March Madness Survivor Rules

1. Pool Format
   This is a Survivor-style pool for the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament (play-in games are not included). Each day of the tournament you pick exactly one team. If your team wins, you advance to the next day. If your team loses, you are eliminated from the pool. The entry that survives the longest wins the pool (subject to the tie-breaker rules below).
   Once you pick a team, you may not pick that team again later in the tournament.
2. Point Spreads
   This pool does not use point spreads. All results are scored straight up: if your team wins the game, your pick is a win; if your team loses, your pick is a loss.
3. Daily Picks
   You will make one pick per day of the tournament (again, excluding the play-in games). As long as you continue to win and still have eligible teams available to pick, you remain alive in the pool.
4. Tie-Breakers
   The following tie-breaker rules apply for determining final standings:
   • Default (No Tie-Breaker): If two or more entries are eliminated on the same day, they are considered tied and will share that finishing position in the standings.
   • Under the Default setting, if an entry reaches a day with no eligible unused teams left to pick the entry will be treated as a No Pick (a loss).
   • Strength of Victory (SOV): If enabled, ties are settled by Strength of Victory — the total combined margin of victory across all of an entry’s winning picks.
5. Pick Deadlines & Game Locking
   March Madness Survivor is always pick-by-game-time: you can never submit or change a pick for a game that has already started (each game locks at its own tip time).
   In addition to game-time locking, the pool manager can choose one of the following pick locking modes:
   • Game-time locking only (no daily cutoff): Picks are allowed up until each game’s tip time.
   • Daily cutoff + game-time locking: The manager sets a daily cutoff time and time zone. Each day, picks must be submitted by that cutoff time — but any game that starts before the cutoff still locks at its own tip time.
   If a daily cutoff is enabled, once the daily cutoff time has passed you can no longer enter or edit that day’s pick (even if a later game has not tipped yet).