DraftDay-Rapid-Fire-Fantasy-Sports

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Web Site Improvements Going Live This Week

We have been working hard on a series of improvements to the fantasysportslive.com website. The updates will be rolled out this week. Below is a list of what to expect when the update goes live.

1) Main contest lobby will go to scroll bars, and the paging system currently used will be eliminated. This will allow you to quickly scroll through all of the current contests offered without linking through to other pages.

2) Tabs for individual sports will be added to the main contest lobby. You will be able to quickly filter by sport by hitting a tab, vs. making a selection in a drop down menu. You will also be able to link directly to a home page that is already filtered by the fantasy sport that you are interested in.

3) The start time of games will be shown in the contest lobby. There has been some confusion when double headers are on the schedule. We only schedule one game of a double header into contests, and it is typically the second game (the regularly scheduled game). You can tell which game is scheduled based on the starting pitchers indicated, but now you can just check the game start time in the lobby and be sure you are drafting players for the correct game.

4) Elimination of injury updates to the draft pool. This is something that a few of our users have requested for a while now. Up to now we let the injury feed determine the draft pool. If a player is listed as "out" or on the disabled list for a game they were not included in the draft pool. As player status is updated real-time the draft pool updates as well. The injury feed is also not 100% accurate. It may show a player as "out" who is actually going to play, or someone who just came off the DL may not be in the pool yet. We will now list all players at all times in the draft pool irregardless of injury status. The injury column will indicate their status for the game (Questionable, Probable, Out, 15-Day DL, 30-day-DL...). If you have knowledge that a player will play in a game, you will be able to draft them even if their status is "Out" or "15-day DL". You will now need to be a bit more careful when drafting your team, as you will need to review the injury status, but it should lead to less confusion and questions about changes to the draft pool.

Fantasy Basketball Season Ends at FSL

Just like with Hockey, Basketball uses a staggered schedule in the round before the finals. As such we do not get the required two or more games to build a fantasy contest around. As a result Fantasy Basketball season is now complete on FSL. While Fantasy Basketball is just the third most popular fantasy sport overall, it was very popular during our first season of operation. The way the scoring and caps work for basketball it just fits in very well with our type of fantasy sports contests. Next season we will offer some new contests that will allow you to play Fantasy Basketball, Baseball, or Hockey all the way through the finals. Thanks to everyone who made Fantasy Basketball on FSL a huge success, and we can't wait to see you next year. Daily Fantasy Baseball and Weekly Fantasy NASCAR contests continue to run on FSL throughout the summer.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Weekly Fantasy NASCAR Racing Contests - Basic Strategy

The weekly Fantasy NASCAR contests at FantasySportsLive.com require some strategy adjustments from a season long contest. I will try to cover these adjustments as well as basic strategy for Weekly Fantasy NASCAR Racing Leagues in this post. First off for a weekly contest, you are not carrying your racing team for an entire season. Just for a single race. You can forget about having a balanced racing team, and simply focus on who will score the most fantasy racing points this weekend.


General Weekly Fantasy NASCAR Strategy


1) Track Type


There are four different track types used by NASCAR. Short (less than 1 mile), Intermediate (1 to 2 miles), Superspeedway (more than 2 miles) and Road Courses (left and right turns). different drivers and different race teams do better on certain track types than others. Make sure the drivers you select do well on this weekend's track type, and avoid drivers who do poorly.


2) Hot Drivers


Like all other fantasy sports you want to go with who has been doing well lately. This may be even more important for Fantasy NASCAR racing. Unlike all other fantasy sports, in Fantasy NASCAR the equipment becomes an important consideration. A hot driver may be hot because his car is dialed in and faster than the other cars. It is always good to select the drivers with the fast cars. Also you may want to look closely at the results from the previous few races. Did the driver with the fast car not finish well because of bad luck late? If the car is really there this week might be the one.


