Pick’em rules

Earn the most points by correctly selecting the outright winner of each eligible event. Point spreads, odds, margins, and scores are not used, and no part of the game is settled on anything other than which team officially won.

• One selection is allowed for each eligible event in each round.
• The only valid choices are the two teams in that event.
• Each event locks independently. A Sunday-night event is still open after a Thursday event has closed.
• A participant may change an unlocked selection freely. The latest server-receipted revision before the lock is the selection of record.
• A missing selection at lock receives zero points.

Round and season totals

A round score is the sum of its event points. A season score is the sum of finalized round scores.

Pick percentage

A displayed pick percentage is:

earned points ÷ non-void eligible events since the participant’s competition start

A missed pick stays in the denominator, because failing to submit is a result. A void event leaves the denominator, because nobody had a chance to be right about it.

The server rejects a selection for an event once either condition is true:

1. server time is at or after the event’s current authoritative scheduled kickoff; or
2. the authorized feed marks the event in progress or later.

Server time decides acceptance. A device clock is informative only, and a submission that arrives at the exact lock timestamp is rejected rather than rounded in the participant’s favour.

If a kickoff moves earlier before the lock, the lock follows the earlier authoritative time. If a kickoff moves later after the lock has happened, the lock does not reopen. No commissioner, and no Clutchhall operator, can bypass a lock through the interface.

An event postponed but still inside the configured round keeps its selections locked and is scored on its eventual final result. An event moved outside the configured round is void for that round.

Participants rank by total season points, descending. Ranks use standard competition ranking, so the sequence runs 1, 2, 2, 4.

Equal totals share a rank. There is no launch tiebreaker and no hidden or random one, so a round may have co-winners and a finished competition may have co-champions. The interface shows a shared rank as shared rather than inventing an order.

Standings remain provisional until 24 hours after the last eligible event in the round is official-final, then become final automatically if no unresolved integrity flag exists. A later authoritative change makes a round corrected, never silently final again.

An event selection becomes visible to the community only when that event locks. Unselected and unlocked events stay private to the participant.

Because Pick’em locks event by event, a round is partly public and partly private for as long as it has events at different kickoff times. A commissioner cannot see an unlocked selection through the interface, an export, an API response, or a log.

1. 01

   A participant selects Harbor City, and Harbor City wins.

   1 point.

2. 02

   Harbor City loses.

   0 points.

3. 03

   The event finishes tied.

   The event is void for everyone. Nobody scores on it and it leaves the possible total.

4. 04

   The participant’s submission reaches the server at the exact lock timestamp.

   Rejected. 0 points, unless an earlier valid receipt already exists.

5. 05

   Kickoff moves from 8:20 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. after the event locked.

   It stays locked. A delay does not reopen a lock.

A corrected official winner triggers a full rescore by the same deterministic scorer. The scorer is idempotent, so replaying it produces the same standings rather than compounding a change.

A locked selection changes only when immutable server evidence proves the stored selection does not match the last valid pre-lock receipt. Valid correction evidence is limited to a versioned change from the designated sports-data source, an internal processing defect reproducible from logged inputs, immutable server evidence of an accepted pre-lock selection, or a documented eligibility or configuration defect.

A commissioner’s statement, a screenshot with no matching server evidence, or a wish for a different outcome is not sufficient. Every correction preserves the original, records actor, time, reason, evidence, and scope, appears in the competition’s correction log, and notifies materially affected participants. No interface anywhere edits a standings total directly.

Members can flag an apparent issue until 48 hours after a round is finalized. That is a service target, not a shield: Clutchhall still fixes an objectively verified error found later. How to report a scoring or lock question.