Fantasy Sports reviews 2.0

I am Back

2007-06-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

Wow it took me a while but i'm Back (personal reasons)

Hilarious fantasy football movie

2007-02-03T03:00:00.000-08:00

So true!
This is what Fantasy football make for you

hy i am back sorry for not posting i had some troubles at home...

2007-01-26T05:37:00.000-08:00

Hy there dear readers, sorry for not being arround, i had some troubles at home and i didnt got the time, hope it wont happen again.

Nice punch in the soccer game

2007-01-10T02:33:00.001-08:00

Amazing gymnastic Jump blopper

2007-01-10T02:28:00.001-08:00

You got to see this Jump

2007-01-10T02:27:00.000-08:00

Sorry for not posting for a while, i was in a business trip

Iverson Trade to the Nuggets the fantasy point of view

2006-12-20T00:34:00.000-08:00

Well it's all set, The answer is being traded to the Nuggets for Andre Miller, Joe Smith, and two 2007 first-round draft picks to the 76ers.
From the Fantasy basketball point of view those are great news for the A.I owners, in the short term of time, the nuggets are missing Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith, who are both suspended till the mid of January after their participation in the Knicks and Nuggets fight last week,with their absence Iverson will be able to do what ever he want and his fantasy value will rise cause he has a lot to prove.
On the other end of the deal, the owners of Andre Iguodala are also gaining some good value, the philies are getting a first pass guard( Andre Miller) and know he is the number 2 go to guy.
In the long term, when Carmleo will end his suspension, and will come back A.I and him will need to get used to some changes,i think that this will become stable after 10 games, when we will See A.I scoring percentage rise and his assists numbers also rising because of his having more passing options.

Fight in N.Y: knicks and Nuggets Brawl

2006-12-16T23:36:00.000-08:00

Here is the Video of the fight; those players are really stupid, they actually act as a "gangstars".

why people like Fantasy Football so much?

2006-12-13T04:25:00.000-08:00

I was asked by a friend of mine (a female one) to explain why do people like Fantasy Football (or any other type of fantasy) so much.

I thought it will be a nice subject to post and discuss, why do we like Fantasy Football?
I think that the basic reason for the popularity of this game, is that we all like to express our knowledge,the Fantasy games gives us an option to "show" the rest of the world our knowledge and ability to analyze the sports, there aren't many ways in life that gives us such an ability to compare knowledge, i mean "trivia" games are a test of knowledge but they are much more elitist way of competition, not so easy to follow for the regular Joe, while in the other end the Fantasy Sports games are a very easy to manage competition based on your knowledge, You compete in your league with other managers, you all have almost all the data that you need to make a decision (today the Sports stats are spread all over the web and are easy to access),so basically it's a competition of skill against other people about a very popular subject that we all like to watch in our spare time.

One more reason that i could thought about, is that this makes watching games more fun, much more fun.

any thoughts out there?

Great Yao Ming commercial, Can i write you a check?

2006-12-11T02:13:00.000-08:00

Saw this great commercial with Yao Ming, liked it:

Fantasy Football Tip Mourinho Tell us which players he will never Drop

2006-12-10T22:09:00.000-08:00

I saw this post, that it's a great tip for all of you that plays Fantasy Football (soccer) out there, Jose Mourinho The F.A premierleague Holding Champion Chelsea, had been interviewed and gave a list of the undroppable players, it can be found here.

For saving time it's:
Lampard, Makele, Essien, Drogba, Terry, Carvalho, Cole and Ballack

Tom Brady sues Yahoo! over Fantasy football ad

2006-12-09T01:21:00.000-08:00

Tom Brady sues Yahoo! over their use of his photo in their Ad.

You can find the full story in CnnMoney.

Fantasy football players can't change their games

2006-12-08T08:26:00.000-08:00

I am encountering this issue lately, and i already wrote about this topic before, actually about things that are related to this topic but not entirely the same.

A lot of Fantasy Football players don't even know about other types of games besides the Full Fantasy Games that they play.

I found myself explaining my bodies or people over the message boards about this type of game, what usually happens than it that they are staring at me like i am some sort of an alien, their boxes can't calculate different type of games, they usually start immediately with "so how do you make a draft in those kind of leagues?", "what!!! other owners can own the same player as mine?"

