Confidence pools are the most popular NFL pick'em format for groups that actually follow football — and if you've never played one, the mechanics take about 60 seconds to understand and the rest of the season to master.
Here's exactly how they work, how scoring is calculated, and what separates the players who win from the players who blame the refs.
The Basic Idea
In a standard pick'em pool, every correct pick is worth one point. Confidence pools change that. Instead of every pick being equal, you assign a unique point value to each pick based on how confident you are.
Pick 16 games this week? You distribute the numbers 1 through 16 across all your picks — one number per game, each number used exactly once. Your most confident pick gets 16. Your least confident pick gets 1. If you're right, you earn those points. If you're wrong, you earn zero.
That's it. The entire mechanics of a confidence pool in three sentences.
A Concrete Example
Say it's Week 7. There are 14 games on the slate. You get the numbers 1 through 14 to assign.
You think the Chiefs are going to dominate the Raiders. You put 14 on Kansas City. If the Chiefs cover (or win outright, depending on your format), you earn 14 points. If they lose, you get nothing.
You have no idea who wins the Commanders-Giants game. Coin flip. You put 1 on whoever you're guessing. Right or wrong, it barely matters — you only gain or lose 1 point on that game.
Over 14 games, the total points available that week is 1+2+3+...+14 = 105 points. If you go 14-0 with perfect confidence allocation, you earn 105. If you go 7-7 but you put your high numbers on the wrong games, you might finish with 42 points while someone who also went 7-7 but allocated well finishes with 70.
That's the entire game. You're not just picking winners — you're betting your conviction on the right games.
ATS Confidence vs. Straight Up Confidence
There are two versions of confidence pools:
Straight Up + Confidence: You pick the outright winner of each game. The Patriots either beat the Jets or they don't. No point spread involved. This is the better choice for mixed groups where some players don't follow betting lines.
ATS + Confidence: You pick every game against the point spread. Instead of picking the Chiefs to win, you're picking the Chiefs to cover -7.5. This is harder — and that's the point. The spread levels the playing field between a heavy favorite and an underdog, and it punishes lazy picks on obvious chalk. This is the format for groups that genuinely follow the lines.
Both use identical confidence scoring mechanics. The only difference is what you're predicting.
How Confidence Points Are Allocated
Each week's total confidence allocation depends on how many games are on the slate. The assignment is always consecutive numbers starting from 1:
| Games that week | Numbers to assign | Max weekly points | |---|---|---| | 13 games | 1–13 | 91 | | 14 games | 1–14 | 105 | | 15 games | 1–15 | 120 | | 16 games | 1–16 | 136 |
You assign every number exactly once. You can't put 16 on two games. You can't skip 7. Every number from 1 to however many games there are gets used.
The Tiebreaker
Most confidence pools use the combined score of the Monday Night Football game as a tiebreaker. Before submitting picks, you enter a predicted total score for MNF — say, 47 points. If two players finish the week tied on confidence points, whoever's MNF prediction was closest to the actual combined score wins.
The tiebreaker rarely comes into play on season standings but matters a lot for weekly prize pools where two players finish the week within a point of each other.
Why Confidence Pools Reward Skill
A flat pick'em pool (one point per correct pick) has a luck ceiling problem. A knowledgeable player who goes 10-6 with smart picks on the right games earns the same as someone who went 10-6 by randomly guessing. Over 18 weeks, variance evens out a bit, but luck stays in the game.
Confidence scoring fixes this.
A player who studies lines and goes 9-7 but correctly identifies the five most certain outcomes of the week can outscore a player who goes 10-6 with poor allocation. The 9-7 player put their 16, 15, 14, 13, and 12 on the five games they got right. The 10-6 player scattered their high numbers across games they happened to win and games they didn't.
The numbers matter as much as the picks.
This is why confidence pools separate the field faster. By Week 4 or 5, the players who are genuinely good at football — who understand the lines, who can identify value, who know which outcomes are more certain than they look — are separating from the players who are getting lucky.
Strategy: How to Allocate Confidence Points
The short version: weight your allocation more aggressively than feels comfortable.
New confidence pool players tend to cluster their points in the middle — lots of 7s, 8s, 9s — because they're hedging against being wrong. That's the wrong approach.
Put your high numbers on your locks. If you genuinely think the Eagles are going to cover at home against a 1-6 team, that's a 14, 15, or 16 situation. Don't hedge down to a 10 because you're nervous. If you're wrong about your locks, you're going to lose regardless. Might as well commit.
Put your 1s and 2s on genuine coin flips. Not "games I'm 60% sure about" — actual coin flips where you have no conviction at all. The cost of being wrong on a 2 is trivial. The cost of putting a 2 on a game you were actually 80% sure about is leaving points on the table.
Contrarian picks win leagues. If everyone in your pool is putting 16 on the Chiefs as massive favorites and the Chiefs lose, everyone loses 16 points together. That outcome barely changes the standings. But if you identified a game the rest of your pool underweighted and you put 14 on it while they put 4s — that's how you gain ground. Games with high public consensus are often worth going against at maximum confidence, not because the underdog necessarily wins, but because the outcomes that move standings are the ones where you go right when your league goes wrong.
How Picks Lock
In a properly run confidence pool, picks should lock at each game's individual kickoff time — not all at once on Thursday morning.
This matters more than people realize. A pick lock before Thursday night means the system captured your spread before the line moved. A game that was -3 on Wednesday might be -6.5 by Sunday. If the platform locks spreads Thursday and you're picking on Sunday, you're picking against a stale number.
On thepickempool, each game locks at kickoff. Live market spreads from DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM update throughout the week. The number you see when you pick is the number you're playing against.
Common Questions
What happens if I forget to submit picks? You get zero points for the week. Most competitive groups track submission rates as a soft indicator of engagement. Commissioners can see who has and hasn't submitted.
Can I change my picks after submitting? Yes, as long as the game hasn't kicked off. Go back to your picks page before the lock time and update anything you want.
What's a push in ATS confidence? In ATS formats, a push happens when the final margin lands exactly on the spread — the favorite wins by exactly the spread number. In standard ATS formats, a push typically counts as a loss. In Pick 5 formats on thepickempool, a push earns half a point.
How do confidence pools handle weeks with an odd number of games? The total number changes (13 games = 1–13 assignment, 105 max points instead of 136) but the mechanics are identical. The platform handles this automatically — you just see the right number of games and the right range of confidence values.
The Format That Keeps People Engaged
Flat pick'em pools lose engagement by Week 10. Someone gets unlucky in September, falls behind, and stops caring because there's no path back. Confidence pools have a different dynamic — one great week of high-confidence correct picks can erase three weeks of bad luck.
That variance, combined with the skill ceiling that rewards genuine football knowledge, is why groups that switch to confidence scoring rarely go back.
If you're setting up a new pool or rethinking an existing one, see all six formats and how they compare →
Or if you're ready to run one: create your league — free →