SportBucks

They exist so a pool can have stakes without money. A week's winner is awarded an amount the owner 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.

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 owner 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 owner 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 owner 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 owner 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 — the sheet lists every line the pool can award.
2. 2 Give the weekly line an amount, and choose what happens when first place is tied.
3. 3 If you want end-of-season awards, give each finishing place its own amount — recognise more final places to add lines.
4. 4 Save the sheet. New amounts apply to weeks decided from then on.

Everything about winners lives on the one sheet: the amounts, the tie rules, and how many places the standings record. The "places listed" controls are bookkeeping, not awards — the weekly award always goes to first place.

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

The rest of a pool's settings