Poker Professionals Dominate Circa’s $18.7M NFL Survivor Contest

^{Circa Resort & Casino on Fremont Street is home to one of the world’s biggest NFL Survivor contests, where several of this year’s winners were professional gamblers. (Photo: Nathaniel Noir / Alamy)}

Casinos are always looking for ways to drive traffic through the doors, whether through giveaways, monster promotions, or high-stakes contests. One of the best examples is done by Circa Resort and Casino on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, which recently concluded its NFL “Survivor” Contest at the end of the NFL season. 

A whopping 18,718 distinct participants took part in the Circa Survivor Contest, with each participant putting up $1,000 towards the prize pool. The grand prize pool ended up at $18.7 million, which would ultimately be given to whoever finished the season with all perfect, winning football picks. The finalists consisted of many professional gamblers, particularly poker players.

Millions of Dollars in Payouts

If your knowledge of sports betting is limited, a “survivor contest” is a season-long pick’em competition in which participants select one NFL team each week to simply win a game. If that team wins, then you move on to the next week as a “survivor”. But if your team loses, then you are eliminated from the contest. This continues until no one is left standing. 

There are some rules to this type of gaming contest, however. Once you choose a team, you cannot select them again for the remainder of the season. It becomes a strategy contest in that you must make sure not to burn up your “lock” picks (the best teams) too early in the season. Even if you do choose a heavy favorite, one upset can be enough to put you out of the contest.

The expectation each year is that only one entry will survive the entire NFL season and claim the full prize pool, which had a $15 million guaranteed minimum. In the event that too many teams picked perfectly, Circa ensured that their rules stated that the final teams would split the prize pool rather than competing in a tiebreaker. Instead, the contest surpassed that guarantee and ended with five perfect entries.

Circa arranged for a finale party where the final six teams could gather together to watch the games unfold at the casino on the final Sunday of the season.

Contest Built for Strategic Gamblers

After 18 weeks of football, only six entries remained from the original total of over 18,000. Two of them selected the Minnesota Vikings in a basically meaningless game against the Green Bay Packers, who had already secured their playoff position the previous week. 

Out of the five scenarios, only one of them missed – the Bengals failed to win against the Browns, eliminating one team from the Survivor Contest. The final five survivors got to split the $18.7 million payout, making for a windfall of $3.74 million per entry after betting a $1000 just to buy-in. 

Once the end of the season was in the books, the players behind the entries were identified. As should come as no surprise, many poker players were part of several of these winning teams. 

One of the teams was “Juicy Kewchi,” featuring UNLV nursing student Fernanda Carriedo and poker pros Jason Somerville and Gabe Patgorski. Carriedo admitted she was particularly nervous as she watched the Vikings shock the Packers to book the win. 

“I’ll be a Vikings fan for life,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal upon the completion of the season. 

One player had two shares of the final five entries. Former PokerStars Caribbean Adventure champion Galen Hall was lucky enough to cash in on two pieces of the $18.7 million prize. Other poker professionals, such as Dylan Wilkerson and Shannon Shorr, were also part of the winning group.

Though Circa may not directly profit from hosting the contest, it gains the notoriety of hosting one of the world's most significant professional gaming events. That attention filters down to potential customers.

More than anything else, activities like this in Circa help build the casino's clientele. Whether the teams are made of seasoned professional gamblers or hopeful amateurs looking to hit it big, they are drawn by the (relatively) low price of entry and the chance at a big payout.