# Unique teams:<\/strong>\u00a0If you have multiple entries, you can decide how many teams to spread your risk across.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
We are now in week 12 of the season.\u00a0 The future value of teams becomes less critical as the future is now.\u00a0 But we still want to look out a few weeks, depending on the pool size, to make sure we are picking teams optimally.\u00a0 First, let’s look at the spreadsheet for Future Values 0 and 50.\u00a0 When using a FV of 25% it basically looked the same as 0 does.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/survivorwk12fv0.jpg\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/survivorwk12fv50.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
When we look at no future value, the teams with the greatest chance to win are always the best plays.<\/p>\n
This week, Dallas and Miami are those two teams.\u00a0 There is also a good chance you do not have either of these teams at your disposal.\u00a0 If you have one of these teams, is this the week to take them? You should take Dallas in all formats this week.\u00a0 In a small pool, you may have the only Dallas to be taken or at least one of the only ones, which means you can take the pool down right now with the biggest favorite on the board.\u00a0 This is the reason you save a team like Dallas.<\/p>\n
You may be able to hold off for Miami, as they will be a good choice again next week.\u00a0 But this will depend on your pool size and your other options.\u00a0 You will need to weigh your next best option this week against the next best option next week because Miami may be a play for you in week 13 @ Washington.\u00a0 If you have Jacksonville available, you will want to go with Miami now and then Jacksonville next week.\u00a0 You may even look at Tampa Bay next week, which will undoubtedly be a popular choice, but you have a massive leverage play this week with Miami.<\/p>\n
The most popular team being taken this week is Minnesota.\u00a0 Most have not taken them yet, and they have a 61% chance to win their game.\u00a0 It is obviously not a game you will feel too confident in, but it will be rare that you are\u00a0overly optimistic about your pick at this juncture of the season.\u00a0 The advantage of taking Minnesota is they play on Monday Night.\u00a0 Depending on your pool size, you may want to take them for their hedging value.\u00a0 I will go into this more in a bit.\u00a0 In large pools, you will have another crack at Minnesota in week 17 when they host Green Bay.\u00a0 Outside of that, you will unlikely want to take them again.<\/p>\n
Tennessee is the next most popular pick on the week, getting about 20% of the public backing them.\u00a0 This will likely be the last time you want to take Tennessee this season.\u00a0 In larger pools, I would lean more toward Tennessee than Minnesota.\u00a0 The leverage on both is not very good, but you can get rid of a team you probably won’t need again for the full 18 weeks.<\/p>\n
Kansas City is the third most taken team and the third most likely to win.\u00a0 In smaller pools, you will more than likely want to take them now.\u00a0 You will have other opportunities to use them, but you need to get to those weeks first.\u00a0 In a small pool where you will have most of the entries on 3 to 4-point favorites, you will have a chance to get close or take down the entire pool.\u00a0 You can consider getting off Kansas City in larger formats, but that will depend on your other options.\u00a0 At some point, you need to decide where and when you will make the big leverage play.\u00a0 If you pass on this week with KC, then you are likely backing one of the chalkier teams like Minnesota or Tennessee.\u00a0 If that is the case, you are saying you like one of those teams’ chances better to win this week than you do another option available to you next week or week 15.<\/p>\n
The same advice for Miami and Kansas City I have for you on Detroit.\u00a0 It is unlikely you have them available, but if you do, you need to weigh your options in the weeks Detroit is a potential pick, like weeks 14 and 15.\u00a0 This is a great week if you have any of these big favorites to make a leverage play and fade the most popular picks of Minnesota and Tennessee.<\/p>\n
Hedging<\/b>
\nI do not like hedging parlays or futures bets because these are losing bets over time.\u00a0 (Feel free to hit me up on Twitter @statsational, and I can give you the data on this.)\u00a0 But hedging in pools like Survivor is a smart way to play.\u00a0 You are a dog to win any large survivor pool ever in your lifetime.\u00a0 If you play in a pool of just 100 entries and you have 1, then you may never win that pool ever.\u00a0 That is just the reality of these pools, but the dream of winning a big prize keeps us returning.\u00a0 For this reason, we want to use some of the equity we have built up to this point in the pool and hedge.\u00a0 The hedge is meant to ensure we at least get our money back and hopefully more.\u00a0 You pay the house some juice to level out the variance.<\/p>\n
I mentioned equity, and that is for good reason.\u00a0 You should calculate the equity you have in your pool before deciding whether or not a hedge is a good idea.\u00a0 If you are one of 5 entries in a pool that pays out $10,000, then you have $2,000 in equity.\u00a0 That is the number you are now working with for hedging purposes.\u00a0 The longer you wait to hedge, the more risk you take of being eliminated, but the more equity you can potentially build up, the more you can hedge.<\/p>\n
The first thing you want to decide is how to hedge.\u00a0 My preference in hedging is to bet the spread line and not the money line.\u00a0 I like the option of having a chance to hit a middle.\u00a0 This is when my survivor pick wins but does not cover the spread.\u00a0 You can bet the opponent of your Survivor pick on the money line, which will allow you to risk less because the team you are betting on in the hedge is likely an underdog, and you will be getting plus money on the bet.<\/p>\n
The biggest question is how much to hedge.\u00a0 There is a bit of science but a lot of art to this, as we do not have concrete numbers to work with.\u00a0 If you were hedging a futures bet on the Super Bowl and your team was in the Super Bowl, then we only have 2 outcomes, making it easy to figure out a hedge amount, but in this scenario, we can find ourselves losing hedge bets every week and chewing into or eliminating all profit we may have if we win the pool.<\/p>\n
