Daily Fantasy Hockey - Basic Strategy

There are not too many websites running Daily Fantasy Hockey Contests out there. This post will cover some of the basic strategy considerations for the Fantasy Hockey Contests on Fantasy Sports Live. First off, like all other daily fantasy sports, daily fantasy hockey requires a pretty good knowledge of the sport and the match-ups for the day. Just like any other sport you should be drafting players that are facing weak competition or weak defenses. You also want to draft players that are "Hot" and have been putting up solid fantasy numbers over the past few games. On these points Fantasy Hockey is really no different than the other fantasy sports offered at FantasySportsLive.com

Where Fantasy Hockey gets unique is in some of the scoring rules. The two most important are listed below.

1) Goalie Scores 20 points for a win
While goalies in general do not score much more fantasy points than the top skaters, they do get a big 20 point bonus for a win. So it is pretty important to have a goalie on your team that will get the win. This is similar to Fantasy Baseball where the pitcher gets a bonus for the win. However, with Fantasy Hockey it is not always obvious who the starter will be for the game. So the key strategy is that you want a goalie that is likely to get the win and even more important is very likely to start. For the likely winner, you can check the online sportsbooks to find what teams are heavily favored. For the likely starter this is a bit tougher. Obviously teams who rarely rotate goalies are safer than teams with two strong goalies. Sometimes you will just need to do some research and find out who the planned starter is for the day. The bottom line is that the 20 points are going to be important to your fantasy teams success so choose your goalie wisely, and don't be afraid to spend a few bucks here.

2) +/- Statistics Count 5 points
This is a very unique scoring rule for Hockey. If your player is one the ice when their team scores you get 5 points, if they are on the ice when their opponent scores, you lose 5 points. So you obviously want players who do well in +/-. Many players in general do well on +/-, but that is reflected in their cap value. What you really want to know is how well will they do in the next game on +/-. Here is where you will want to have players from the day's winning teams. Since the winning team scored more goals than the loser, the winning team will have more "plus" stats than "minus" stats in general. You can again consult an online sportsbook to see who the most heavily favored teams are, and in general draft players from those teams, and not from teams expected to lose. Don't make the mistake of drafting a good fantasy hockey skater, who is facing a tough match-up and whose team will likely lose. Their personal stats may not be able to overcome the minus stats that may come.

End of Quarter Fantasy Basketball Updates

We are launching End of Quarter scoring updates for all Fantasy Basketball contests starting tonight on FantasySportsLive.com. End of Quarter updates will be a nice improvement for Fantasy Basketball, making them closer in feel to our Fantasy Baseball and Fantasy Football contests which feature live, progressive scoring updates. Next season (later this year) we will offer live, progressive scoring for Fantasy Basketball as well. Live scoring feeds for Fantasy Hockey and Fantasy NASCAR Racing are not currently available. We will continue to provide one time scoring updates with the final box score for Fantasy Hockey and Fantasy Racing. Let us know what you think about end of quarter scoring updates for basketball as well as our new Fantasy NASCAR Racing contests.

Daily Fantasy Basketball - Basic Strategy

I got a little tired of just using this space to provide basic updates about FSL, so we will try to get some strategy and other important notes and topics up here more often. To start, I want to cover some very basic strategy concerns for Daily Fantasy Basketball Contests. I will break down the strategy based on the draft method for the contest, and will keep things as generic as possible.

Ranking Cap Contests

These are as tough as they get. The ranking cap for each player is set as the average fantasy points scored per game for that player. If you blindly selected a fantasy team using all of a 200pt cap, your team would on average score 200 fantasy points that day. To win these contests you need to pick a team that will score above average (above 200pts). Now to get above 200pts, the obvious thing to do is pick the biggest fantasy point scorers like Lebron James, and Kobe Bryant who average 40+ fantasy points per game and put them on your team. Not so fast. You want to pick players who you think will score more than their rank cap value in that day's game. You should only take Lebron or Kobe if you think they will put up more points than their cap value. Since there cap value is high, they need to put up a bunch of points just for you to "break even" on them. So the big question is how do you figure out who will out score their fantasy cap value in a given game. There are several things to look for here.

1) The Matchup
What team your player is playing, and how well the opponent defends fantasy points is huge. Also home field advantage is important. You should try to select players who are up against poor defenses, and are playing at home when possible.

2) The Streak
Players who are hot tend to stay hot, and those that are cold tend to stay cold with all else being equal. Try to select players that have been playing well over the last few weeks to a month. Select players that have been consistently beating their rank cap value over the last several games, and plan on them continuing to do so.

3) The Playing Time
Players who were bench warmers for most of the season, but now are starters or have their minutes way-up are solid selections. Their average fantasy points per game will be depressed by the lack of playing time earlier in the season, making it easier for them to exceed their cap value now.

