Post 5: what running multiple entries (and using a buyback) actually does to your odds
In my last post I covered why going a lot more aggressive on fading the field costs you on survival without buying you anything on wins. Before that: adding future value to your picks doesn't help (Post 3), a mild lean off the crowd beats Chalk (Post 2), and Chalk survives longest but rarely wins (Post 1).
My standard disclosure: I built SurvivorPulse for people who play multiple survivor pools and entries.
This one's a lot bigger. I look at what happens when you play more than one pool or entry, and whether buybacks change the math. Buckle up.
For this analysis I assume genuinely different, safe-team picks across entries. Picking the same team across entries essentially reduces your survival odds to the same as playing a single entry, so I wanted to test multiple entries with different picks specifically.
I looked at survival probabilities (i.e. chance of being alive at week 9) for 5, 10, and 20 entry scenarios across several different pick strategies.
Here's what I found:
The following table shows the chance that at least one entry will be alive by week 9, by strategy and entry count (10 real seasons, genuinely distinct picks, no buyback):
| Strategy | 1 entry | 5 entries | 10 entries | 20 entries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chalk | 17.6% | 36.4% | 40.6% | 42.2% |
| Mild Lean | 13.4% | 34.6% | 38.7% | 40.4% |
| 65/25/10 Future Value Blend | 10.6% | 31.7% | 36.5% | 38.1% |
| Max Equity | 9.9% | 30.5% | 35.5% | 37.3% |
| Heavy Contrarian | 5.2% | 22.0% | 26.4% | 28.6% |
Clearly the more entries you have the greater the chance of at least one entry making it to week 9. Across the board there is at least a 2x increase going from a single entry to 5 entries. It's worth noting that going from 5 to 20 entries shows a much more modest increase in survival likelihood.
I also tested more aggressive pick selections that include some less safe teams. Only the most aggressive setting I tested clearly loses to distinct, safe-team picks, by a statistically significant margin at every entry count. The milder steps toward aggression don't reliably lose, but they don't win either, so there's no case for reaching past distinct, safe picks in search of an edge. The real finding here is that going with wider, more aggressive selection of picks doesn't pay off over going with genuinely different, safe-team picks.
Here's expected survival depth in weeks between distinct safe picks vs. increasingly aggressive pick selection (10 real seasons, no buyback). NOTE: Expected survival depth is the average number of weeks the last entry standing in your portfolio survives, averaged across the seasons I tested.
| Entries | Distinct, safe picks | Mildly aggressive | Moderately aggressive | Most aggressive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 4.9 wks | 4.9 wks (n.s.) | 4.5 wks (n.s.) | 3.8 wks (significant) |
| 10 | 6.0 wks | 5.9 wks (n.s.) | 5.1 wks (n.s.) | 4.9 wks (significant) |
| 20 | 7.3 wks | 6.1 wks (n.s.) | 6.8 wks (n.s.) | 5.4 wks (significant) |
Worth being honest that this analysis is about survival only, not winning. Across the 150 historical scenarios I tested, not one showed a real edge on net return in either direction, so what you're actually getting with a diversified multi-entry approach is staying alive deeper into the season, not necessarily more cash coming out the other end.
Related to this and worth mentioning separately, I found that spreading your claims across multiple pools rather than just multiple entries within one pool adds real modeled survival value too, for every strategy I tested.
Extra expected survival weeks from spreading across pools, by strategy and entry count (10 real seasons, modeled):
| Strategy | 5 entries (3+2 split) | 10 entries (5+5 split) | 20 entries (10+10 split) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chalk | +1.4 wks | +1.5 wks | +1.1 wks |
| Mild Lean | +1.3 wks | +1.5 wks | +1.2 wks |
| 65/25/10 Future Value Blend | +1.4 wks | +1.6 wks | +1.1 wks |
| Max Equity | +1.4 wks | +1.5 wks | +1.2 wks |
| Heavy Contrarian | +1.1 wks | +1.5 wks | +1.2 wks |
The gain doesn't grow the more entries you're running. A 10-entry portfolio split across two pools usually gets a bigger boost from spreading than a 20-entry portfolio does, for every strategy tested, because a larger single pool already picks up some of that same diversification on its own without needing to coordinate across pools at all.
Next: does using a buyback change any of this? A single entry averaging 0.8 weeks means it's usually eliminated in week 1, with a handful of stronger seasons pulling that average up.
As a baseline: a single entry with no buyback has an expected survival depth of 0.8 weeks. Add a buyback to that same single entry, and it jumps to 4.0 weeks, regardless of deadline.
Here's how that compares to running distinct entries, with and without a buyback:
| Entries | No buyback | With buyback (earlier deadline) | With buyback (later deadline) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 4.9 wks | 6.3 wks | 7.1 wks |
| 10 | 6.0 wks | 9.0 wks | 10.1 wks |
| 20 | 7.3 wks | 9.6 wks | 11.3 wks |
A buyback helps even with a single entry, and diversifying still helps a lot more than that on its own. But whether a buyback widens or narrows the gap between distinct-with-buyback and distinct-without depends on both the buyback deadline and how many entries you're running, it's not a clean "wider with more entries" pattern. At the earlier buyback deadline, the gap actually shrinks as you add entries. At the later deadline, it shrinks at low entry counts but grows again at 10 and 20 entries. Either way, a buyback never makes diversifying worse, it just doesn't add a single consistent amount on top of it.
That pattern is different for the more aggressive pick settings, though never in a direction that favors them. One more definition: the coordinated-diversification advantage is how much extra survival depth an aggressive spreading setting buys you over running identical entries. What I'm checking here is whether a buyback preserves that advantage, shrinks it, or leaves it alone.
Change in the coordinated-diversification advantage over identical entries, under a buyback (10 real seasons):
| Entries | Mildest step, earlier deadline | Mildest step, later deadline | Most aggressive, earlier deadline | Most aggressive, later deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | -56% | -22% | -10% | -3% |
| 10 | -24% | -20% | -7% | -2% |
| 20 | -23% | +8% | -2% | +2% |
The mildest step toward aggression sees its already-smaller advantage over identical entries shrink further under a buyback in most cases, with one exception at 20 entries and the later deadline where it ticks up slightly instead. The most aggressive setting barely moves either way, staying roughly flat under a buyback. Since I already recommend mild diversification over aggressive, this doesn't change my stance, it just confirms that aggressive picks don't buy you an extra benefit just because a buyback happens to be in play.
Finally, I also went back and properly tested one more related question. Does using a buyback mean you should take on more risk early with a single entry rather than saving it for later?
I tested across all 10 seasons with two realistic buyback deadlines using weeks survived as the metric. The one comparison that actually reaches statistical significance is a buyback deadline at week 2. The result is that taking more risk early beats saving it for later by about 2.3 weeks of expected survival. The rest of the individual comparisons don't reach significance either way so I'm not using this to change any guidance.
Wow, I covered a lot in this post.
Anyone here running double-digit entries across multiple pools, does this match what you've actually seen play out, or do you find yourself drifting back toward safer, more correlated picks out of habit?
Full methodology write-up is at survivorpulse.com/methodology.
Posted Sep 4, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC