A
betting pool,
sports lottery,
sweep, or
office pool if done at work, is a form of
gambling, specifically a variant of
parimutuel betting influenced by
lotteries, where gamblers pay a fixed price into a
pool (from which taxes and a house
"take" or "vig" are removed), and then make a selection on an outcome, usually related to
sport. In an informal game, the vig is usually quite small or non-existent. The pool is evenly divided between those that have made the correct selection. There are no
odds involved; each winner's payoff depends simply on the number of gamblers and the number of winners. (True
parimutuel betting, which was historically referred to as pool betting, involves both odds calculations and variable wager amounts.)