This is a guest post from PoolGenius, the only site dedicated to helping you win more sports pools. Check out their Circa Survivor tools for expert picks and strategy.
Circa Survivor has become the most prestigious (and unforgiving) NFL survivor pool in the country. With over 18,000 entries in 2025 and a prize pool exceeding $18 million, this high-stakes contest with a $1,000 entry fee is about more than gut-feeling picks or the cliche “survive and advance” mentality some use when it comes to NFL survivor pools.
Outlasting nearly 19,000 entries takes more than luck, although you’ll need some of that too. Careful planning is required if you want a chance to win.
You need to save quality teams for later, preserve future value, and prepare for tricky weeks, including two thin holiday slates, knowing it will take all 20 weeks to win. Yet with the right strategy and data-driven analysis, you can significantly improve your odds.
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Understanding the Circa Survivor Format
Each entry costs $1,000, with up to 10 entries allowed per person.
Every week, you pick one team to win outright, no spreads involved. If they lose or tie, that entry is eliminated.
The catch that transforms this into a complex strategic game: you can only use each NFL team once throughout the entire season.
Two special holiday weeks add extra constraints:
- Thanksgiving slate. During Week 13's Thanksgiving slate, you must pick from just eight teams playing across Thursday and Friday. Then you have to turn around and make another pick for the Sunday/Monday games of Week 13.
- Christmas slate. The same occurs for Week 17's Christmas games, which offer only six teams to choose from. Then, you need to make another pick for the Week 17 Sunday/Monday games.
As you can imagine, these bottlenecks require planning in advance to make sure you have strong options or adaptability in place for both occasions.
The contest continues until the last entry (or entries) remain standing to claim or share the prize pool. In 2024, eight entries out of 14,266 survived all 20 weeks, each taking home over $1.7 million.
Circa Survivor Tip #1: Measuring Risk vs. Reward
In Circa Survivor, the best pick isn't always the biggest favorite.
Expected Value measures the immediate payoff of a pick by considering your selection's win probability, how many opponents are picking each team, and the projected state of the contest next week. A pick with EV above 1.00 is favorable.
Consider the image above, showing our Circa Survivor Data Grid for Week 5 of the 2025 season. The Seahawks had 73% win odds but were picked by 39% of the pool, which lowered their EV below that of some teams with less strong win odds.
The leverage gained when your less-popular pick wins can be worth the marginal increase in risk. When half the field gets eliminated on a popular upset, your entry's value skyrockets even if you only had slightly better odds.
Circa Survivor Tip #2: Playing the Long Game
Some teams are projected to be strong favorites in multiple weeks throughout the season. Using Buffalo in Week 3 might help you survive that week, but it could leave you scrambling in Week 15 when they face another favorable matchup and you no longer have them available.
Future Value assesses how many weeks a team projects as a top-tier option, their expected pick popularity in those weeks, and the opportunity cost of burning them now versus later.
Teams like Kansas City, Baltimore, Buffalo, and Philadelphia typically carry high future value because they're projected as significant favorites multiple times. Lower-tier teams with limited future utility should generally be prioritized for early use when they have favorable matchups.
In 2024, all eight Circa Survivor winners saved at least one of Kansas City or Detroit for the Thanksgiving slate, recognizing their importance for navigating the holiday constraint. This wasn't luck — it was strategic planning from the season's opening weeks.
Circa Survivor Tip #3: Immediate Value vs. Future Planning
The optimal strategy balances immediate expected value with long-term planning.
In high-leverage weeks where popular picks could get upset, you could favor EV even if it means using a valuable team. When a potential upset could eliminate 40% of the field, gaining that leverage might justify burning a premium team early.
Conversely, in lower-volatility weeks where the chalk is relatively safe, preserve future flexibility by using lower-value teams. This creates a war chest of elite options for when you truly need them — whether that's navigating thin holiday slates or surviving brutal late-season weeks where alternatives are scarce.
Circa Survivor Tip #4: Aggressive Planning Needed
Unlike small office pools that might end by Week 8, Circa Survivor's massive field almost always requires surviving the full season.
Every previous winner across five years of the contest has needed to survive the full season undefeated. There's simply too much money at stake and too many entries for the contest to end early, even in years with heavy early carnage.
This reality means future value matters more than in typical survivor pools. You must plan for late-season constraints from Week 1.
Playing too conservatively — always taking the safest option — won't separate you from thousands of other entries trying the same strategy. You need calculated risks that create leverage when they hit.
Circa Survivor Tip #5: Measured Contrarianism
Going contrarian just to be different is reckless. The goal isn't to avoid popular picks — it's to identify when fading the crowd offers favorable risk-reward despite increased danger.
Consider when to go contrarian: when a popular team has real upset risk, when an alternative team offers comparable win odds with much lower ownership, or when the popular team has higher future value worth preserving.
In 2024's Week 2, the Ravens were the most popular pick as double-digit favorites but were stunned by the Raiders. All eight eventual winners avoided that trap by taking the Texans instead — both surviving a major elimination week and preserving Baltimore for future use.
However, you should follow the chalk when the consensus pick has significantly higher win odds, no compelling alternative exists, or the week's dynamics don't justify extra risk.
Most Circa winners weren't especially contrarian overall — 65% of their picks were either the most or second-most popular option that week. Their well-timed pivots in critical weeks made the difference, not blind contrarianism.
Circa Survivor Tip #6: Reading Circa-Specific Behavior
Circa Survivor attracts sharper, more EV-conscious players than typical public survivor pools. This creates second-order strategic considerations.
Public pick popularity data from sites like Yahoo or ESPN may not reflect Circa-specific behavior, where sharp players will fade obvious negative-EV chalk picks.
The challenge is understanding strategic tiers without overthinking yourself into worse decisions. Basic players pick the biggest favorite. Sharp players consider EV and future value. Very sharp players anticipate how other sharp players will react.
But overthinking beyond this level creates more risk than reward — you can't play 4D chess when the board is still fundamentally about picking NFL winners.
Understanding these dynamics matters because it allows you to spot opportunities where Circa behavior diverges from public sentiment.
In 2024's Week 6, Atlanta offered solid value as a "not-so-obvious-and-not-clearly-sharp" option when half the pool picked Philadelphia. The Falcons won, Atlanta pickers preserved a premium team, and many gained significant ground in the standings.
Circa Survivor Tip #7: Holiday Week Planning
The Thanksgiving and Christmas constraints require weeks of advance planning.
In 2025, this challenge is especially acute because Detroit and Kansas City both appear in Thanksgiving and Christmas games. You can only use one of them across both holidays, meaning you need strong alternatives for at least one slate.
Philadelphia appears on Black Friday and Baltimore on Thanksgiving night, both premium options (barring injuries). Yet none of these holiday games represent the highest win odds weeks for these teams from a pure probability standpoint. You're often forced to use elite teams at suboptimal times simply to navigate the format constraints.
The solution involves mapping out your holiday strategy by mid-October at the latest, ensuring you have at least two strong options available for each slate.
This might mean passing on Washington in Week 11 specifically because you need them for Christmas, or burning a lower-value team in Week 10 despite moderate risk because preserving your holiday roster is more important.
How PoolGenius Gives You an Edge in Circa Survivor
Optimal Circa Survivor strategy requires extensive data, sophisticated analysis, and constant weekly updates. You need accurate win odds, reliable pick popularity projections, EV calculations adjusted for Circa's specific dynamics, and tools to model future scenarios based on which teams you've already used.
PoolGenius provides real-time win odds and pick popularity projections updated multiple times through the week, ensuring you base your decisions on current information rather than stale Monday projections.
Our Expected Value calculations are customized for Circa's format, accounting for the 20-week requirement and holiday constraints.
Future Value rankings project every team's utility across all remaining weeks, helping you identify the optimal time to deploy each option, as we identify projected favorites in future weeks, as well as pick popularity estimates and potential EV values to set up in future weeks.
Tools for Multi-Entry Players
For players managing multiple entries, our multi-entry optimization tools help you distribute picks across your portfolio to maximize survival odds while maintaining leverage opportunities.
The Season Planner lets you model and compare future pick strategies, while the Optimal Path tool identifies routes most likely to survive all 20 weeks given your current team availability.
Accuracy That Drives EV
Perhaps most importantly, our Circa-specific pick popularity projections have averaged within 2.4% of actual pick rates across teams drawing more than 1% ownership. In Weeks 3-4 of the 2025 season, we projected seven such teams and hit within that margin on all of them.
This precision is critical because EV calculations are only as good as the popularity estimates that drive them. Being off by 10-15 percentage points on a major pick can completely mischaracterize the value proposition.
Proven Track Record
Since 2017, PoolGenius subscribers have reported over $6.6 million in NFL survivor pool winnings across all contest types.
Get Started with Free Circa Survivor Tools
You can track all your Circa Survivor entries completely free at PoolGenius, monitoring which teams you've used across each entry and seeing current-week options.
Unlock our premium tools for the full strategic edge, including our Season Planner, Optimal Path analysis, and weekly Circa-specific advice.
When you're investing $1,000 or more per entry in a contest where eight survivors split $14 million, data-driven decisions aren't optional. They're the difference between guessing and having a genuine edge.
Start your free trial at PoolGenius and see how our tools can transform your Circa Survivor strategy.
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