Frequently asked questions

A few quick answers about how Pick’em Pro works — for members, for commissioners, and for the technically curious.

What is Pick’em Pro?: Pick’em Pro is a free-to-play NFL pick’em game. You join a private, invite-only pool with friends, make your picks each week — either against the point spread or straight up — and see how you stack up on the standings as games finish.
Does it cost anything? Is there any real money involved?: No. Pick’em Pro is free to play, and the app never handles money. There are no entry fees, no prize pools, and no payouts — the app only tracks picks, points, and standings.
How does scoring work?: Each week you pick a winner for every game. Once a game finishes, your pick is scored automatically and your weekly and season standings update. In an against-the-spread pool, a pick counts only if your team beats the point spread; in a straight-up pool, you just need to pick the outright winner. Ties and postponed games are handled for you.
What’s a point spread?: A point spread evens out a mismatch. If you see BUF −3, Buffalo is favored by 3 points: a Buffalo pick wins only if they win by 4 or more, while a pick on their opponent wins if that team wins — or loses by less than 3. Land exactly on the number and it’s called a push.
What’s the difference between against-the-spread and straight-up?: Straight-up means you pick the team you think will win. Against-the-spread means your team also has to beat the point spread. Your commissioner chooses one style for the whole pool — the pool’s rules page shows which.
How do XP and rollover work?: Some pools run an XP points race alongside the standings. Each week’s finish awards XP to the top places — and in pools with a PickBot, any place that doesn’t beat the bot sends its XP rolling into the next week, so bigger weeks build up until someone earns them.
What is PickBot?: PickBot is the pool’s built-in digital nemesis: a computer opponent that locks in a random pick for every game before the season starts. Beat its weekly score for bragging rights — in XP pools, finishing at or below the bot means that place’s XP rolls over.
What is autopick?: Life happens. If autopick is on in your pool and you forget your picks, the system fills them using the strategy you chose (all favorites, all home teams…), up to a limit your commissioner sets.
When do picks lock?: It depends on your pool: either each game locks at its own kickoff, or the whole slate locks at one set time. After lock, picks can’t change — the countdown on your picks screen shows what’s left.
How do I join a pool?: Pools are private and invite-only. A pool’s commissioner sends you an invite — by email or a join link — and following it adds you to the pool. Once you’re in, you’ll find that pool listed on your Pick’em Pro home screen.
Who do I contact for help?: Email us at support@tootallgaming.com and we’ll get back to you.

Setting up your pool

What can I set up when I create a pool?: Quite a lot — the create-pool wizard walks you through it: picks against the spread or straight up; whether members pick every game, a set number of games of their choosing (“Pick X”), or play confidence-style; when picks lock (each game’s kickoff, or one Sunday deadline for the whole slate); which NFL weeks your season covers and whether playoffs count; XP scoring with weekly and season awards; tiebreakers; autopick rules; the PickBot; a member cap and join deadline; plus your pool’s name, locker-room name, and a welcome message for new members.
Can I change settings after the season starts?: Core game rules freeze once week 1 is finalized — that protects your members from mid-season rule changes. Before that point there’s a correction window for fixing a mis-configured setting. A few things stay editable all season: the PickBot’s name, the member cap, and the join deadline (you can extend it).
How do people join my pool?: Two ways: send email invites from the pool, or share your pool’s invite link. Pools are private and invite-only — nobody can find or join your pool without an invite. You can optionally let members invite others, set a member cap, and set a join deadline after which no one new can enter.
What’s the difference between all-games, Pick X, and confidence pools?: All-games: everyone picks every game each week. Pick X: everyone picks a fixed number of games of their choosing each week (at least 8) — you set the X. Confidence: members rank their picks by how sure they are — more confidence, more points when they’re right. Pick X and confidence pools disable autopick by design, since choosing which games (and how confidently) is the skill.
Can I run more than one pool?: Yes — up to 25 pools per account, each with its own settings, members, and standings. Many commissioners run one spread pool and one straight-up pool side by side.

What the app automates

What do I actually have to do each week? (What’s automated?): Almost nothing — that’s the point. The app pulls the official point spreads and freezes them at the same moment for everyone, locks picks at kickoff (or your Sunday deadline), scores every pick as games go final, updates weekly and season standings, applies your tiebreakers, awards XP and handles rollovers, and notifies members of results. Your job is the fun part: inviting people and talking trash.
Where do the point spreads come from, and when do they lock in?: From a licensed sports-data feed — the same lines the sportsbooks publish. Spreads freeze for everyone at the same platform-wide moment (early Wednesday morning Eastern), so every member picks against identical numbers. You can also choose half-point spreads so ties against the line are impossible.
What happens if a game is postponed or cancelled?: The app handles it. A cancelled game’s picks are voided automatically so nobody gains or loses from it, and scoring adjusts. Odd situations that need a human judgment call go to the platform operators — not to you — so the resolution is always neutral.
What if someone forgets to make their picks?: That’s autopick. Each member can choose a fallback strategy — all favorites, all underdogs, all home teams, random, and so on — and the app fills their card automatically when they miss the deadline. You control the policy: how many weeks autopick can save someone per season (with forgiveness options for near-misses like missing only the early games), or turn it off entirely.
What is PickBot?: PickBot is a digital nemesis you can add to your pool to compete against the members. Its picks are selected at random and locked before the season starts. In pools with PickBot and XP turned on, you have to beat the bot to earn your XP; finish at or below it and that place’s XP rolls over to the next week. PickBot is turned on/off in the pool setup wizard and can be renamed to fit your pool’s theme.
How do ties get broken?: You choose the tiebreaker order from nine options — closest Monday-night total, fewest autopicks, head-to-head, best single week, most recent weekly win, and more, ending in a coin toss if you want a guaranteed winner. The app applies your chain automatically and shows members exactly why a tie resolved the way it did.
How does XP scoring work?: XP is the points system for weekly and season standings — bragging rights, not money. You choose how much XP each week awards, how many places share it, and the split between them. If a week produces no eligible winner, its XP rolls into next week automatically. Season-end awards work the same way.

