You cannot reuse a number and you must use all numbers. When the team you chose to win actually wins, you get the points you assigned to that game.
Scoring and payouts
So how do scoring and payouts work? Many pools will charge an entry fee. That fee is collected from all participants and distributed in the form of weekly and/or seasonal prizes. The weekly winner is the person whose coin returns the most correct picks points (closest to 136 points). Those rankings are tabulated throughout the season to determine the rankings within their league. You can win a week to earn money, and you can also win the total score of the season.
This type of prize structure means that even novices can compete with the experts. Even a novice using the “animal strategy” can pick the best for a given week. (The “animal strategy” involves picking the winner as if it were a cage battle in the wild. For example, in a game pitting the Chicago Bears against the Philadelphia Eagles, the Bears win every time. Of course, this strategy has some pitfalls: see “Detroit Lions” or at the other extreme, “Arizona Cardinals”).
Variable League Configuration
A good fantasy sports site will allow pool commissioners to choose from a wide variety of customizable settings. Below we’ll cover some of the more common league options. You’ll want to weigh the options and cost among some of the providers. There are some good websites that offer free trust funds. You just have to do a search for them.
Trust funds generally allow each team owner to discard a certain number of bad week picks per season (for example, their lowest 2 weeks out of 16 weeks). These are often referred to as “Drop Weeks.” This feature lets you forget about the week he was out of town and didn’t read, and helps lift your spirits after an unusually bad week.
Another common option is not to rank the weekly outright winners, but to rank the winners against the spread. This more difficult option requires that if the difference between the Broncos and the Raiders is 6 points (in favor of the Broncos in this case), you would have to choose if the Broncos will win by 6 or more, or if they will win by less than 6. d then assign trust points to that selection as you would a normal pool.
Finally, does your pool allow the use of “auto pick” when the owner does not make picks for the week? Automatic selections allow the computer to use its default decision-making system, such as picking all favorites, ranked in descending order by point spread. If your group shuts down the chance to make picks at the start of the first game and you’re busy sleeping off Saturday night drinks, at least you’re playing that week.
victorious
If you’ve read this far, you deserve some tips on how to earn your trust pool. Beyond the obvious (which is making sure you assign points based on your confidence), every trusted league player should be aware of the major factors that affect winning in the NFL: injuries, weather, home field advantage, matchups between equipment and training. Matchups Studying all this information for each game can be tedious for non-NFL addicts, but there are plenty of websites and experts that will offer predictions for each game. These websites are worth checking out if you don’t have time to do the research yourself.
Best of luck!
