If a player has not submitted picks for a particular game or round he/she may qualify for default picks depending on the allocation of defaults for the tournament. A default pick is not an automatic point - it is only awarded if the default team wins. We use the default pick system because we don't want people who miss a game or two to feel like they've fallen behind and that there's not much point in continuing. We think the default safety net is reasonable, especially because it's tightly controlled by a limited number of defaults being available for each tournament. Long-term defaulting gets you nowhere and regular defaulters will quickly fall down the rankings.
If you'd like to have defaults deactivated within your pool that can be done by upgrading your pool to a SuperPool which has various value added features including the option to deactivate defaults amongst others. If you'd like to know more about the SuperPool package you can view our Pools & Upgrades page under the Help & Info tab.