How It Works

The rules underneath the game. If a bet settled in a way you did not expect, the answer is on this page.

Your stake is taken when you place the bet

Placing a bet deducts the stake from your balance immediately, which is why the number drops when you confirm and not when the game ends. The money behind a pending bet has already left your balance. What comes back depends on how the bet finishes.

The four ways a bet can finish

• Win. Your stake returns together with the profit at the price you took.
• Loss. Nothing returns, because the stake has already gone.
• Push. The result lands exactly on the line and your stake is returned. A push counts as neither a win nor a loss.
• Void. The bet is cancelled and your stake is returned.

Every bet card shows which of the four it finished as, and a voided bet carries the reason it was voided.

A result landing on the number is a push

Take a player over 49.5 receiving yards and 60 yards wins. Take a whole number, say over 50, and 50 yards exactly returns your stake as a push. The same applies to whole number spreads and totals, and to a moneyline in a game that finishes level.

Most lines carry a half point so this cannot arise. Whole numbers do appear on spreads and totals, and landing on one returns your stake.

When a stake is refunded, and when it is not

A bet is voided and refunded when the player never took the field. We wait for a finished game's statistics to be final before grading its player markets, so a slow feed can leave a bet pending for a while after the final whistle. A market that still has no result once the statistics are final belongs to a player who did not play, and the bet card says so.

A player who takes one snap and leaves injured does not produce a refund. He is graded on what he did, the same as at any sportsbook. This is the rule most likely to feel harsh, and it is deliberate. Once somebody has played, the bet has had its chance.

Parlays settle more generously than a sportsbook

A conventional book drops a voided leg and lets the remaining legs ride at shortened odds. Wagerwolf refunds the whole ticket instead. Your stake was struck against combined odds that included the dead leg, so the surviving legs were never priced to stand on their own.

One limit applies. A leg that has already lost is not rescued by a later void, because the ticket was dead on its own merits before the scratch. Without that limit a doubtful player would work as free insurance on every other leg. Legs still in progress do not block a refund, since undecided counts as alive.

A pushed leg behaves the conventional way. It comes out of the ticket and the parlay is re-priced on the legs that remain. A ticket whose every leg pushes is refunded in full.

Cashing out returns the stake

You can cash out any pending bet before its game starts. Cashing out cancels the bet and returns the whole stake, so it carries no price and no profit or loss. Once the game has kicked off, cashing out is refused along with everything else on that game.

Bets lock at kickoff

Every market on a game locks the moment that game starts, and the lock is enforced on our side instead of in your browser. Games in one week kick off at different times, so Sunday stays open long after Thursday night has locked.

Your balance resets every week

At the start of each NFL week your balance is set back to your league's weekly allowance. Unused money expires and so do winnings. The reset is to the allowance itself, not to the allowance plus whatever you made.

Your balance therefore says little on its own about how your season is going. It measures one week. Your record is what accumulates.

How a weekly matchup is decided

Each week pairs you with one member of your league, and the higher balance at the close of the week wins the matchup. Because everybody started the week on the same allowance, that comparison is the same as asking who did better with it. Two equal balances are recorded as a tie for both members.

A league with an odd number of members has one person unpaired each week. That person plays a stand-in opponent whose score is the average balance across the league, so the week is winnable and losable in the normal way.

Your commissioner sets the limits

Three limits belong to the league instead of to us: the largest stake allowed on one bet, how many bets you may place in a week, and how many legs a parlay may carry. The first two are optional, and a league that sets neither has no cap beyond your balance. Parlays hold up to ten legs unless your commissioner changes the figure.

Where the odds come from

Lines and prices come from a live sportsbook odds feed. We do not set them and we do not adjust them. Each game is re-priced on a schedule that tightens as kickoff approaches: about once a day while it is more than three days out, every eight hours inside three days, every three hours inside a day, and hourly in the last three hours.

Pricing stops at kickoff, which makes the board pregame only. There are no live in-game odds, and a game in progress shows the score without offering anything new to bet.

An empty board is a valid state. A week whose schedule has not been published yet has no games, and a game no sportsbook has priced yet has no odds. A blank section is usually early. We never invent a line to fill the space.

How you are matched into a league

Joining asks three things: which NFL week you want to start, how many teams you want, and whether you want a beginner or a pro league. You are placed in the open league closest to filling up, which is what makes leagues start instead of leaving dozens of them half empty.

Your start week and your level are never compromised. League size is the one preference that can be relaxed, and only once an exact match has failed. When nothing open matches your week and level, we create a league and make you its commissioner.

Beginner and pro are a choice and not a test. Nothing checks how long you have played before letting you into a pro league.

How a week closes out

A week closes once every game in it is final and every bet on it has been graded. At that moment the head to head matchups are decided, the following week opens for betting, and its allowances are distributed, all together. After a Monday night finish that is usually shortly after midnight Eastern. If a result is slow to arrive, the week closes no later than eighteen hours after its last kickoff. After the final regular season week the playoff bracket is seeded from the standings and advances itself each week until one member is champion. Nobody has to press anything.

If something settled wrongly

Results come from published NFL statistics, and those can be late, revised or wrong. If one of your bets settled against the actual result, tell us through Contact Support at the top of this page and we will check the source. Where a source has corrected itself we will settle the bet again and adjust the balances involved.