3) Hot Racing Teams


Sometimes you need some help to get the victory, and NASCAR is more of a team sport than some people realize. If a race team is doing well lately, and you can project a couple of the members to both be in a top position late, you might want to select both of those drivers. They can end up drafting, blocking and helping each other in many ways late to get the win. A single driver without teammate help late is less likely to get the win and score big fantasy points.


Sprint Cup Race plus Qualifying Leagues


In these Fantasy NASCAR racing leagues you will select 4 qualifiers and 5 drivers for a Sprint Cup race. The qualifiers and drivers are independent selection and can be the same or different. For a heads-up contest there are not many adjustments here. For a multiplayer type contest, I would suggest using the same qualifiers and drivers as much as possible. Since top qualifiers in general are better in the race than low qualifiers, you can parlay your qualifying choices by taking them in the race as well. This will help you to get a very large fantasy score if you are correct, or a very low score if you are wrong. Since it takes a bigger score normally to win a multiplayer contest you should go ahead and take the higher variance approach of selecting the same drivers for qualifying and the race. Laslty, keep in mind that some drivers are better at qualifying than others no matter how they do in the actual race. A high ranking in the Sprint Series standings does not necessarily mean the driver is a good at qualifying.


Sprint Race plus Nationwide Race Leagues


In these Fantasy NASCAR Racing Leagues, you will select 4 drivers from the Nationwide race, and 5 drivers from the Sprint race. Not all Nationwide racers will be in the Spint, and not all Sprint racers will be in the Nationwide race. Also, the two events are not correlated at all which is a pretty big difference from the other structure. Qualifying will be complete for both races prior to the start of the contest. You should go back and adjust your racing team as required based on the qualifying results. It is always wise to dump a high priced racer who qualified poorly, or add a low priced racer who qualified near the top.


Ranking Cap Leagues


The ranking cap for Fantasy NASCAR is based on the average fantasy points scored per race. We currently include all races from the 2008 season, and look back as well at the last races of 2007. Since the ranking cap represents average fantasy performance, it can be exploited by using the track type, hot drivers, hot teams ideas presented above. All of these things tend to push a driver off of the long term average for an individual race. If you can select a team of drivers who are all expected to do better than their average performance, you have done a good job with your Fantasy Racing Team.


Salary Cap Leagues


The salary cap for a Fantasy NASCAR driver is the average amount of money that they win per race. It is currently based entirely on the 2008 season. Since the way fantasy points are distributed is different than the way cash prizes are distributed the salary cap can be exploited. The fantasy points are heavily weighted towards the top finishers, while the cash payouts are more flat. The drivers are sorted in the draft interface by Ranking Cap point value. When selecting a team you should in general pick drivers near the top of the list that have lower salaries than the others at the top. You should also pick the top 2-4 projected fantasy point scorers regardless of their salaries. There will always be a few under priced racers to complete your team with if you spend a bunch on the top drivers for the weekend's race.


No Cap Leagues


Want to pick your own personal Fantasy NASCAR dream team? This is how it's done. Simply select the top fantasy scorers regardless of cap values in a no cap league. In general these selections should be from the top of the driver lists. These types of contests are won by identifying one or two drivers who are not at the top of the list who will outperform the ones at the top. If you can do this better than the others the prize is yours.


These are some general strategy considerations for Fantasy NASCAR Racing Contests. I am sure I left tons of things out, but these are some items you should definitely consider when building a top fantasy racing team.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

NHL Fantasy Hockey Season Completed at FSL

It appears that we have run our last Fantasy Hockey contest for the 07/08 NHL season. We need to have two games on the daily schedule to run a fantasy contest. Now that the third round NHL playoff schedule is out, it appears that the games will be staggered throughout the round, and we will not get any more multiple game days this playoffs. This is done to maximize TV profits, but is bad for our contests here as the Fantasy Hockey season is now over. Thanks to everyone who played in our unique daily fantasy hockey contests this year. We are planning to make Fantasy Hockey bigger and better for next season. In the meantime please check out the Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Basketball, and Fantasy NASCAR Racing contests that continue to run on Fantasy Sports Live.