Ranking Cap, Leaderboard, and More

We rolled out version 2.0 of FSL tonight. With the new version we now offer the "Ranking" cap draft method. You can find the ranking cap games in the contest lobby where points (pts) are shown for the cap value. With the ranking cap a player's cost is proportional to their fantasy points per game. This makes things much more difficult and adds even more skill to drafting your fantasy team. We also added a leaderboard which shows total contest prizes won (any cash) since the website launched. We will be adding a more sophisticated leaderboard later, but for now you will be able to see who the consistent performers are on FSL. Lastly, we have updated the contest lobby quite a bit. Contests are now color coded, and the Salary or Ranking Cap value used is indicated in a column. We also removed the past contest link, and allow you to sort by contest status or sport. We will probably be tweaking the UI stuff a bit over the next week or two to fine tune things so let us now if you have any suggestions. Also let us know what you think of the ranking cap.

Fantasy Football Launches September 9th with contests registering by September 4th.

Football Update, and Counting Every Yard

I thought I should give you an update on what is going on with football. It turns out that our stat provider does not provide complete live stats or box scores for football during the preseason. I guess the demand for such services is low, although we wanted it for our version of Fantasy Football. As such, we can't run our contests during the preseason as we had planned on doing. Pro Football will launch Sunday September 9th on FSL.

Yeah, that sucks! So to make it up to you, I will at least reveal our scoring system for football. We call it the "Decimal" scoring system, and it is designed to count every yard vs. rounding down as all other scoring systems do. It is also designed to have the maximum impact on the live contest scoring by making nearly every play, a change to the contest standings. As a side effect it will eliminate 9 out of 10 ties, while allowing us to do some other interesting things with football scoring.

One last note is that we also simplified a few things to allow us to close contests with the first box score. With football the final "official" box score is not released until Tuesday. I guess so they can debate certain plays at depth using video replays. We really do not want to wait until Tuesday to pay Sunday's winners so we have eliminated a few types of scoring for the defense that are not always resolved immediately after the game. We will use our standard rule that the first official box score received counts, and later adjustments to the box score are not considered. Also we only score what is in the box score, so all subjectivity of scoring is removed.

Pro Football 9-Player Team

QB
(2) RB
(3) WR
TE
K
DEF

Offensive Scoring

TD (Run, Receive, or Pass) = 6 pts
2 pt conversion (Run, Receive, or Pass) = 2 pts
1 yard rushing = 0.1 pt
1 yard receiving = 0.1 pt
5 yards passing = 0.2 pt (rounded to nearest 0.1 pt)
Fumble Lost= -2 pt
Interception Thrown = -2 pt
Made FG 0-29 yd = 2.5 pt
Made FG 30-39 yd = 3.5 pt
Made FG 40-49 yd = 4.5 pt
Made FG 50+ yd = 5.5 pt
Missed FG = -2 pt
Made Extra Point = 1 pt

Defensive Scoring

When Game Starts = 12 pt
Each point scored by opponent = -0.5 pt
Sack = 1 pt
Fumble Recovery = 2 pt
Interception = 2 pt
Safety = 4 pt

Edit: A couple small changes to the scoring system are shown in blue based on feedback from user's. Also registration for Sunday September 9th contests will begin on September 4th.

FSL Version 2.0 and Rediscovering Discover

I wanted to give you a preview of what is coming in just over a week at FSL. We will be releasing what we call version 2.0 of the website. Version 2.0 will include football, the new ranking cap for both football and baseball, a leaderboard for our top players, and a much improved user interface. I almost forgot, we will also start accepting Discover with version 2.0. Those guys are tough negotiators, but they just could not resist joining the revolution in Fantasy Sports. Sorry, but we have no plans on taking Diner's Club.

The only thing missing that we really wanted as part of version 2.0 will be NASCAR. Development continues on this, but NASCAR will be launched shortly after football season begins.

Thanks for being patient with us as we worked on this much improved version of our website. We talked in the past about the great scoring system that we will be using for football, and we will start to reveal the details next week. Also, if you can't wait for our Aug. 18th launch of football, drop an email to support@fantasysportslive.com, and we can let you in on Beta testing next week on our development site. We are incredibly excited about this new release, and we know you guys will love it, so thanks for all the great feedback that helped us define our improvements.

Sponkey takes down $100 prize for 100pt Fantasy Score

Sponkey barely got there, but put up exactly 100pts in contest ID=1229 tonight to take down the $100 prize. What makes this extra impressive is that he did it in an early game contest where only about 1/2 of the games for the day were available. Below is the winning roster.

Pitcher J. Peavy 37
Catcher V. Martinez 7
First Baseman A. Pujols 9
Second Baseman B. Roberts 4
Third Baseman D. Wright 12
Shortstop J. Reyes 8
Left Fielder G. Sizemore 4
Center Fielder C. Crisp 8
Right Fielder B. Abreu 11

Total = 100 pts

That happened faster than we thought. So we are going to offer it up one more time, but this time you need to beat Sponkey's score. First one to 101 pts or higher wins $101. Send an email to support within 24 hours of posting a 101 pt fantasy baseball score in any of our fantasy baseball contests, and the one first verified wins $101. Good luck!