I can't get it, i also plays regular Fantasy games, but when i was introduced to the Salary Cap type of games, i understood them quickly and got to know that they have a lot of advantages over the full Fantasy games.

What really gets me mad is that they actually are not open minded to any thing different.

Any thoughts out there?

USC cheerleader cheered for the wrong team AGAIN

2006-12-05T02:05:00.000-08:00

As a continue to the BCS Saga, i saw this video that explains how some people were so happy the The UCLA team had won the USC, apparently they weren't alone, the USC cheerleader was backing them up.

The BCS system and Fantasy Football

2006-12-04T08:02:00.000-08:00

The subject of this post is one that can grab a lot of criticism (as it’s already had), every body is talking about this shity system called the BCS.
That got me thinking, how do we determine which team is the best in a league, the league can be a fantasy football (in my case) or a real Football league ( NCAA College football league for example).
In this post i will try to show the Cons & Pros of each type of competition system and explain the factors that those systems most value.

1. Table league type: real leagues with the same system, (All the major European soccer leagues).
Explanation of the System:
The league is just like the regular season in the NFL, but each team plays twice against the rest of the league, once away and once in their home court, by that you can understand that a league that consists 20 teams, has 38 rounds.
In the End of the season the team with most of the points is declared the league champion.
***in the real world not like the fantasy games, there is also a delegation and forwarding system, the soccer associations around Europe had rearranged all the regional associations under a pyramid system, where the last teams in the major leagues go for delegation (moving to the lower league for the next season), and the top teams in the minor go forward for the major league to the next year.***
Off course that this fact doesn't affect us in the Fantasy league but i thought it will be interesting to mention that.

The pros:
This system rewards the long term successful team, not as the playoff or the knock out systems where the team that performed all season long great, and than went to the playoffs could lose one game to lose the title.
So in the Fantasy league this system definitely determines which "manager" had the best predictions during the season.
The Cons:
I will mention one, this is the "non competition factor", this factor happens somewhere during the mid season when some teams know that they wont make it (they are not going to be the winners of the league) and by that the interest in the game goes down, in a playoff system, even the teams that are Ranked in the eight place have a spot in the playoff, making this league more interesting for a large number of competitors.
Summary:
I think that this system in not appropriate for a Fantasy league, this will take the Fun out of the game for a large number of participants.

2. League+playoffs: real life leagues using the same System,(Nba,NFL,...)
Explanation of the system:
League, (some times divided to divisions), since a pre determined date a specific number of teams ranked 1st till X proceed to a playoff system, till the Final game that determine the leagues winner.
The Pros:
This is my favorite system, i believe that this system is the one that equilibrates the best between the determination of the leagues winner to keeping the interest in the game.
The Cons:
Vice Versa, A team can reach the playoff with a less than .500 percentage of wins and in the playoff with the help of some luck take the crown from the team that held a .900 winning percentage, when adding the division element, it some times even more frustrating, since a team from a specific strong division it can't proceed to the playoff while a team from the parallel division with a lower record find it self proceeding to the playoffs.

Note* i think that the NCAA should try to establish a pyramid type of leagues with playoff systems, it can't continue this saga of the BCS, it can't be determine by a pool whom will be the Champ.

one of the most amazing Football come backs ever?

2006-12-03T03:20:00.000-08:00

I saw this amazing game that was held back in 1994 between Plano east and John Tyler.

John Tyler was leading the game by the score of 41-17 with less than 3 minutes to the end of the game,only to watch the Plano east team making an amazing comeback to almost win the game, the rest my friends, the clip will reveal.

Amazing

Clarification about Fantasy Sports are Just about luck

2006-12-02T02:50:00.000-08:00

After receiving some comments telling me that i am full of crap and that Fantasy sports are 75% skill and 25% luck, i felt that i have to clarify myself.

