Ask anyone who plays fantasy baseball or fantasy NFL in a long-established league to name the best day of the year, and they will not select the day of the Super Bowl, the All-Star Game or even their birthday, their wedding anniversary or Christmas Day. To a man - or, more unusually, to a woman - they will nominate the day when they gather in a room to select their teams for the forthcoming season.
In office conference rooms, or more likely selected corners of favourite local hostelries they will gather - usually armed with reams of information and stats - to sink a few beers, eat several slices of pizza and, most importantly, pick the players they hope will take them to a title six or eight months down the line. Whether they use an auction or draft format, these occasions are always the same - plenty of trash talking, frequent howls of anguish as a top target is taken, and usually a lengthy debrief over a cool beverage.
Now all this can be yours.
Those of us at The Times who have enjoyed these annual delights have decided that you deserve the chance to experience them too, so this season we have introduced an offline allocation facility. Members of private leagues no longer have to rank their players and wait to see what sort of team our computer has allocated them. Instead you can all get together, pick your players and input the results in time for the beginning of the new season. Choose when and where it happens, and introduce a few new rules of your own if you like.
"SNAKE" SYSTEM
The usual method is to draw lots for allocation order, with the order reversed for even-numbered rounds. So in a six-team league, players pick in the order 1-2-3-4-5-6 in the first round, and 6-5-4-3-2-1 in the second. Then back to number one again to start the third round and so on. This is what our computer does when it allocates players automatically. The order "snakes" backwards and forwards and gives Managers at the end of the allocation order the compensation of being first to pick in even-numbered rounds.
The task is similar, in some ways, to the one you had in the school playground as you and a friend picked up sides for a kick-about. First to go were the stars of the school team. Last were the unknown quantities - the new kids that no-one had seen play before. But in this case, instead of picking from among your schoolmates and their little brothers, you will be choosing from the cream of the talent in the Premier League. And the other big difference is that there will be more than one other person picking the opposition!
The proven quality of Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney and Cesc Fabregas means that they will be among the first players chosen. The new boys are the foreign imports, and the players of the newly-promoted clubs. How long before someone takes a chance on them? Will Dean Windass be worth a pick? Will Deco deliver?
We decided to pick the Times in-house league along these lines, as you will find out when you read our fantasy supplement in TheGame on Monday July 28th.
AUCTIONS
But as long as everyone agrees, there is no reason why you should do things our way. As mentioned above, many fantasy baseball leagues use an auction system, in which every manager is given a fund of fantasy money with which to bid for players. Given Premier League prices these days, £100 million should do it.
Make sure someone is keeping track of how much fantasy money each manager is spending (or borrow some play money from the kids' board games), nominate an auctioneer - or rotate the role every round - and decide on a minimum increment (say, £100,000).
The first manager nominates a player and throws out a bid - say, "Fernando Torres, £1 million," and things proceed from there.
The beauty of the auction system is that getting the players you want does not depend on your place in a picking order, but on your determination to outbid the competition - to go the extra £1 million to land the goalscoring midfield player you want - even if it then means you can't afford the goalkeeper you might like.
A warning - don't get carried away with your first few bids. Make sure you have enough left to buy a complete and balanced squad of 20 players. Blowing £99 million on Torres and Cristiano Ronaldo may win you the goals category, but those £100,000 Hull City defenders may leave a few holes in your defensive numbers.
Some prefer to pick a balanced team, with plenty of strong, if not stellar, performers across their squad. Others favour the so-called "stars and scrubs" approach, sinking a large chunk of their budget into two or three big-name performers and hoping to pick up low-budget performers with potential to fill in the gaps.
Some managers will nominate players in the early stages in whom they have no interest, seeking to force rivals to spend large chunks of their kitty too soon. If your rivals are too keen to splash the cash early on, there could be some bargains to be had later on. But beware - if you attempt to "bid up" the price of a player, you may end up with an unwanted, overpriced reserve.
Whichever method you choose, you can expect a fun-filled few hours. Replica shirts are optional, but banter is inevitable.
Once all the Team Managers in your league have filled their 20-man squads, you can begin inputting their teams and yours following the instructions on the League Chairman's page.
Enjoy your offline allocation - and whatever else you do, don't forget to order the pizza!
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