Fair & Competitive Play Policy

Effective date: June 1, 2025. This is a pre-launch draft. Final policy will be reviewed by counsel prior to public launch.

Spurts is a game of sports knowledge, strategy, and competitive nerve. The daily Sheets, Spurts, the Spurts Table, challenges, and the Top Dog only mean something if everyone plays honestly. This policy sets the rules that protect the competition for all players.

By using Spurts, you agree to this policy in full. Violations may result in point adjustments, challenge voids, account suspension, or a permanent ban — at our sole discretion.

1. One Account Per Player

Each person may operate exactly one Spurts account. Creating multiple accounts — for any reason, including to bypass a suspension, protect your real ranking, or manipulate challenges — is prohibited. Accounts found to be duplicates may both be suspended.

2. No Automated Tools or Bots

Picks, challenges, and all in-game actions must reflect your own judgment made in real time. You may not use bots, scripts, automated pick-submission tools, scrapers, or any software that interacts with the Service outside of a standard web browser or the official app. Using late-breaking data feeds to time picks after locks begin (even fractions of a second) is also prohibited.

3. No Collusion

Coordinating with other players to manipulate standings, challenge outcomes, point wager transfers, or Top Dog possession is prohibited. This includes deliberately losing a challenge to transfer points to a friend, coordinating picks to inflate a shared standing, or organized efforts to target or isolate specific players unfairly.

4. Picks Lock at Game Time — No Exceptions

Each question locks the moment its associated event begins. Attempting to submit or alter a pick after lock time — through any means, including exploiting network latency, API access, or timing bugs — is cheating. If we detect picks submitted after lock time, those picks will be voided and the account may be flagged.

5. Challenge and Wager Integrity

Challenges must be entered in good faith. You may challenge any other player and agree to any wager within the system-enforced limits. You may not:

• Create challenges with the intent to deliberately lose and transfer points to another account.
• Coordinate with your opponent to predetermine a challenge outcome.
• Use a secondary account to challenge your primary account.
• Exploit the challenge system to launder points through a third-party account.

We reserve the right to void any challenge and reverse any associated point transfer if we determine the challenge was not conducted in good faith.

6. Top Dog Challenges

Top Dog challenges — where the Top Dog is explicitly placed on the line — must be initiated and accepted voluntarily. A Top Dog who accepts a Top Dog challenge and loses transfers the Top Dog to the challenger. A Top Dog is never required to accept a Top Dog challenge, but consistent refusals may be noted in challenge history.

Attempting to manipulate the Top Dog through collusion, duplicate accounts, or a deliberately thrown challenge is a serious violation and will result in immediate account action and Top Dog removal.

7. Respectful Community Conduct

Trash talk is part of the game. Harassment is not. The line: competitive trash talk targets picks, standings, and sports takes. Harassment targets a person.

You may not post content that:

• Contains hate speech, slurs, or targeted discrimination.
• Constitutes personal threats or threats of violence.
• Reveals another user's private information without consent (doxxing).
• Is sexually explicit or otherwise grossly offensive with no legitimate purpose.
• Is designed to harass a specific user into leaving the platform.

The rate limit on trash talk posts (two per six-hour window) is a feature, not a bug. Work with it.

8. Bug Reporting, Not Exploiting

If you find a bug, scoring error, or vulnerability in the Service, report it to us rather than exploiting it. Exploiting bugs for competitive advantage — including gaming the scoring system, bypassing Spurt locks, or inflating wager balances — will result in immediate account action. Good-faith bug reporters will not be penalized.

9. Scoring Corrections and Result Integrity

Sports results occasionally change after the fact — official stats corrections, overturned calls, postponed events. We reserve the right to re-grade affected questions, adjust standings, and reverse challenge outcomes when source data changes materially. We aim to be transparent when significant corrections occur.

We also reserve the right to manually adjust scores, void picks, or cancel challenges in response to confirmed rule violations. Any manual adjustments will be logged internally.

10. Enforcement

We take competitive integrity seriously. Enforcement actions may include:

• Warning with no action.
• Voiding of picks, challenges, or point transfers.
• Point deduction or score reset.
• Temporary account suspension.
• Permanent account ban and forfeiture of all in-game records.

Enforcement decisions are made at our sole discretion. We are not obligated to disclose specific evidence or follow a formal appeal process, though we will consider good-faith appeals submitted to the contact address below.

Contact

Questions about this policy or to report a violation? Contact us at fairplay@spurts.app.

Play smart. Play bold. Play fair.