In my previous post about this topic i had argued that the Salary Cap type of Games are much more about skill than the Full Fantasy type of games, i am standing behind that claim, in Full Fantasy type of games, you have one more aspect to deal with, and it's the other team owners possessions, and those are determined by a draft system, that has the luck factor in it, one more issue is the "veto" issue, each trade in the league is subject to a revision by the "Commissioner" of the league or the other owners,all of them can "veto" a trade and by that not letting you accomplish the trade if you think that this issue doesnt happen look at this discussion in some other forum.
There are some reasons for that, and i believe that the majority of them are even good ones, but that is not our subject of debate, by having this feature the Full Fantasy games have more aspects that are not related to Prediction Skill, while in the Salary cap games, it's all about prediction, how good you can predict relatively to the other owners in your league.

2006-12-01T09:46:00.000-08:00

Saw this movie of Lebron, i really appreciates this guy, look at this move, i never thought that the warm up could be so exiting.

Every thing that goes on Sports and Fantasy Sports

Are Fantasy Sports only about luck?

2006-11-30T09:32:00.000-08:00

I recently had a dispute with a friend of mine, the subject of the dispute was his claim that Fantasy sports are a game of luck and not skill.

This is a claim that i am encountering more and more recently, it all ready intrigued me to post this post once, and i think this is happening again.

My fried that we will call him "the Skeptical" claims that the winner in a fantasy league is determined only by chance.

I must specify that the Skeptical only plays in a Full Fantasy league, to check out his claim ,i have registered to 5 different Full Fantasy leagues and to 5 Salary Cap leagues, the type of sport of those leagues is Football(American Football for all my non US readers out there).

The experiment was Simple, i was intending not to do any thing in my league.
In the Full Fantasy league i will only Draft (auto pick draft) and in the Salary cap i will only pick players, if i could reach the playoffs in one of those leagues, it's obviously only by the chance factor.

Well to make a long Story Short, i am now ranked 2Nd in two Full Fantasy leagues (each consists of 12 teams!) i am 4Th in 2 more Full Fantasy leagues, and in the bottom of the last one, while in the Salary type games, i am ranked well down in the table.

So what is the conclusion of this test? of course this is not a scientific way of proving or disproving theories ,but we can work with this fact.

In my point of view of this "research" , the main thing that raises is that maybe in the Full Fantasy type of games, there is a lot of weight for the Chance factor, i believe that the reason is the Draft,that decides who have the right on a specific player.
On the other end, in the Salary type of game, it's pure Skill, cause every body can pick the same player, so you can't just make one lucky pick,after that not making any move all the season and still be the Champ of your league.

Any other thoughts out there?

2006-11-29T09:55:00.000-08:00

I saw this Shaq classic moment being posted some where

And that filled me with great memories

A classic Shaq moment:

pau Gasol trade rumors

2006-11-29T04:45:00.000-08:00

Pau Gasol says that he is used to "hear" and "read" about trades that he is involved in.
The Memphis All star is suffering from an injury since he's last performance in the World Basketball Championship.

If the trade rumors are real, i think that the Memphis club is doing a big Mistake,Pau is an all star player, he actually took The Spanish national league to the World championship Finals.

After one of the greates goals ever i thought to show you some thing else

2006-11-29T02:06:00.000-08:00

After my post about Ronaldinho greates goal ever started a great disscussion over some other sites,(for example in this great Yahoo! fantasy Football (soccer) forum, Team talk.) where each one of the disscussion participants showed other great goals such as this one of Berkamp and this one of Van Basten.
I have decided to show the other end of the spectrum with this great video.

A couple of inches lower, and it was one of the greatests one.

Fantasy Blog stock market

2006-11-27T08:20:00.000-08:00

Blogshares is a fantasy blog stock market, the main concept of the game is to create an online fantasy game where the Blogs are the "players" and the blog's in bound and out bound links are type of scoring.

Off course that this service has more benefits from this type of game, he is actually a very large index of blogs,(till now almost 9 mil blog's are listed).

The game is a Freemium type (meaning that the game is free to play, but you can upgrade your game by paying for premium subscription and gaining extra features).

This service Achilles heel is it's complicated Rules and U.I, i thought i saw all the complications that can be done regarding U.I, but this one is the most complicated and non User friendly that i have ever met, till now i don't know all the rules of the game and how the hell the stock prizes are compiled.

