Fantasy Basketball Newbie, Part 1

If you’ve never played fantasy basketball before the NBA’s season is just about to start and now is your chance. You play by picking your favorite superstars and letting them accumulate points, rebounds, blocks, etc. for your team. There are several ways fantasy basketball leagues can be run and we’ll look at the different popular setups you will be able to choose from. So exactly how does fantasy basketball work? Well if you’ve ever played fantasy baseball or basketball it will seem very familiar. To start the season you’ll draft a roster, usually with around 10 starters and several bench players to serve as backups. There are five positions in basketball: point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, and center. Depending on where you play fantasy basketball, they will judge...

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What Did We Learn - Week 2

Week two is all over in the NFL, and I have to say the general level of sucky play was drastically down on the offensive side of the ball. With of course the notable exception of the Minnesota Vikings. Even the 49ers put on a strong showing against the reigning Super Bowl champs Monday night, signaling they’re not ready to be written off as dead just yet. But back to those Vikings, and Ole Gunslinger, Brett Favre, whose performance these last two weeks is a distant cry from what he gave owners last season. He looks almost unable to throw out there, hell he barely looked like he could walk into the stadium. The receiving doesn’t seem to be much better, but who’s to say Percy Harvin and Bernard Berrian couldn’t catch competently thrown passes? Favre was rusty coming back last year, and older...

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What Did We Learn - Week 1

With one great week of fantasy football beyond us, it’s time to look over the events of the weekend and see what we’ve learned. It’s safe to say the league looked a little rusty in just about every opening game. The Vikings-Saints match up was a disappointment offensively and that set the tone for the weekend. One guy who wasn’t a disappointment was Arian Foster. Ben Tate had been one of my favorite fantasy sleepers, but his injury opened up the spot for Foster to take over the Texans run game completely and he didn’t waste the opportunity. Some analysts are looking to blame the Colts defense more than praise Foster, I think they’re being too clever. Right now Foster is a #1 RB until proven otherwise. Don’t trade him, don’t think every RB match up against the Colts is guaranteed money, don’t...

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Who to Start On Week One

Being a fantasy football coach is a little bit like being a college football coach in that you don’t get any real preseason games. Sure your players back in real life play four preseason games, but what does your star running back taking four carries for 13 yards supposed to tell you? As a fantasy coach the two most important things you need to know are how a player is going to be used within his team’s setup, and how many fantasy points is he likely to earn in that role. Right now, I don’t know how C.J. Spiller is ultimately going to be used. I don’t think his coach even knows. I don’t know how many snaps Beanie Wells can take before his knee falls out and Tim Hightower has to go in. I don’t know how many carries Chester Taylor will steal from Matt Forte. I need to see them actually play...

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Fantasy Football Bench Strategy

Fantasy football leagues often aren’t won thanks to the efforts our #1 pick. Or even our #2 or #3 picks. The reason for this is because those guys are supposed to be excellent. They are supposed to blow it up week in and week out, that’s why we spent our first picks getting them. Okay, maybe Chris Johnson last year won some people their league because he so outperformed even the other top players, but he’s the exception. Normally top players live right up to expectations and no higher. And since everybody gets a few top picks in a round by round draft, nobody gets much of an advantage with them. Instead winning comes down to your mid-draft picks who then exceed your expectations and become studs. A guy who picks a running back in the 7th round, only to see that player finish as a top five...

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Understanding Value Based Drafting

Come draft day you know you’re not supposed to just start drafting the players with the highest fantasy point projections. If we did everyone would take a quarterback in the first round. Instead everybody wants a running back. And the reason for this is because we all base a players value on how many points he should earn within the context of his position. The thing is, most of us don’t specifically know how valuable a player is by his position. We just let the cheatsheet we downloaded do all the thinking for us. But not today! Today we look at Value Based Drafting, or VBD, to see how the real analysts determine how players stack up. Ranking...

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Auction Draft Strategies Vol. 2

Because there’s a wonderful variety of methods you can choose when deciding how to pick your team in an auction draft, I’m presenting three more auction draft strategies for you to use. Just examples, not necessarily great examples, of how you can design a draft plan to get the players you most value. So get out your thinking helmets and let’s get to work! #4. Triple Stud This auction draft strategy is actually the one you’ll find recommended within the pages of Yahoo!’s fantasy football draft kit. It’s reproduced for you here—because you can’t copywrite a draft auction strategy and I’m completely free to do so. The central idea of the Triple...

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Snake Draft Strategy, Part 2

2nd thru 4th RoundsIf you had an early pick in the first round, you’ll get a late pick in the second and an early third round pick. Frequently there are still great quarterbacks and wides available. This is why getting the first or second pick is so ridiculously advantageous. By my very unscientific calculations there is usually a big drop off of projected quality around the 22nd or 23rd pick. Because of this, it’s possible for an owner who receives the 1st pick of the draft to end up with three pretty awesome players. For example, this year in one of my leagues I got the first pick and selected Chris Johnson, Tom Brady, and Randy Moss in...

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Snake Draft Strategy

So your draft day is coming up and you need to prepare. Snake drafts involve a fair share of luck and opportunity, but that doesn’t mean you want to go into one without knowing your stuff. Odds are if you’re playing fantasy football you’re doing so on one of the big online hosts, ESPN, Yahoo!, etc. They’re sure to have plenty of information and listings and a draft kit. Be sure to read them over.Once you’ve done your basic research, gotten to know this year’s studs and potential studs, you need to make your cheatsheet. You can’t formulate a strategy without a cheatsheet to work from. Most big fantasy football sites have cheatsheets available...

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Creating an Auction Draft Cheatsheet

The most important tool you have on draft day is your cheatsheet. A handy go-to guide for how players stack up against each other so you know who to bid on and how high to go. Because when draft day comes you don’t want to be trying to work from memory or some vague list that takes too long to make sense of while bids are flying by all around you. Your cheatsheet is also useful for coming up with draft strategies in the days beforehand. With current average prices and expected point production next to each player you can design a roster maximizing production while minimizing cost. It’s always good to be prepared. In this article I will show...

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Auction Draft Strategies Vol. 1

Following up my article on developing your own auction draft strategies, this time around I’m going to show three examples that you can use for your draft or at least get a better idea of how to build your own. #1. Double Stud Fantasy football teams tend to be built around players known as “studs.” These are positional leaders who are going to blow it up every week and slam 15 to 20 points home on your opponent. Or maybe 10 to 15 points in the case of wide receivers. Not everybody can have a team with a couple of studs, or sometimes even one stud, but at least they at least can spread their wealth around and pick up more mid-level producers...

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Where to Join an Online Fantasy Football League

If you’ve never played online fantasy football before, or if you have but haven’t done a lot of it, you might not know about all your options. Right now there are several great league hosting sites that you can play on for free and get a lot of cool features to play with. If you’ve already got a group of friends playing fantasy together, you can use the website to host your league and do all the math and other work for you. Or if you’re on your own, you can join a league in need of owners and play with them. Most online leagues are just groups of strangers who have joined in a league together.So let’s go through the options currently available for fantasy footballers and what each one offers you.#1. ESPN.com – Let’s start with the group that’s probably the best. In the last few years...

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