Using the example where we have $2,000 in equity with 5 left, including us in the pool and a $10,000 pot, how would we hedge this?\u00a0 Assume we do not know anyone else’s picks when our game starts.\u00a0 Maybe we are on Tennessee, who play in the early game on Sunday. Your hedge will be for a max of $2,000 since that is your equity.\u00a0 But you will want to hedge for less than that because you may lose a few hedge bets and lose more than you were in the pool for.\u00a0 So, we want to risk a fraction of $2,000 on this bet.\u00a0 We have 7 weeks remaining.\u00a0 If nobody loses from here on out, we will split the $10,000 and get $2000 each.\u00a0 So the max we can risk this week is $2,000\/7 or $285.\u00a0 If we lose the hedge bet and everyone advances, we maintain our $2000 in equity, but we lose $285 on our hedge.\u00a0 If we eliminate anyone and lose our hedge, our equity goes up, which means we can hedge a bit more next week.\u00a0 This strategy is banking on the fact that we will continue to increase our equity as the pool advances, which you most certainly will.\u00a0 If you do not, the hedge bets will not be helping you.\u00a0 If we are at $2,000 in equity next week and risk another $285, we are just trying to get back the $285 we lost this week.\u00a0 If our team eliminates us, then we make nothing by hedging.\u00a0 If this continues for multiple weeks, then your hedge bet does not cover the losses on previous hedges.\u00a0 Because of this, you will want to hedge something a bit less to increase your hedge bet size, regardless of whether you increase the equity in the pool as you advance.<\/p>\n
If you start with a bet that covers your entry fee of, say, $100 and lose that next week, you can increase the hedge to $200.\u00a0 A loss there and you can increase the hedge to $400 and so on.\u00a0 You will likely increase your equity as you advance, allowing you to increase the hedge bets to return more if you get eliminated.\u00a0 You will also be betting on the spread, and you can win the bet and advance in the pool simultaneously.\u00a0 The lower you start the hedge bet, the more risk you take of being eliminated with nothing to show for it, but the more equity you get to keep as you advance.\u00a0 It is a personal preference.<\/p>\n
The other thing you want to look at with hedging is opting for the latest game you can.\u00a0 This gives you more information.\u00a0 If you have Minnesota and 3 of the 5 entries lose before Monday night, your equity has now gone up to $5000, and your hedge bet can change accordingly.<\/p>\n
Equity, time, and number of participants left will all factor in when and how much you hedge.\u00a0 In the above example, with 5 left, it’s unlikely we go the full 18 weeks, but if you are in a pool with 200 left, you indeed might.\u00a0 You must adjust the hedge to fit your pool and risk tolerance.\u00a0 The hedges get much easier to figure out with fewer remaining weeks, and fewer opponents.\u00a0 Waiting is risky, but risk is how we will make the big money!<\/p>\n
Have a great Thanksgiving, and hopefully, I see you back here next week!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Week 11 made most Survivor Pools way more interesting, as Washington knocked out about 30% of all entries.\u00a0 If you were lucky enough not to have them available to you, then you most likely survived and are possibly close to taking your pool down.\u00a0 This week, I will go over the best plays on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":230938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Circa Survivor - Week 12 By The Numbers - Survivor Sweat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/article\/2023\/circa-survivor-week-12-by-the-numbers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Circa Survivor - Week 12 By The Numbers - Survivor Sweat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Week 11 made most Survivor Pools way more interesting, as Washington knocked out about 30% of all entries.\u00a0 If you were lucky enough not to have them available to you, then you most likely survived and are possibly close to taking your pool down.\u00a0 This week, I will go over the best plays on the […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/article\/2023\/circa-survivor-week-12-by-the-numbers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Survivor Sweat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-11-22T20:43:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-11-22T20:44:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/GettyImages-1802721008.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"711\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Survivor Sweat Staff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Survivor Sweat Staff\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/article\/2023\/circa-survivor-week-12-by-the-numbers\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/article\/2023\/circa-survivor-week-12-by-the-numbers\/\",\"name\":\"Circa Survivor - Week 12 By The Numbers - Survivor Sweat\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/article\/2023\/circa-survivor-week-12-by-the-numbers\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/article\/2023\/circa-survivor-week-12-by-the-numbers\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/GettyImages-1802721008.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-11-22T20:43:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-11-22T20:44:21+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/#\/schema\/person\/794c9e7201256e634b807ecf74fd2236\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/article\/2023\/circa-survivor-week-12-by-the-numbers\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/article\/2023\/circa-survivor-week-12-by-the-numbers\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/article\/2023\/circa-survivor-week-12-by-the-numbers\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/GettyImages-1802721008.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/survivorsweat.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/GettyImages-1802721008.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":711,\"caption\":\"CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA - NOVEMBER 19: Tony Pollard #20 of the Dallas Cowboys celebrates after a touchdown with teammates during the fourth quarter in the game against the Carolina Panthers at Bank of America Stadium on November 19, 2023 in Charlotte, North Carolina. 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