For example look at this Screen shot that teaches you how to earn "money" in the stock trading, this is like Yahoo! will publish how to score big points in the Fantasy games, I mean, whats the point on having a Fantasy stock market, if they have a method of a Sure win, i don't get it, the point of a stock market is to show an objective Value, but by the way that they run their system, they have a false value in the market.

I think that the basic idea of this Fantasy game is a good one, but, i think that the game is executed badly.

Ronaldinho best goal ever

2006-11-25T22:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday i was watching the game between Barcelona and Villarreal live and i had the chance to see the goal of the year,scored by Ronaldinho you can see it here.

More Fantasy Sports reviews ,News, Sports Widgets, Videos

Cool and simple Fantasy trade analyzer

2006-11-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

I saw this cool PhP Fantasy basketball analyzer, for all of you Fantasy BBall players out there, this is a cool and simple tool to use.

fantasy sports are huge business

2006-11-22T08:20:00.001-08:00

For any one who needed some explanation about the size of Fantasy Sports;

Faniq a fantasy pool prediction game review

2006-11-21T04:00:00.000-08:00

Faniq is a Fantasy sports site that deals with prediction pools generated by users.
The site is trying to answer the sports fans bragging need.
We all know the situation, we are all the best football/basketball/baseball/you name it experts, in sports we are consistently predicting the outcome of some events or just arguing about general philosophical questions (Is Shaq better than Bill Rusel?).
What differs Faniq from other similar services such as Pickspal?The difference is that in this service each one can create a pool and invite his friends to compete, while in Picks pal the game operator is the one who decides the pool markets.
The method in which the service operates is by letting any user to answer pools that he likes, and by his correct answers he gains a higher Sports Iq.

There is an online form for creating your pools, they can be objective (lets say a specific result in an NFL match) or subjective, let's say, who is a better ball player Shaq or Yao?

The site is very community oriented, each pool can be ratted as well as all the comments for the pool.

You can gain prizes by participating in specific pools and being the pools winner.

The down sides if this service are the U.I (user interface), it is quite confusing, there are not odds like in the other fantasy betting sites, i mean that if you said that a particular outcome will happen and 100 people said different than you and you were right, you need to gain much more IQ.
For the fantasy sports fans this is a cool place to visit and try to figure out who is right in yours Saloon sports arguments by bringing your debates online and letting the Faniq community help you go on.

Ferenc Puskás and the Hungary Gold soccer team

2006-11-19T11:50:00.000-08:00

Three days ago Ferenc Puskas one of the best soccer players ever has passed away, this made me remember the great stories that i heard from my grandfather about the great Hungarian Team Of 1954, a team that is thought the best national soccer team that ever played,(beside Brazil 1970).
For all of you that are staring at the screen and saying What the Hell is he talking about, here's a little Soccer history lesson.
In 1954 the world cup was held in Berne Switzerland the two teams that were qualified for the Final game were Hungary and West Germany.

Never in the World cup Finals history there was such clear favorite for winning the cup like the 1954 Hungarian squad was, in fact besides a few German supporters the whole world was sure that Hungary is going to be the world cup winner.

There were some reasons for this common thought, Hungary won Germany in the first round of the tournament by the staggering score of 8-3, they also haven't loss a game over 32 matches.
They also won the British national team in Wembly a year before the Cup in the 6-3 score, and later 7-1 in Budapest.
this game can be seen in this video.

The game was held in Wankdorf Stadium in Berne,Switzerland on July 4, 1954.
Hungary was leading the game by the score of 2-0 with Puskas and Zoltán Czibor scoring for Hungary.
It seemed destined that the pre-tournament favourites would beat Germany again and take the title. However, Germany did not give up, and with goals from Max Morlock and Helmut Rahn within the next ten minutes, the score was equalized at 2-2, with 72 minutes to play. In the second half, there were several good scoring chances missed by the Hungarian team or saved by German keeper Toni Turek. With six minutes left, "Boss" Rahn scored his second goal, making the score 3-2 for West Germany. Two minutes from the end, Puskás then shot the equalizer into the net, but the goal was disallowed due to a controversial offside. The match and Hungary’s unbeaten run ended.
Puskas later went to play to Real Madrid and won the European title with the team and he is still considered one of the greatest players ever that played with that Club.
The video of Hungary Vs Germany Final can be seen here.

