POLL: Fantasy Sports

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Fantasy of choice - Cricket obviously

The thwack of willow on leather...

 

It seems that European aren't as in to it as Americans.

@ Chev

OK, I'll try to explain, and instead of using American football, I'll pick a sport you are likely far more familiar with - basketball.

You get a group of people together and you hold a draft. During the draft you alternate turns choosing real basketball players. I really only know American basketball players, so I'll avoid using actual names as you may unfamiliar with them. The first player picks Player A to be in his fantasy team. Now, no other player can choose him, so the next guy picks Player B. This continues until you have a full basketball team (typically 12 players). Now, since the actual basketball league has about 30 teams, and the fantasy league you play in has far fewer teams (usually 10 or at most 12 teams), obviously each team has a much higher-scoring team than a real NBA team, as everyone picks the best players from the real NBA teams. Typically, you have "backups" who are actually average players and start in the NBA. Just like a real NBA team you pick backups that you can play in the case of injury. So, typically you have 5 starting players who play, and 7 bench players who are there when your regulars are off on a particular day or are hurt.

Now, when the season starts, the performance of the players you selected affects what your score is. To simplify things as much as possible, if Player A scores 10 points, than whoever drafted Player A gets 10 points. If Player B scores 15 points, whoever drafted him gets 15 points. Once every player from every team plays a game, all the points are added up, and whoever finishes with the most points "wins" that game.

Obviously, the matchups continue throughout the season, but you only draft once. Drafts are the most time-intensive part of the fantasy process, and no one would go through the trouble if you had to re-draft for each new round of games.

The reason I play fantasy football the most is that it is the easiest to schedule. All NFL games are played on either Sunday or Monday, and each player only plays once each week. If you're talking about sports like baseball, basketball or hockey, in a given time frame not every team plays the same amount of games. Sure, all the teams have the same number of total games for the season, but they don't have the same offdays, meaning it's harder to plan ahead to see who should be starting on your team.

Hope this helps.

 

There are many different formats to the one outlined by Aldeth. In other versions, you might have $20m to spend on players and each player has a price tag. The best players cost more so you can't afford to go around and just buy all the best players. You have to buy a few cheaper players as well (the skill being that you might be able to spot some under-rated players that you pick are going to perform this season).

 

I'd like to do it, but over here it always costs money. For fun, yes. I dislike, however, the amount of time required for research. You have to do research, right?

 

There are many Fantasy Football competitions in the UK - almost every newspaper has one. There are quite a few websites also. I have ran a couple in the office, based on a national newspapers.
I normally have a go - and if I start to fall behind - like this season, I loose interest. Most of the time a players true performance is not accurately represented by the scoring system. With most sports in the US there tends to be a heavy impetous on stats - in football there tends to be a lot a player can do that is not recorded - ie if a player makes a run and drags 2 defender away from a teammate to give him a scoring oppurtunity.

 

@ Niz

While research is not required, you'll probably do a heck of a lot better if you do some research. Otherwise, you're relying completely on luck when you're making your picks.

There are free sites all over the internet, although I will be the first to admit that the paid sites usually provide a better service. The best free site I've ever used is Sandbox, and AFAIK, it's still free at this time.