Playing Fantasy Sports - A Beginner's Guide

By Author: Rob Moore
Total Articles: 9
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playing fantasy sports

Playing fantasy sports isn't just for egg-heads anymore! Number chunchers beware, the age of the Internet has ushered in a whole new set of fantasy sports enthusiasts!

What used to take a degree in mathematics now just takes a couple of clicks from your mouse. The fantasy sports world is inundated by thousands of newbies every year as a result.

playing fantasy sports overview

playing fantasy sports lets you compete against others using real stats and performances from real athletes. Your fantasy team gains points for each stat category (check your league's scoring to see how this is tabulated- every league differs) an individual player gains during the course of the real game.

Your points are then totaled, and (depending on scoring method used) you are credited with either a win or loss in a typical sports standings format


playing fantasy sports - the basics

join a league- search hiway-play for free or pay fantasy games to join. Follow each websites instructions for joining. Many offer public or private leagues. ...
... Private leagues need a password for entry, usually supplied by the league commissioner (the person who started the league)
draft your team- your league will have a section for you to rank players in the way that you would most like to draft them. There are several draft formats, but the basic info is that drafts are done in rounds, with each team getting one selection per round. Please check with your individual league to see what fantasy draft strategy they are using. There are many fantasy sports websites that offer free cheatsheets that rank players. There are also several draft formats, including live draft (players logon and draft in real time) and automatic drafts, where a softare program does the drafting for you (recommended for beginners).

play your team- once the draft is over, see which players you have, and either choose to start them in one of the designated starting spots (usually done by position), and choose to bench those that you do not wish to play.

let the games begin- check the schedules of the real teams that your players play for, then watch or keep track of their progress in the game. You get points depending on how they do in the real game. All your starting players' totals are then totalled and added together. This total is then either copared to another team in your league (head to head style play) or against the totals of the entire league (rotisserie-style)

add/drop- depending on the sucess (or failure, or injury) of your players, you have the options to trade players with another team in your league, or drop a player from your team, and replace that player with a player from a pool of players that are not assigned to any teams in your league (free agents, or waivers). You may "tweak" your team throughout the season, hopefully picking up more productive players in the process. Please note that you may want to check a player's performance history before dropping or adding. A few bad games does not neccessarily mean that player will not perform over the entire season!

About the author:

Rob Moore operates HIWAY-play.com, a site featuring fantasy sports reviews, and where many great folks play online games free