More about Ferenc Puskas can be found here.

The man behind Borat

2006-11-19T04:27:00.000-08:00

It is amazing, this is the man behind BORAT, i am not kiding he is OSCAR worthy for bening able to act this role for almost 24/7, well here is a pick at the man Behind BORAT, Sacha Cohen.

Salary Cap VS Full fantasy cons & pros

2006-11-19T00:51:00.000-08:00

I saw this post , that claims that fantasy Football is a game that is based mainly on the luck factor.

The main point post claim is;

The NFL season, not like the MLB season that contains 162 games, is too short, and by that any randomness can make you win or loose.

regardless the fact that i don't agree with this claim, i think that this leads us for an interesting point, the differences between Fantasy Salary Cap and Fantasy Football and their pros & Cons of each game.

Full Fantasy:

This is the most popular form of Fantasy Football,
The concept of the game is the most similar to the real world, you have a league commissioner that gathers a group consisted by 8-12 "team owners", they all assemble their teams by a draft,(there are some types of drafts ,such as serpentine draft Random Draft and ext...), you might ask how the order of the draft is determined? there are some ways, if its a keeper league, you might decide to make it like in the real life, the last team in last years ranking will pick first, in some other leagues ,its determined by luck, in a lot of the online fantasy leagues you have auto pick draft, that means that the system simulates an automatic draft and pick your players.

It is easy to understand that in this type of game the draft is one of the most,if not the most, important thing, by having a good pick you can actually win or loose your season.

now as for the trading, there are some types of leagues that the commissioner is the one who reviews the trades and approves or disapproves them, in other leagues it is approved or not by the league votes,you might ask your self why you need the leagues or commissioners approve?
that is for protecting the league from "group" working to determining the winner, one other reason is for not letting the teams that have no longer a chance of winning, determining the winner of the league by making an unfair trade.

The pros of that type of game is that this mimics a lot the real life games but there are some problems that this model raises.

This model gives the Draft stage a big factor for your winning or loosing the leagues tittle, after the draft was conducted and the season starts, the teams with poor picks in the draft almost never could win or reach the playoffs, the reason is that they need to trade their way up and this is a tough thing to do in a short season like the NFL's, (in keeper leagues this point is different because you can plan for long terms).

The pros of this game is that it gives a "tactical factor" of "managing" your team and trades.

In my point of view the main point of Fantasy Football is to see who can predict future performance of Football players, In the Full Fantasy Football you are not being only measured by that factor because there are managerial factors that affect your options of picking, (draft, trades...).

This is the point that I want to talk about Fantasy Salary Cap.
The Salary Cap game is less popular than the Full Fantasy Football but it is picking a lot of fans and the majority of the pay per play games are in the form of Salary cap.
How the game is played;
Basically each team owners is awarded with a virtual budget,(needless to say the same for each owner...) , lets say 100 million $, each real life player is being tagged with a value determined by the system, and each owner needs to assemble a fantasy team that consists all the required positions and he can't pass his salary cap.

in this game each contestant can assemble each players he wants, as long as he keep his team under the CAP.

The system gathers and calculates the trading activity (each time you "buy" & "sell" a player) and the real time performance of a player and outputs his value, by that if you got player X in a value of 5 million $ and now his value is 7 million, by "selling" him you gains 2 million more for your total cap.

This type of game is emphasizing much more the predicting abilities of the users but it cons are that, you can't directly affect the other team owners in your league by denying some trades.

Soap Opera Fantasy?

2006-11-17T08:08:00.000-08:00

I came across with this post , about the new Fantasy Soap opera where you need to pick three male actors and three female actors and you gain fantasy points depending on which things they do, let's say get undressed or make sex....

Bad things happen for the one that plays with CBS Sportsline Fantasy Football

2006-11-17T07:08:00.000-08:00

As you can read over here, CBS is suffering from major crashes during the rush hour web traffic ,especially when the users were looking for making final adjustments in their squads before the starting of the games, and after the weekly games when they were looking to check their scoring.

