Business and Sport

With the rapid growth of fantasy football in the US in recent years (and slowly taking over the whole world too), many Americans now want to join the fun and be involved in fantasy football league. There are many websites that offers fantasy sports (some are free and some are not) that you can join. There are also websites that offers huge prizes for winners. Many fantasy players always begin in joining a small fantasy football league to get a taste of the fun and excitement while also practicing to get the big prizes later on.

You can join and organize a league taking anyone you like from friends, relatives to even co-workers. Getting your first fantasy football league ready doesn’t mean you have to follow any fixed standards as the idea primarily is to have loads of fun. There are no rights or wrongs out there when fun and unlimited excitement is what is aimed at.

You need to get together a team for a league and they could comprise of 8 to 16. Depending on the resources in your locality you should get a team done. But you should also keep in mind that the intensity of the competition and the fun would get scaled down with too few teams. Owners in that case would find it hard to get top level players or get enough competition going. Your aim would be to keep the number of your teams as equal as possible.

Depending on the number of teams in your fantasy football league, the number of divisions would be determined. For many, a total of 3 divisions is great and works well according to their requirement. For the success of your league and excellence in the game, you need to be very choosy while picking a commissioner. The choice of a commissioner can stand between success and failure in fantasy football. It is also among the most important fantasy football tips offered to people before they join up.

Commissioners require to be trusted by all the other owners and under his or her watch rest the fantasy football drafts, games scoring and the league set up. It can be the most tedious of tasks and to help the commissioner along, an assistant is also roped in. It would require an extra position in fantasy football. For every season you should get together a plan of at least thirteen games that would exclude playoffs lasting for 3 weeks. Your nfl fantasy football season should not be lasting more than an actual NFL season in real terms. These are basically the rules followed in fantasy league football.

Fantasy football drafts would depend on the league you set up. There are many leagues that just hold one draft at the initial stages during the league set up and after that, it is for the rookies. For selecting fantasy football players you got to have a draft during the league set up stage.

You can go for an auction where very owner would be given a salary cap depending on a pre-determined amount. At least 15 players from each team will need to fill up the roster. One tight end, defense, quarterback and place kicker, 2 running backs and wide receivers are among the fantasy football picks.

The UEFA Champions League tournament is regarded by some as being the biggest and best tournament in the world from any sport. Providing major excitement it might be more entertaining than the World Cup. The Champions League has almost ran its course for the ’08/’09 year and is about to crown its champion.

For those of us that have played Fantasy Champions League this season or plan on playing next season, here are a few tips and player recaps to keep in mind as we move ahead.

Keys to Success
Depending on where you play or what format you are in these tips may vary or be void altogether, however their core ideas remain the same.

- More successful the team the more successful the player -
A few places make you pick one specific roster and use it throughout the duration of the tournament. From a pure numbers standpoint, using this format greatly rewards those who make it deeper and end up playing the most games.

If this is the situation you find yourself in, it may be more important to draft who is on the team you think will win rather than the best player on a lackluster team.

- Pay attention to ALL stats -
One fantasy killer in the soccer world is fouls. Fouls, yellow cards and the devious red cards can destroy your total points for a tournament. Some of the best offensive players are also the biggest committers of fouls which nullifies their positive stats. Drafting a weaker offensive player that commits fewer fouls may work out in your advantage when all is said and done. For example, Daniel Alves of Barcelona is a major threat from defense but take him with a grain of alt for he was second in fouls committed in the Champions League tournament with 26. That is a lot of negative points.

- The hidden star -
Fantasy tournaments can be won and lost by finding the gem that goes overlooked by most. Odds are, mostly everyone had Lionel Messi this tournament which nullified the 8 goals he has scored thus far. However, the managers that picked Miroslav Klose who netted 7 and Lisandro of Porto who scored 6 probably are amongst the leaders of their leagues. Find out who excels in tournament games and take a risk or two.

Recap
The Champions League is nearing an end but here is what has happened to some of the bigger names thus far.

- Lionel Messi (Barcelona) -
As mentioned before, he has scored 8 and had an extremely productive Champions League tournament. Barca has marched through their opponents and Messi has been a big factor as to why. He is a constant fantasy contributor and is worth the large price tag. No disappointments here.

- Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United) -
Coming into the year Ronaldo was widely considered the best player in the world, however this view likely will switch to Messi following the results of the Champions League tournament. Ronaldo has not lived up to his enormous expectations and has only scored 2 with the tournament nearing an end. He leads all the competition with 26 shots on target, which has been a big fantasy contribution, yet the rarely heard of Lisandro of Porto has a second best 23 shots on target but also 6 goal tallies by his name. Ronaldo has not been his best and his numbers reflect it.

Looking Ahead
This season’s fantasy winner likely will have a roster of Barca players with a few of the hidden gems tossed in. Looking ahead to next year, the transfer of players will once again be an integral point to where a fantasy player’s value is at the start of the next tournament. One thing should be certain: Lionel Messi and Ronaldo will be the most sought players and rightfully so. However, it is the players like this season’s Klose and Lisandro that win it for fantasy managers.

Being a very dedicated sports fan, I grew up waking every morning, having breakfast while having the newspaper at my other hand and turning to the back pages of the sports section to scan the box scores for the previous night’s games (in my case my favorite is basketball and basenall). Numbers streamed down those four columns–ab, r, h, rbi–after every hitter’s name much like the neon symbols rained down in the opening sequence of “The Matrix.” And now, where I’m already grown up and can now bet on sports or establish my own fantasy sports league, I make it sure that I win every game in my fantasy sports team.

Like The Matrix, those box score numbers occupied an alternate reality for us baseball fans who took great pleasure in absorbing statistics and the endlessly fascinating configuration of numbers.

Nowadays, with the Internet and Sports Center, box scores don’t carry the weight they once did. But scanning lists of baseball stats is not a dead skill. For fantasy baseball, it’s essential.

The first step in winning your fantasy baseball league is to create a solid draft list. To do that, you must create a bias-free player rankings sheet.

A bias-free player rankings sheet

Here’s how: Take a stat sheet that lists the last three year’s statistics, like the one that Yahoo distributes to its Fantasy Plus subscribers, or the ones that appear in various baseball magazines and books. What I like to do is to take the sheets of Yahoo stats and fold the papers vertically so that I can only see the stats and not the names. What you want to do is try and spot a player’s trends. Are they moving up? Was last year’s numbers a substantial increase over his three-year average?

You’re also looking at the overall quality of last year’s stats. Even if his home run and stolen base total don’t add up to much, is there something that stands out across the board that might make him a great fantasy value?

Lastly, when scanning these statistics, you want to make the process as objective as possible, separating the names from the statistics, if possible.

What to do with these stat sheets

For the hitters, what I do is scan the sheets and put a checkmark next to the stats of approximately the top 72 players. Then I’ll divide them up into two groups. I’ll give an “A” to the top 36, and a “B” to the next 36, and I’ll keep dividing groups into halves until I come up with an ordered Top 72 list.

There is no exact science to this. This is an exercise in ranking players without being biased by the superstar names. The idea is to rank your players without looking at their names to see if there are any surprises, either at who made your list, or at how highly you ranked a lesser-known player. Doing this exercise might also yield some draft steals.

Fantasy sports had been a part of every sports lover’s life. As the popularity of fantasy sports, particularly football, increases, people are always looking for some tips and advices to help them win. This is your lucky day because we are giving out tips for your fantasy sports league. Here are some fantasy football tips that should be carried out.

1. When playing fantasy football there are always certain rules you will need to know and remember. The rules differ from league to league, so once your perfect league is found you will need to learn the rules of the league. For a beginner fantasy football player it is best to know as much as you can before you draft a team. Reading the rules will help you to better understand everything you need to know.

2.When deciding to join a fantasy sports league you should always stay active for the entire season. If you quit before the season is over it could ruin it for the other players, so be courteous and try to stay through for the entire season. Some people may be happy to have less competition, but you may be penalized for future seasons, and lose the valued trust of the other players in the process.

3.When starting out you may not want to join a league with complete football experts. It will be best to find a league that will be compatible with you. That way you can work your way up to a more advance league from what you feel comfortable playing with in the beginning.

4.Do some research and be prepared. Know about the player rankings and plan out a cheat-sheet in advance (there are plenty of good websites available to help you with this). Have a good plan of attack for the draft. This will make it easy to pick when you know how the players are ranked before you select. You can practice in a mock draft to make it easier when getting ready for the real draft. This will help you get the feel of things beforehand. Keep a pen and paper close at hand with your cheat sheets and the rules for the draft.