4) The Cap Value
Players who have large cap values are more risky than players with small cap values. The downside is much larger. Let’s say you picked up somebody with a value of 30 pts, and for some reason they do not play, or have a very bad game. You could end up 30 pts below their average score. Now the same situation for a player with a value of 12 pts. If they do not play, you are only 12 pts shy of the average total. Players with small cap values have more upside potential than downside risk. Players with high cap values have more downside risk than upside potential.

5) The Injuries
Make sure your player is in good health prior to drafting. Injuries are noted in the draft screen. Do not draft questionable players, and be careful when selecting probable players. Keep in mind that the average points scored was done when the player was healthy in most cases.

Salary Cap Contests

For this draft version, you pay the actual cash salary for the player for that game. Since the NBA salary structure greatly favors the veterans you end up with a bunch of overpriced veterans and under priced rookies with this cap method. In general, you will want to try to figure out who the top fantasy scorers will be that day regardless of the cap value. Put the top 2-3 scorers on your team. This may cost a bunch, but don’t worry. There will be some obvious under priced players in the pool. Chris Paul, Kevin Martin, and many others young players are way under priced. You will need to put 3-4 of the obviously under priced players on your team. After putting the projected high scorers, and the vastly under priced players on your team, you just find the best value you can get for the last position or two you need to fill. These contest will not be decided by the obviously under priced players that everyone will have. They will be decided by who can better map out the top scorers that day, and by who can plug in the last one or two spots on the roster the best.

No Cap Contests

No Cap contests allow you to draft any team that you want without any cap restrictions. Players are sorted in the pool by their ranking cap values. The players most likely to score the most points on average are listed at the top. In general, you will want to pick your fantasy team from the top of the draft pool. Your edge is found when you can identify players farther down on the list that will outscore the top players. Since most will be picking from near the top of the list, if you can find the one or two players down further who will score more you can get an edge. Also you pretty much have to pick the top fantasy scorers like Lebron or Kobe. Even if they are facing an unfavorable match-up, it is still likely they will outscore the others on the list.

NASCAR, Hockey, and Basketball End of Quarter Scoring Updates

We have a bunch going on over here at FantasySportsLive.com, so I thought it would be a good idea to provide an update.

Fantasy NASCAR

We will be launching fantasy NASCAR later tonight, with the Daytona 500 first up. You can find the rules for NASCAR at the bottom of the Rules Tab. Fantasy NASCAR Teams will consist of nine drivers. Two types of structures will be offered. The NASCAR sprint race plus Qualifying, or the NASCAR sprint race plus the nationwide race (when both are held the same weekend). In both cases you will draft (5) sprint racers, and either (4) qualifiers for the sprint race or (4) nationwide racers. The selections for the two events are completely independent. This means you can pick the same racer for qualifying as you do for the race, or pick completely unique qualifiers. Cap levels and scoring for the racers in the two events are also completely independent. For the sprint race plus qualifying, registration will end when the qualifying begins. For sprint plus nationwide, registration will end when the nationwide race begins. Rank Cap, Salary Cap, and No Cap will be offered for NASCAR. Scoring for NASCAR will be updated one time when official results for the race or official qualifying order has been received. Let us know what you think about our NASCAR structures, Cap levels, and contest types.

Fantasy Hockey

We have been working with our vendor to improve the quality of the Hockey Box scores and have made significant progress. We are currently testing the accuracy of the first final box score received, and if all goes well will be relaunching Fantasy Hockey in about a week. Sorry for the inconvenience we caused by temporarily suspending Fantasy Hockey on FSL.

Fantasy Basketball

We were unable to implement live scoring for Fantasy Basketball at the beginning of the season due to licensing restrictions with the NBA. Those restrictions are now gone, and we will offer free progressive scoring of our Fantasy Basketball contests like we currently offer for Fantasy Baseball and Fantasy Football starting next season. The live progressive scoring makes the contest leaderboard much more interesting, and adding it for basketball will be a big improvement. We also wanted to do what we can to make the Fantasy Basketball contests even better this year. What we are currently working on is providing end of quarter scoring updates for all games in a Fantasy Basketball contest. While this is not quite as good as shot by shot updates like we will have next season, it is much better than not getting any updates at all until the end of the game. The way it will work is the leaderboard will be updated about 2-3 minutes after the end of Q1, Q2 and Q3 with the current game statistics. The Q4 update will come through with the final official box score that we close the game with. This typically comes in about 45 minutes after the game. So we will have the first game scoring update about 30 minutes after the start of a game vs. 45 minutes after the end (nearly 3 hours sooner). We will roll this out as soon as development is completed in about a week.