Home — the river
The front page: tonight's slate, top stories, highlights, and the wire from every room in one scroll, with your teams up front.
The House · Membership
Anyone can run a pool. Nobody else gives you the room.
A pool by itself is a form — a hundred sites have one. House membership is the whole clubhouse around it: your groups, your private pages, your history, the full games calendar, in one place with your actual friends. One membership per person. No separate organizer fee to explain.
Price: to be announced. We're setting it against the full bundle below, not against a pool form — founding members will hear it first.
Room-by-room tour
Every room in the clubhouse, in the rail's own order. This is what a membership sits on top of — most of it is free to walk through.
The House
Ask Luka
The house SI. He builds cook plans, plans fishing licenses from official state sources, IDs fish and cards, helps with Pick'em, and drafts recaps — from named sources, or he says he doesn't have it.
My Teams
Your personal dashboard: follow your teams and get each one's next game, the line, the latest result, and its news — the wire filtered to your world.
Scoreboard
The sports desk: game highlights from the leagues' official channels, real upcoming fixtures, and the day's sports news wire, linked out to the publishers who wrote it.
Standings
Every league's table on its own page — NFL, NBA, WNBA, and MLB tables and playoff pictures, plus a plain-English guide to reading a table.
College Football
The college game's own room: FBS standings across every conference and the 12-team playoff explained in plain English, with Luka on the college game.
The Lab
The numbers workshop: a win-probability what-if tool, published calibration, and team power ratings for building your own line. The advanced layer is part of the House bundle.
The Rail
The pre-bet homework desk: real upcoming fixtures, live moneylines, highlights, and odds education that shows how the number is made. Information only.
The Board
The clubhouse message board: member-started threads across every room. Reading the public Board is open to everyone; posting takes an account.
Pick'em HQ
Private groups with invite links and weekly or daily slates across the major sports. Any pot is held by the organizer off-site — the site never touches pot money.
The Organizer's Desk
The organizer's handbook: start a group, pick a term, choose straight-up, spread, or confidence scoring, run the paid list, settle ties, and close out a season.
Coach's Corner
Learn to coach, the Luka way: rules exams for youth, high school, and college/pro football and basketball, decision exams, and fillable coaching forms.
Officials' Room
Learn to work the whistle: the same rules exams the coaches take, your state's real registration door, a first-game checklist, and a rules-differences guide.
The Games
Playable games in the room: chess, trivia nights you host for your crew, play-money blackjack and poker, billiards, darts, and the Academy.
The Rooms
Hobbies Hub
The hobbies wing in one place — the Grill Yard, the Brew Room, the Showroom, and the Dock, each with its own page. Start here if you're not sure which room you want.
Grill Yard
The grilling and smoking room: guided cooks with check-off steps and Luka at every step, a cook-plan tool, and cooker and fuel libraries.
Brew Room
The homebrewing room: a guided first batch with check-off steps, a batch log with live ABV math (ABV = alcohol by volume), and recipes.
The Showroom
Cards and collectibles: show Luka a photo of a card and he reads only what is printed on it, then tools to evaluate a card and catalog your own pieces.
The Dock — Fishing Locator
The Dock's public fishing locator: a map of verified places to fish — public piers, lakes, rivers, and shore spots — with the fish at each spot and what the official sources name.
Screening Room
The movie room: the House Canon (the house's own ranked movie list) by category, member ratings, reference ratings named and dated, and Luka's spoiler-free picks.
Her Game
The women's sports desk: fixtures, reported results, and the day's news from the Her Game wire, with explainers and verified tutorials below.
Encore
Concert and live-event memory albums: invite the friends who were there, pool everyone's photos and memories into one album, and save the ticket in your stub book.
After Hours
The clubhouse's separate 21+ wing — The Pour, the Beer Corner, and The Session. It sits behind its own adults-only gate; that gate is a fact of the room, not a perk.
The Rest
The Store
The shop in the corner: city baby gear through our Etsy shop and The Fan Club books through Amazon. Open to everyone; House members shop first.
The House
This page: the membership itself — the free-vs-House comparison, the Jesse rule, the perks shelf, and the questions below.
Free vs House
| Free — forever | House member | |
|---|---|---|
| Pick'em groups | One group as organizer, standard slates, straight-up winners | Unlimited groups, every sport's slates, against-the-spread and confidence-point scoring |
| Your group's page | Standings inside the group | A private page for every group — trash talk, announcements, automatic weekly results — plus group stats |
| Commissioner tools | Invite link and the paid list | Automatic pick reminders, one-tap weekly recaps, co-commissioners, fill-in pick rules |
| Games calendar | Casual chess, group Pick'em | Survivor pools, March brackets, championship-game squares, chess leagues and tournaments (darts joins when it ships) |
| The Rail | Scores and headline lines | Pick trends, line movement, and rest-day and availability notes |
| The Board | The public Board | Members-only Board areas |
| Your history | This season | Season archives, all-time group records, head-to-heads, and a trophy case on your profile — the quiet reason nobody leaves |
| The Store | Open to everyone | Member discount, early access to drops, members-only designs |
| Ads | Yes | None. Ad-free, everywhere, full stop |
The Jesse rule — how premium reaches a group
They follow the organizer
If Jesse runs your group and Jesse is a House member, his whole group plays premium: the private group page, spread and confidence scoring, automatic reminders, the paid ledger, group stats — for every player in it, free members included. A pool where half the players can't see the features doesn't work, so the organizer's membership upgrades the group.