You can read the apologizing letter sent by CBS, it's a nice thing to do , and i appreciate their confession, but that's said, i think that a company in that size that is offering a Pay per play game, can't afford to itself to make those types of errors.

Great desktop application for Fantasy teams managment

2006-11-17T03:47:00.000-08:00

Wow, this is a cool application,

For all of you out there that plays in multply Fantasy sports services and have more than one fantasy team, this is the application for you.

Sportsport is a cool rich web application that will help you manage all your fantasy teams out there, and gather all their stats and news.

Check out the cool screen shoots.

no.1

You can see on the Screen shot no.2 that you can login to the most popular Fantasy sports Services,( a good feature for the developers to add, is a submission service, so that you can submit services that aren't in the Sportsport application.)

no.2

In total this is a very cool application, i think that there are some features that need to be add (as i mentioned before, the option to add other services and it will also be great if you could add the option to gather sport news for other places.)

you can download it here.

Protrade, general review

2006-11-15T01:04:00.000-08:00

A new Fantasy sports site that treats players like they were stocks?

Well after this bombastic tittle it is quite surprising that protrade doesn't really treats players like they were stock and actually it doesn't make any thing really different than all the other "salary cap" fantasy sport games,

The players prices are accumulated by an algorithm that calculates the number of times a Players is being bought or sold and the players performance and by that calculates the players price, just as Yahoo's Fantasy Salary cap game.

O.K so what are the differences?, in Protrade you don't have to assemble a Fantasy team by pre determent squad positions, rather than that you don't assemble a team, you assemble a Portfolio and you win a challenge if you have the biggest portfolio in the challenge.

The game is not taking off, one reason is that they are changing all the time their scoring system, the game is also a very complicated game to understand, it took me a while to get it, and i still might be wrong (and if i am it is even a bigger problem).

The founders of protrade wanted to make a place that can evaluate players performance inspired by the Moneyball book, for me they totally missed their purpose.
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coming soon "Yahoo! fantasy Basketball review"

2006-11-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

I am working on Yahoo Fantasy Basketball review.

Coming soon.

Fun technologies acquires CDM

2006-11-14T00:49:00.000-08:00

Fun technologies acquires CDM Fantasy sports company.

http://www.funtechnologies.com/images_fun/press/fun_press_08_24_06.pdf

Yahoo and Intel Team up to bring Fantasy sports to the T.V

2006-11-13T07:41:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! and intel are teaming up to bring the fantasy sports into the t.v.

Those are great news for all the People out there that have TVs connected to Intel® Viiv™ technology-based PCs this football season.

The Full press release be found here.

TiVo Launches CBS Sportsline Fantasy Football

2006-11-13T04:41:00.001-08:00

That's a great new product by Tivo and CBS sportsline fantasy Football,

In the press releasse TiVo says: TiVo Inc, the creator of and the leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), and CBS SportsLine, a leading Internet sports media organization and part of CBS Digital Media, announced today that CBS SportsLine Fantasy Football Companion can be accessed from any television connected to a broadband-enabled TiVo® Series2™ DVR. Registered users of CBS SportsLine Fantasy Football can manage their leagues, check stats and scores, and watch highlights from the comfort of their living rooms with their TiVo remote control. CBS SportsLine and TiVo are creating a new form of interactive sports programming for subscribers.

I will posts some reviews about this in later posts, any way it seems very cool.

Here are some cool pics of this.

The new gambling bill finds the Fantasy Sports as an Act of Skill

2006-11-13T02:27:00.000-08:00

The new legislation in the U.S makes it harder for online sports betting Sites to accept wagers online.

But this might be good news for the sports Fantasy industry since the Bill, that is known as the Port security bill contains an exemption of the Fantasy Sports games.

Experts assume that this act will lead to a bigger growth in the Fantasy sports industry, so this can be good news for us Players.

what's that blog about?

2006-11-13T02:24:00.000-08:00

This blog is about all the latest news in the Fantasy Sports industry and all the Games reviews from the End user point of view.

I hope you will enjoy this blog and that it will help to contribute to the growth of the fantasy Sports industry, and eventually make better games for us the Players.

Thanks,
Yours Josh