How the Index works.

The 15-capper Index

The Index is a rolling roster of the fifteen highest-ranked sports handicappers we track. It is the product: subscribers get access to the pending picks of every capper currently in the Index.

Fifteen is not a lucky number. It’s a balance between two forces: enough cappers that volume and sport diversity are always present, few enough that the roster is curated rather than exhaustive. We picked it once and we haven’t changed it.

The Farm league

Below the Index sits the Farm — up to fifteen more cappers whose picks are tracked and graded identically, but whose selections are not yet part of the subscriber product. The Farm is how cappers audition for the Index. Every pick a Farm capper submits counts toward their weekly composite score on equal footing with an Index capper’s pick.

The Farm is public. You can see every Farm capper’s running numbers on the leaderboard. You just can’t see their selections before games start.

Composite score

Every eligible capper earns a weekly composite score, expressed on a 0.00 to 1.00 scale:

Each input is a percentile rank against the entire eligible pool for the month — Index and Farm combined. A capper in the 80th percentile for units earns 0.80 on that component. The raw numbers never appear in the final score; only relative rank against the pool does.

This matters because the sports calendar is volatile. A flat week across the industry is still ranked the same way as a hot one. You are never competing against an absolute benchmark — only against the other cappers we track.

Why 60/20/20?

Units won is the only thing that pays. We weight it heaviest. Win rate by itself rewards cappers who chase favorites to pad their record, so we cap its influence. Risk-adjusted return — essentially units won divided by the standard deviation of stake-sized outcomes — rewards cappers who don’t need to go on wild heaters to stay ranked. We weight it the same as win rate.

Eligibility

A capper’s weekly score only counts if they clear two thresholds:

• At least 5 graded picks in the week. Low-volume cappers are ranked but their score is floored at zero.
• No single pick stakes more than 10 units (10% of the declared bankroll). This keeps cappers from bankroll-spiking one game to move their ranking. Picks over the cap are auto-trimmed back to 10 units for scoring purposes.

Cappers who fall short on either threshold stay on the leaderboard but with a score of 0.00 and a flag noting insufficient activity. They’re still tracked, still graded, and eligible again the following week.

Cut Day

Every Sunday night at midnight Pacific — no exceptions — we take a snapshot of the prior week’s final composite scores. Based on that snapshot:

1. Any INDEX capper whose composite has fallen below the merit cutoff is demoted to the Farm. Their historical picks remain public on their profile.
2. Any Farm capper with 20+ graded picks whose composite is now above the cutoff is promoted to the INDEX. Effective immediately, their picks feed the subscriber product.
3. Tier changes are always single-step — an INDEX capper who falls hard only drops to the Farm, not below; a challenger climbing from the bottom only rises one tier at a time.
4. Any INDEX capper whose composite is below the cutoff after the new week’s ranking carries an At Risk flag, signalling subscribers that they’re queued for demotion at the next Cut Day if their numbers don’t recover.

Pick eligibility: a capper needs 20+ graded picks to qualify for INDEX promotion and 10+ graded picks to qualify for Farm promotion. These floors stop cappers with tiny sample sizes from gaming the ladder.

There is no appeal process and no discretion. If the numbers say you’re out, you’re out. Demoted cappers re-enter through the Farm the same way everyone else does — by earning it on the composite ladder.

Pick verification

Every pick carries a server-side timestamp. The window between when a pick is submitted and when the underlying game starts must be at least one hour. Picks that arrive inside the one-hour window are auto-voided and don’t count toward the capper’s week. The hour lead time gives subscribers time to see the play, evaluate it, and act on it before kickoff.

We grade every pick against the posted closing line at the book of record. If the posted line moved more than half a point from the capper’s submitted price, we grade at the capper’s price (so cappers aren’t penalised for sharp movement after they posted). If the pick’s outcome is ambiguous — a cancelled game, a settled push, a rule-book void — it doesn’t count toward units won or lost.

How units work

A unit is a normalisation of bet size. 1 unit is, by convention, 1% of a capper’s declared bankroll. A capper risking 2 units on a bet at +110 odds earns 2.2 units on a win and loses 2 units on a loss. The formula is the standard American-odds unit calculation:

We never convert units back to dollars. That’s deliberate. Dollar bankrolls are private; performance is public.

Disputes and voids

A capper can’t retroactively edit or delete a submitted pick. If a pick needs to be voided — for example, a game is cancelled or the capper submitted a typo that was never actionable — the void is applied by us (the Index team), recorded in a public audit log on the capper’s profile, and never applied silently.

Subscribers who believe a pick has been graded incorrectly can write to admin@capperindex.com with the pick ID and the disputed outcome. We publish the grading reference used (book of record, posted closing line) for every pick so disputes can be resolved from the data rather than opinion.