They follow the person
The site-wide perks — the trends and stats layer on the Rail, the merch discount, ad-free, members-only Board areas — are yours only if you personally subscribe. Jesse's friend Mike plays in a premium group all season for free, and on the rest of the site he's a free member — until he starts his own group next year, tasting exactly what he'd be paying for.
The perks shelf
Your state: you're signed out — the free shelf is open to everyone, and the House shelf shows what membership adds.
Free forever
One Pick'em group as organizer
One group as organizer, with standard slates and straight-up winners.
Joining groups
Join groups other people organize and play their slates.
Your group's page
Standings inside the group, plus the invite link and the paid list for the organizer.
Casual chess + group Pick'em
Casual chess and group Pick'em are on the free games calendar.
Rail basics
Scores and headline lines on The Rail.
The public Board
Read the public Board; posting takes an account.
The Store
The Store is open to everyone.
Your history — this season
Your history for this season stays on the free plan.
Contributing to albums
Contributing to an Encore album is free — starting an album is the House power.
Your stub book
Your Encore stub book — the tickets you've saved — is yours on the free plan.
Your movie diary
Your Screening Room movie diary is yours on the free plan.
Your nights log
Your nights log is yours on the free plan.
House
Unlimited Pick'em groups
Unlimited groups, every sport's slates, against-the-spread and confidence-point scoring.
Group feature — or yours today when your organizer is a member.
House perk — membership opens soon
A private page for every group
A private page for every group — trash talk, announcements, automatic weekly results — plus group stats.
Group feature — or yours today when your organizer is a member.
House perk — membership opens soon
Commissioner tools
Automatic pick reminders, one-tap weekly recaps, co-commissioners, and fill-in pick rules.
Group feature — or yours today when your organizer is a member.
House perk — membership opens soon
The full games calendar
Survivor pools, March brackets, championship-game squares, and chess leagues and tournaments (darts joins when it ships).
House perk — membership opens soon
The Rail, deeper
Pick trends, line movement, and rest-day and availability notes on The Rail.
House perk — membership opens soon
Members-only Board areas
Board areas for House members only, on top of the public Board.
House perk — membership opens soon
Your history, kept
Season archives, all-time group records, head-to-heads, and a trophy case on your profile.
House perk — membership opens soon
Store perks
Member discount, early access to drops, and members-only designs in The Store.
House perk — membership opens soon
No ads
None. Ad-free, everywhere, full stop.
House perk — membership opens soon
Join the House
One membership. The whole room.
Everything in the House column above — unlimited groups and every sport's slates, premium scoring for the groups you organize, the full games calendar, members-only Board areas, the Lab's advanced layer, your history and trophy case kept, store perks, and no ads — for one flat membership fee. The fee pays for the software and the room. It never comes out of, scales with, or touches any group's pot: pots stay between friends, settled off this site, always.
Membership opens soon — founding details are being finalized. The price is set once, against the full bundle above, and founding members on the list below hear it first.
Questions
Is the site holding our pot?
Never. Pots are held by your organizer off-site and settled among friends. The site never accepts, holds, or moves pot money, and it takes no cut, ever — that is the house's own law, printed in the footer of this page. Membership fees pay for the software and the room; they never come out of a pot.
My organizer cancelled — do we lose our group?
Group features follow the organizer — that is the Jesse rule, as published on this page. If your organizer is a House member, the whole group plays premium; the premium side of the group rides on the organizer's membership, so if that membership ends, the group's premium features go with it.
What if I cancel?
Membership isn't on sale yet, so there is nothing to cancel today. The published terms will state renewal, cancellation, and refunds plainly before anyone pays — that language is finalized together with the price, and founding members on the list below will see it first.
Are my records mine?
Your profile carries your picks history and your trophy case. On the free plan your history covers this season; the deep archives — season archives, all-time group records, and head-to-heads — are part of the House bundle, as the comparison table above shows.
How does Luka know things?
His answers come from named sources with dates, or he says he doesn't have it. On top of that, he uses what you tell him: that list lives on “What Luka knows about you” in your account, and you can delete from it any time. There is no silent profiling — nothing is kept about you that isn't on that list.
What does the site do with my location?
Only what you set — a city/ZIP (ZIP = your postal code) or a tap. It's rounded to your area, used to sort what's near you first, never shared, and removable whenever you want.
Spotify refused my connect — why 25 members?
The house's Spotify app runs in Spotify's development mode, which caps it at 25 named members until Spotify grants extended access. Getting that extended access is a pre-launch step on the house's list — the cap is Spotify's, not a limit the house picked.
One account everywhere?
Yes — one sign-in across the SI clubhouses, as the rail on this page puts it: one account across the clubhouse, SIHobbyist, and the SI Collectors world. The same account holds your groups, your follows, and your House membership.
What's the 21+ about?
After Hours is an adults-only wing of the clubhouse, and it sits behind its own gate. That gate exists as a fact of the room — you confirm you're of age to enter it, separate from anything else on the site.
Hear the price first
Join the clubhouse list and you'll get opening night, the House price when it's set, and founding-member word before anyone else. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.