How to Run an Online Baby Pool From the Shower to the Delivery Room

An online baby pool is a guessing game about a birth. Your family predicts the date, the weight, the name, and whatever else you care to ask, then someone scores the guesses once the baby shows up. Running it online fixes the two things that go wrong with paper prediction cards: only the people in the room get to play, and somebody has to keep a stack of cards safe for two months and add them up during the least convenient week of the year.

Most sites built for this hand you a fixed set of fields and ask your guests to register before they can guess. You can run the same pool with your own questions and no signup for anyone but you. Setup takes a few minutes. What takes thought is the question list and who does the scoring.

What Is an Online Baby Pool?

The format predates the internet. Someone passes a sheet around the shower, everyone guesses the birthday and the weight, and the closest guess wins a prize. Online, the game works the same way without the sheet.

People run it two ways. In the money version, sometimes called a baby betting pool, each player buys in and the winner takes the pot, which is how most of the dedicated baby pool sites are built. In the points version, each correct answer is worth a point and the winner gets bragging rights.

Picksy's baby pool scores on points and never touches money. Your group can still put a pot on it. Collect the buy-ins the way you already split a dinner check, run the questions here, and pay out whoever the leaderboard puts on top. Skipping the money keeps the game open to the coworker who would rather not pitch in ten dollars and to relatives who would rather not wager on a grandchild, so most hosts play it for bragging rights.

Both versions run on the same mechanic: a list of questions with fixed answer options, scored against what happens on the day. If the format is new to you, our explainer on prop questions covers it in two minutes.

Two Decisions to Make Before You Set It Up

Pick someone other than the parents to run it

Whoever runs the pool writes the questions, chases the stragglers, and grades the answers in the days after the birth. That is not a job for two people who are learning to feed a newborn. A sibling or the shower host works better. Picksy generates a two-word grading passphrase for every event, so you can hand the scoring to a second person without giving up your account.

Decide when picks open

Opening at the baby shower gets you the highest turnout, since the room is already together and someone can hold up a QR code. Opening closer to the due date gets you sharper guesses, because people know more by then. You can do both: open picks at the shower, then leave the link in the group chat for anyone who was not there.

A long gap between the shower and the due date is nothing to plan around. A Picksy event stays up as long as it is being used, and only gets removed after three months of nobody touching it.

How to Set Up an Online Baby Pool

1. Create the event

Name it something the family will recognize in a text message. "Baby Ramirez Pool" beats "Prediction Game." Choose the baby event type when you create it, which loads a library of ready-made baby props instead of the wedding ones.

2. Write the questions

A board holds up to 21 questions plus one tiebreaker. Six to twelve is the range we suggest: a guest fills out six in under a minute, and past about twenty the questions start repeating each other.

Write your answer options as ranges rather than exact numbers. Only about 5% of babies arrive on their due date, so a question asking for the exact day sends almost every guest home with nothing. Buckets like "within 2 days, 3 to 6 days, 7 to 10 days, more than 10 days" spread your guests across the options and still grade in one tap. Our list of twelve baby prediction questions has the ranges worked out for weight, length, and time of day.

Save the exact date-and-time guess for the tiebreaker, which takes a free-form answer instead of fixed options.

3. Share one link

Publish the event and you get a URL and a QR code. Text the URL to the family group chat and print the QR code for the gift table. Guests need no account and no app: they open the link, type a name, and pick.

Check your entry limit before you send it. The free tier covers 10 entries, which suits a small family pool, and a shower with the extended family will need more. You can upgrade the event at any point, including after picks have started.

4. Let the picks come in

Every guest answers every question. Picksy will not accept a partial card, so nobody skips the weight question and still lands on the leaderboard. Each entry locks the moment someone submits it, which settles the argument about whether Uncle Dave revised his guess after the 38-week appointment.

5. Grade it when the baby arrives

Open the grading view, mark the real answer for each question, and the standings update for everyone holding the link. You can grade in batches as you learn things, so the date and the weight go in on day one and the name goes in whenever the parents announce it.

Grading your first question also closes the board to new picks. You want that, because the birth announcement usually hits the group chat before you finish grading, and anyone still able to pick would be copying it. To cut off entries earlier, close picks yourself from the dashboard.

How Do You Score an Online Baby Pool?

Each correct answer is worth one point. Multiple choice keeps the scoring fast: a guest's option matches the outcome or it does not, and you never award half credit. The ranges are what make that work. Nobody nails an exact birth weight, and you do not want to read out a leaderboard of zeros.

Ties are normal on a short board. Every player's tiebreaker answer shows on the leaderboard, so you compare the tied answers yourself and pick the closest. Announce the winner in the group chat you used to share the link, next to the first photo.

Rules to Settle Before Anyone Picks

Write these into the question text itself rather than a separate message. The question text is the only thing every player reads.

• Rounding. Decide whether a 7 lb 8 oz baby counts as "7 to 8 lbs" or "8 to 9 lbs" and say so in the question.
• Middle names. If you ask whether the baby is named after a relative, state whether middle names count.
• Judgment calls. A question like who the baby looks like needs a named referee. Give the parents the final word, in the question.
• The deadline. Tell people when picks close, even though the board closes itself the moment you grade.

Running an Office Baby Pool

Office pools are where the money version causes trouble. Plenty of employers restrict workplace gambling, and HR guidance on the subject stresses applying one consistent rule to every pool, which means a company that allows a March Madness bracket has a hard time forbidding a due-date pool, and a company that bans one bans both. Scoring on points sidesteps the question. With no buy-in and no pot, there is nothing for HR to weigh in on.

Keep a work board short, and keep the questions to things a coworker can answer without knowing the family. The date, the weight, and the time of day travel fine. Who cries first does not.

Start Small and Open It at the Shower

An online baby pool takes about ten minutes to build and gives the family something to argue about for the rest of the pregnancy. Write six to twelve questions with ranges instead of exact numbers, hand the grading passphrase to someone who will not be in a delivery room, and settle the rounding rule before anyone picks.

Open the picks at the shower while everyone is together, then leave the link in the group chat. When the baby arrives, mark the answers once and read off the winner. The baby predictions page has the full prop library to pull from, and our step-by-step setup guide walks through building a board screen by screen.