SportBucks

They exist so a pool can have stakes without money. A week's winner is awarded an amount the manager chose, the amount is recorded against that week, and your total is the sum of everything you have been awarded.

There is no wallet and no balance to spend down. Nothing subtracts SportBucks from you, and the number only moves when a result is decided or, rarely, corrected.

SportBucks are a virtual tracking tool only. No real money is collected or distributed through this platform.

• There is nothing to buy. SportBucks cannot be purchased, topped up, or earned by paying.
• There is nothing to redeem. They cannot be converted into money, credit, goods, or anything else.
• They cannot be sent, gifted, or traded to another player.
• They do not carry between pools, and they do not expire.

Anything a group chooses to arrange among themselves happens entirely outside Sportpoolz. The app records a number against a result and has no knowledge of, or part in, anything beyond that.

Sportpoolz does not accept, hold, or transfer money, and does not operate a betting or wagering service. SportBucks have no cash value.

More on how Sportpoolz stays free to play

One rule decides what awards: a line on the pool's SportBucks sheet with an amount above zero awards, and a line at zero awards nothing. The weekly line always goes to first place; season or playoff lines go to the finishing places the manager gave an amount. Saving the sheet keeps the pool's underlying award switches in step, so there is no separate toggle to remember — a pool set up before the sheet existed shows a notice if one save is needed to bring its amounts into effect.

Results are worked out shortly after a week's last game finishes, and a check runs every hour to catch anything that settled late. A week is only decided once, so an award you have already been given does not change when the manager edits the amount later.

Survivor pools do not award SportBucks at all, and a playoff pool has no weekly awards because it has no weekly scoring.

How a week is decided

Awards are shown with the letters SB after the number. A week that paid nothing simply shows no award, rather than a zero.

The totals on your activity feed

The card sits at the top of your activity feed. It counts awards from every pool you have played in, including ones you have since left — a record of what you have won does not shrink because you moved on.

Standings are named rungs rather than a score out of ten, and everyone starts on one. They are spaced widely on purpose: each pool's manager picks their own award amounts, so two pools can differ by an order of magnitude and a finer ladder would say more about who you play with than about you.

• On the Roster — where everyone starts, before a first award.
• On the Board — you have been awarded SportBucks for the first time.
• In the Circle, On the Wall, In the Record Book, In the Rafters — reached in turn as your total grows.

Alongside the standing, the card marks things you have done: a first award, weeks won, a season finish, awards in more than one pool. They are a record of what happened, nothing more.

Rolling only happens when the manager set the weekly tie rule to roll over. It applies both when first place is tied and when nobody scored at all: the week records no winner, and its award carries forward.

The run has to be unbroken. A week that pays out ends the carry, and the week after it starts again at the normal amount.

On the pool's final week a tie is shared instead of rolled, so an accumulated pot is split between whoever is tied rather than being left unclaimed. Shares are whole numbers, and anything left over is dropped.

The four ways a tie can be settled

1. 1 Open your pool's settings and go to SportBucks.
2. 2 Switch SportBucks on. Until you do, the pool records its winners and awards nothing.
3. 3 Say what the pool awards per player. Multiply by the players and that is the total there is to award — it grows as the pool grows.
4. 4 Type what each week awards, in SportBucks. The seasonal award is whatever the weeks (and any playoff pool) leave, so the lines always come to the total.
5. 5 Open a scope to type what each of its places gets. Raise one place and the difference comes out of the lowest place first; a place at 0 is still listed — it just earns nothing. The buttons under each scope are ready-made shapes — winner takes it, 50 / 30 / 20 — for when you would rather not type.
6. 6 Save. New amounts apply to weeks decided from then on.

How many places your pool lists — on the weekly winners page and in the final standings — and what happens on a tie are set under Winning & Tiebreakers, not here. Those apply whether or not the pool awards anything. A linked playoff pool is the one exception: it is a pool of its own, so its places are set in the Playoff Pool section alongside its scoring.

Amounts are whole numbers and can be zero, which means the pool records winners without awarding anything. Some pools want exactly that — the record is the reward.

The rest of a pool's settings

The awards scale with the pool. Set 50 SB per player and a pool of 12 awards 600 SB across the season; the same pool at 20 players awards 1,000 SB. Nothing is gathered from anyone — this is only how the size of the awards is decided.

Every line is typed in SportBucks, and the sheet keeps them adding up for you. The weekly amount is typed per week; the seasonal award is whatever the weeks leave, so it moves when the weekly amount does. Inside a scope, raise one place and the difference comes out of the lowest place first — the line you typed in always keeps the number you typed, and it does not matter which line you type first. Nothing is ever refused for not adding up, because it cannot.

When a player joins or leaves, every line grows or shrinks in proportion, so the shape you chose is the shape the pool keeps. The amounts are whole numbers, and whatever a week cannot take is added to the seasonal award — the lines always come to the total exactly, not approximately.

If the pool has a postseason pool attached, a share of the total can go to it. Saving writes those amounts onto that pool's own sheet, and it keeps its own record of them.

Seeing what a season awarded

Only the manager and Sportpoolz see it; nobody else in the pool does. Everything on it comes from this pool's own results — the same rows the standings above it are built from.

• Awarded, out of what the pool set aside — or out of what its amounts can reach when no total is set.
• Who received it — each decided week and the finish in order, with who received it, including members who have since left the pool.
• Still to be decided — the weeks and finishing places not played yet, with runs of weeks grouped together.
• Not awarded — anything decided without anyone receiving it, line by line.

The not-awarded lines name what happened: a week that tied under a rule that awards nobody, a week nobody scored in, or an even split that left a SportBuck over. A finishing place that a tie for the title swallowed is named too.

Anything the record cannot put a reason to is shown as "Not itemized" rather than quietly left out, so the figures always add up to what the pool set aside.

How a week is decided