5.Once each player is drafted you can mark them off your cheat sheets. In FF it is important to keep track of all the players and what is going on with the draft.

Keeping track of the waiver rules is another important thing to remember to any fantasy football player. You should know these rules to keep track of what is going on such as knowing about locked rosters, pick-ups and drops. You should also keep track of all the injuries in the league. There are many fantasy sport resource sites out there for this as well. Knowing these things will help your team. Also knowing which players are more or less injury-prone can make a difference in who you should draft and play into their fantasy rankings.

These fantasy football advices should help you to run the game the best team possible. Don’t get too serious and remember to have a good time while playing! Fantasy sports football is a great game that you can play, no matter what your skill level in real sports is.

Fantasy Baseball 2010: Draft Strategies

We have reached that time of year again. What time of year you ask? Well, the best time of the year. With the NCAA tournament coming up and the MLB opening day right around the corner, I’m really not sure what more I can ask for. In addition to all this real life sports goodness, it has become time to fill out your brackets and draft your fantasy baseball team. Most competitive fantasy leagues will wait until the last minute before they draft, so they can have the most up to date information about players before the season starts. Lots of players who already drafted got screwed with the news about Joe Nathan. That’s just an example of why, if possible, your league should wait before drafting. So with most drafts coming up near the end of March, I’ll share some knowledge that I have picked up during the mock snake drafts that I’ve done. In other words, here is how I plan to go about drafting my teams this year.

1.) Take the best hitter available in the early rounds.

A little bit of a standard piece of advice here, but I still see lots of guys drafting more then one pitcher in the first couple for rounds for some reason. The logic behind my idea is simple: Hitters are more predictable and consistent while pitchers tend to be more injury prone and inconsistent. There is plenty of solid pitching the middle rounds this year, and that is the right time to build your staff. A good team is built around a solid offence, not a fantastic pitching staff.

2.) Get your 1B and 3B slots filled up in the first few rounds.

There has been much talk about how deep 1B is this year. Most advice I see says to wait on your 1B. I like to think of it another way. How would you feel if you didn’t have one of the top tier 1B and everyone else did? Personally I wouldn’t be too happy with someone like Carlos Pena as my starting first baseman. On the other hand, the top tier talent at 3B is scarce. If you have to reach a little bit for one of them, do it. I would have say the best drafting spot this year in a snake draft is near the turn. I have found myself able to take a Fielder and Wright pairing or a Cabrera and Longoria pairing from that spot. Now that’s how I like to start out a draft.

3.) Wait before grabbing your closers.

Another one you’ve probably heard before. Saves are the same no matter where you get them, and drafting a Matt Capps type in one of the last rounds isn’t much different then drafting a Papelbon in the early rounds. Sure, the elite closer will most likely have a better WHIP and ERA, but they don’t throw enough innings to make a significant difference in your ratios. Unless you’re in a very deep league, wait on closers.

4.) Speed is plentiful later on.

Ok not really a strategy, more of a statement. But it is a statement you can use to help yourself during your draft. If you want me to put in other words, it would go something like “Don’t pick Jacoby Ellsbury or Carl Crawford in the early rounds.” There’s no need. If you really want a big time SB guy, (and honestly you don’t need one but whatever) go ahead and draft Juan Pierre or Rajai Davis or one of those guys later on.

5.) Keep your bench full of starters, not hitters.

There’s no use to having a bunch of hitters on your bench. If you have a surplus of pitchers, you can play the matchups and bench guys who are playing the better teams. Don’t like James Shields and his matchup at NYY? That’s fine. Bench him and use one of your other guys with a more favorable matchup.

6.) Don’t “punt” any categories.

I’ve seen people try this in both head to head and roto leagues. These are the people who like to brag about how smart they are for punting saves, steals, or homers and focusing on the other categories. They are also the ones who inevitably end up in the bottom third of the league.

These are just some things to keep in mind. You also need to remember that each draft is unique and you have to go with the flow in each one. Don’t be afraid to make a bold move and go against the norm. But most of all, be prepared and confident and you’ll most likely end up with a solid team. And even when you do draft that good team, there is no guarantee you will end up the winner. A fantasy baseball season can be lost during a draft, but it can’t be won. Hey, that’s what makes it so fun.