Maybe you’ve been playing fantasy sports for a while and have been asked to play your first Confidence Pool. Or maybe you’re new to fantasy sports games entirely. In any case, a trust fund is actually quite an interesting way to bet on 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 Trust Fund, you are asked to choose the winners of each NFL contest for the week (yes, all 16 games; less during the bye weeks). Then weights each selection with a number of confidence points between 1 and 16 (where higher is better). You cannot reuse a number and must use all numbers. When the team you picked to win actually wins, you get the points you assigned to that game.
Scoring and payments
So how do scores and payouts work? Many pools will charge an entrance fee. This fee is charged to all participants and is distributed in the form of weekly and / or seasonal prizes. The weekly winner is the person whose coin returned the most points from the correct selections (as close to 136 points as possible). Those rankings are tabulated throughout the season to determine ranking within your league. You can win a week to earn money and you can also earn the total score for the season.
This type of prize structure means that even newbies to the trusted pool can compete with the experts. Even a novice using the “animal strategy” can choose the best during a given week. (The “animal strategy” involves choosing the winner as if it were a cage battle in the desert. For example, in a game pitting the Chicago Bears against the Philadelphia Eagles, the Bears always win. Of course, this strategy has some pitfalls: see “Detroit Lions” or the other side, “Arizona Cardinals”).
Variable league settings
A good fantasy sports site will allow pool commissioners to choose from a wide variety of customizable settings. Here we will cover some of the most common league options. You will want to weigh the options and the cost between some of the providers. There are some good websites that offer free trust groups. You just have to look for them.
Trust groups generally allow each team owner to discard a certain number of bad week picks per season (say, the lowest 2 weeks of the 16 weeks). These are often referred to as “Fall Weeks.” This feature lets you forget about the week you were headed out of town and didn’t read, and helps brighten your spirits after an unusually bad week.
Another common option is not to rank the weekly direct winners, but to rank the winners against the spread. This more difficult option requires that if the Broncos – Raiders margin is 6 points (in favor of the Broncos in this case), you would have to choose whether the Broncos will win by 6 or more, or win by less than 6. You ‘ Then assign confidence points to that selection as you would a normal group.
Lastly, does your group allow the use of “automatic selections” when the owner does not make selections for the week? Automatic selections allow the computer to use its default decision-making system, such as choosing all favorites, ranked in descending order by point margin. If your group closes the opportunity to make selections at the beginning of the first game and you are busy sleeping off your Saturday night drinks, you are at least playing that week.
Victorious
If you’ve read this far, you deserve some advice on how to earn your Trust Fund. Beyond the obvious (which is making sure to assign points according to your confidence), every trusted league player should be aware of the main factors that affect victory in the NFL: injuries, weather, home advantage, matchups. between teams and training. clashes. Studying all of this information for each game can be tedious for non-NFL addicts, but there are many websites and experts that 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!