Scoring Modes: Pick the Right Rules for Your Pool

Your scoring mode determines two things: what earns points (predicting the right winner, the exact score, the correct margin, and more) and when picks lock. You set it once when creating the pool. It can’t be changed after the first member joins, so it’s worth understanding your options before you commit.

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The three presets

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Casual

Casual is the simplest mode. You earn points for getting the right outcome (who wins or if it’s a draw) and bonus points for nailing the exact score. Every stage — group stage through the final — is worth the same. When picks lock: individually, at each match’s kickoff. You can submit or update a pick up until the moment the whistle blows.

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Escalating

Escalating works like Casual but stakes rise with each round. Group stage points are modest; a correct final prediction is worth ten times as much. This means anyone can catch up until the very last match, and nobody is mathematically eliminated before the quarterfinals. When picks lock: at the start of each stage — once the first match of a round kicks off, picks for that entire round are locked. This creates a natural deadline per round rather than per match.

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Cascading Bracket

Cascading Bracket flips the format. Instead of predicting match by match, every member submits their complete knockout bracket in one go before the first knockout game kicks off. You call every matchup — who beats who from the first knockout round through the final — all at once, with a scoreline for each. The same escalating point values apply, but drama compounds as teams are eliminated. Every upset ripples through your bracket. If the team you picked to win the final goes out in the quarterfinals, you lose all the downstream points you’d built around them. When picks open: members predict the entire knockout bracket up front, before any knockout game kicks off. Your own picks cascade through the rounds — the R32 winner you pick auto-fills your R16 slot, your R16 winner cascades to QF, and so on. You don’t wait for real results to confirm a matchup; you pick it yourself. When picks lock: all bracket picks lock at the first knockout-round kickoff (Round of 32 or Round of 16, depending on the tournament). There are no per-match or per-round deadlines — just one deadline for the whole bracket. See Set prediction deadlines for your pool for the full breakdown. Point values for Exact Score and Correct Outcome are identical to Escalating (see the table above). Cascading Bracket also enables a knockout-only Team Advancement rule that scores when the team you picked advances — even if your predicted matchup never happened, and even when the match is decided on penalties. Default Team Advancement points per round: For a full explanation of how bracket pools work — including a worked Team Advancement example — see Bracket pools.

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Custom mode

Custom mode lets you set your own point values for each scoring rule and each stage of the tournament. It’s built for organizers who want a specific format — like awarding bonus points for predicting a clean sheet, or weighting the final more heavily than the escalating preset does.

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The six scoring rules

In Custom mode you assign a point value to any combination of these six rules, independently for each tournament stage. Rules you leave at zero (or toggle off) simply don’t score.

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How scores are read

Score-based rules (Exact Score, Correct Outcome, Correct Margin, Total Goals, Clean Sheet, Close Score) are scored against the full-time + extra time result — penalty kicks don’t count. If a knockout match ends 1–1 after 120 minutes and is decided on penalties, a 1–1 prediction is treated as the exact score regardless of who wins the shootout. There’s no way to predict penalty kicks in Toqui. Whatever scoreline you enter applies to the regulation + extra time result. In Casual, Escalating, and Custom, each match is scored on its full-time line independently. Cascading Bracket layers two extra behaviors on top:

• If your predicted matchup for a given match never happens (because the team you picked got knocked out earlier), the score-based rules earn 0 points for that match regardless of the score you wrote down.
• The Team Advancement rule still pays out when the team you picked wins — including on penalties — so a broken matchup isn’t always a wipe-out. See Bracket pools for the full explanation.

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Comparing all modes at a glance