Every week, the lowest score in the league is gone

How a guillotine league works

1. 1

   Draft like normal

   A standard snake draft, a standard roster. Everything up to kickoff looks like any other league you have played in.

2. 2

   Your score is ranked against everyone

   There is no opponent. Each week every surviving team is put in one list from highest to lowest, and the whole league can see exactly where it sits.

3. 3

   Last place is chopped

   The lowest scorer is eliminated. Permanently. If two teams tie, the one with fewer points on the season goes — a tied week is settled by who has been worse all along.

4. 4

   Their roster goes up for bidding

   Every player they had lands in the free-agent pool at once, and the survivors bid on them in secret. This is the part that makes the format: a genuine first-round pick can be sitting there in week 6.

5. 5

   Two teams reach the final week

   The chopping stops with two left standing, and they play the last week out between them. Highest season total takes it.

Why it plays completely differently

• A high floor beats a high ceiling. You do not need to win your week — you only need to not come last. The boom-or-bust flier that wins a head-to-head matchup is the exact player that gets you chopped when he busts.
• Bye weeks can end your season. In a normal league a bye costs you one matchup. Here, three empty starting slots on the wrong weekend is usually fatal — the bottom team most weeks is not the worst team, it is the one with holes in its lineup.
• Nobody is ever mathematically eliminated. There are no standings to fall out of and no dead weeks in November. You are alive or you are gone, right to the end.
• The waiver wire gets better as the season goes on. Most formats see the free-agent pool picked clean by October. Here it is restocked every single week with a full roster of drafted players.
• Your budget never refills. Spend big in week 2 and you will watch someone else buy a star in week 11. Spend nothing and you will be outbid on everyone.

Blind bidding, in plain terms

Every team gets one budget for the whole season. When you want a free agent you enter what you are willing to pay, and nobody — including the commissioner — can see it. All bids are opened together after the week's elimination, and the highest bid wins the player.

Losing a bid costs you nothing. Winning takes the money out of your budget for good. If two people bid the same amount, the player goes to whoever has more budget left, on the reasoning that outbidding someone who has spent nothing should cost more than outbidding someone who is nearly broke.

You can bid on more players than you can afford — that is normal, you bid on five hoping to land two. The most expensive player you win is settled first, and any of your other bids you can no longer pay for simply lapse, passing that player to the next-highest bidder.

How big should the league be?

One team goes each week and the last two play out the final week, so the natural size is one more than the number of weeks. An 18-team league fits the NFL regular season exactly — seventeen chops, two finalists, decided on the last weekend.

Smaller works too. A 12-team league running the same way is finished by week 11, so most commissioners either start it later in the season or chop only every other week.

Frequently asked questions