Running your pool

What can I do that regular members can’t?: Commissioners control the settings above, send and revoke invites, remove members, appoint co-commissioners, post announcements, write the welcome message, moderate the Smack Talk feed, and keep private notes on members that only commissioners can see.
Can someone help me run the pool?: Yes — appoint any member as a co-commissioner. They get the same day-to-day tools (invites, moderation, announcements) so the pool doesn’t stall when you’re at a wedding during the Sunday slate.
Can I change a score or a pick result myself?: Deliberately, no. Scores come from the data feed, and corrections are made by the platform’s operators — never by a commissioner who’s also competing in the pool. If a result looks wrong, report it and the operations team fixes it with a full audit trail. Your members never have to wonder whether the person setting the scores is also trying to win.
What moderation tools do I have for Smack Talk?: The built-in filter blocks genuinely harmful content automatically while leaving room for trash talk. On top of that, you and your co-commissioners can remove posts, mute members, and act on member reports. GIFs come from a pre-moderated catalog.
Can members see each other’s picks before kickoff?: No. Picks stay hidden until they lock — each game’s kickoff, or your Sunday deadline. After lock, everyone’s picks are revealed so the sweating is communal. The server enforces this; there’s no way to peek.
Do I have to write up the pool rules?: No — the app generates a rules page from your actual settings, so it’s always accurate. If a setting changes through the correction window, the rules page updates with it.

How can I trust the scoring is correct?: Three independent checks had to agree before we trusted this engine at all. First, the scoring engine itself, covered by an extensive automated test suite. Second, an independent “oracle” — a separate scoring program built in isolation, with access to the written rules and nothing else, never the app’s code — which re-computes entire seasons from scratch and has to line up with the app. Any disagreement stops the work until we’ve traced which side is wrong against the written rules, and that has cut both ways: it has found a real bug in the app, and it has found a real error in our own written rules. Third, a human check: twelve complete pools were scored by hand in a spreadsheet, line by line, then checked against both the app and the oracle. All three agreed on every pool — with one documented exception, where two weeks turned on a tiebreaker a person can’t reasonably compute by hand, so we verified those by tracing the code directly instead.
What happens to my results if something goes wrong?: Your picks are the permanent record, and they’re the one thing that is never edited: once a pick locks, it can’t be changed — not by you, not by another member, not by your commissioner — and a spread pick carries the exact line it locked with. Everything else — grades, standings, XP — is derived from that record, which is what lets us go back and fix any problem: if a data feed delivers a wrong final score, the correction re-grades the week from your original, untouched picks, and the same inputs always produce the same outputs. In pools that run the XP points race, XP is recorded in a ledger that is only ever added to, with a built-in conservation rule: every point that enters a week is either awarded that week or rolled forward — nothing created, nothing evaporating. And the standing rule is delay-over-wrong: the system never posts a number it isn’t sure about — if it can’t grade with certainty, it holds that week’s standings, keeps retrying, and alerts a human.
How do I know PickBot isn’t cheating?: The moment PickBot joins your pool — normally when the pool is created, before the season starts — its entire season of picks is generated from a fixed seed tied to your pool and written down in full, before a single result is known. The seed is recorded in the pool’s audit record, so the picks can be regenerated from it and checked against what was stored — that’s how a dispute would be settled. The bot can’t see results and react, and can’t be re-rolled or tuned once it’s generated. It competes in the tiebreakers as a normal entrant, with its own Monday-night guess it can win or lose on — with one deliberate asymmetry: if nothing separates you from the bot, the tie goes to the bot. Tying the nemesis isn’t beating it.
Can anyone sneak a pick in after kickoff?: No. Locks are enforced by the server inside a database transaction — the same all-or-nothing mechanism that stops two people from booking the last seat on a flight — so a pick on a locked game is rejected no matter what the app on someone’s phone claims. The countdown you see in the app is a courtesy display; the server’s clock is the law. This also covers people who join a pool mid-week: they can pick any game that hasn’t locked yet, and the locked ones are simply out of reach.
Can a commissioner change scores in their own pool?: No, and that’s deliberate. A commissioner usually competes in their own pool, which is a conflict of interest — so a game’s score comes from the data feed, and only the platform operator, outside your pool entirely, can correct it. When a correction does happen (say, a data feed delivered a wrong final), it re-runs the same deterministic grading as the original, and the whole event is recorded: what changed, when, and why.
What testing did this actually go through?: Layers of it, on purpose. Over nine thousand automated tests run on every code change. The independent oracle has verdicted complete simulated seasons — every pick, score, rank, and XP transaction — with zero discrepancies. We then replayed a full six-week season through the real production system — the same servers, database, and web address players use — with real locks and the real finalization machinery, and the oracle verdicted that at zero too. Finally, we ran a live dress rehearsal on real NFL preseason games: real point spreads from our data provider, real kickoff locks, real finals detection, scored end to end the same day. And we’ll be honest, because it’s the best part: that live rehearsal alone caught two real bugs before launch — one crashed loudly before it could touch anything, and the other tripped the safety that holds results rather than post a wrong number, alerted us, and recovered once we stepped in. That’s the property we actually engineered for — not “nothing ever goes wrong,” but “when something goes wrong, it cannot quietly corrupt your pool.”

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