It’s that time of the year again for survivor pools to get started. In case you are not familiar, survivor pools are incredibly easy to play. All you need to do is pick a team that is going to win that week, however, you can only use each time one per season. Once your team doesn’t win, you are out of t he pool. So the strategy is to choose wisely each week with one eye towards future weeks.

There are several different strategies that are commonly used by those in survivor pools, and below are the most popular ones.

Season Picks

Some bettors will make their picks for Weeks 1-18 before the season even begins. The advantage of this strategy is that you won’t run into a week where you have no good selections because you failed to plan ahead. However, the downside is many teams are often better or worse than expected, and significant injuries can happen throughout the season. Therefore, you are making your selections without all of the available information.

Spread Picks

Another common strategy is to look at the spreads for each game every week, and select the team with the lowest moneyline odds still available to you. Obviously, this may put you in a vulnerable position several weeks into the season if you selected all the best teams upfront, but some bettors are willing to take that risk given that it will only be an issue if you keep advancing.

Fade the Worst Team

Some survivor players will just pick a team they expect to be the worst for the season, and select whoever they play every week, unless that team has already been selected, then they will take the team playing the second-worst team in their mind.

Hybrid

Finally, some players will use a hybrid strategy where they incorporate 2-3 of these strategies into their selections.

So who should you take for Week 1?

As of today the, largest favorites are the Colts and the Ravens, and that is mostly due to the fact that their opponents are the Texans and the Jets respectively, who are largely expected to be two of the worst teams in the league. These look to be safe picks so if your goal is just to survive Week 1, then you can select either of these teams. However, these will be the two most commonly selected teams in most pools, so if they both win, very few people will be knocked out.

Taking a look at more of a contrarian pick and using teams’ Win Probability in future weeks, the Eagles or Saints could be a very smart pick, and if either the Colts or Ravens lose, you can be sitting in a great position for Week 2.