Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Planning ahead

Wherein I’ll admit it isn’t as much fun as picking teams by their mascots


Filling out March Madness brackets is kinda boring. Team A over Team B, Team D over Team C, blah blah blah. I’ve never played fantasy sports before, but there’s got to be a way to add that sort of element to the tournament. I’m sure someone’s already doing this, so without looking here’s what I’m thinking.

Points
We need point categories. I think these are individual stats: Points, rebounds, assists, steals. Add those together. Subtract fouls -- 2 points a foul, with an extra five for fouling out. If stats show individual turnovers, subtract those.

Example, Player A: 23 points + 0 rebounds + 5 assists + 3 steals - 3 fouls (6) = 25.

Selecting players
Need two guards, two forwards, one center. But to make it more interesting, you can't just select whomever you want. Instead, we can divide the 64 teams (the buy-in game doesn't count) in five groups by seeding: 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, and 13-16. You now select one player from each group. For example, once you pick a player from 1-3, you can't pick again from that group. So your team might look something like this:
G, 1-3
C, 4-6
F, 7-9
F, 10-12
G, 13-16

Bonus players
I'm trying to think of our to add a couple more players, so instead of playing 5 you could play 7. If playing with a group of people and drafting by order, just continue and pick two more players - any position, any group. If playing with yourself (hey, now!), maybe use a random number generator to spit out a group (1-5) and select a player.

Plus 5 points for each player whose team wins (possible 10 points per player per round).

Bonus players score the same, unless their team loses. Then subtract 10 points from their total. Bonus players do not get 5 points for a team win. Also, win or lose, bonus players are discarded before the next round.

Order of play
  1. Pretournament - select players
  2. Round 1 = 64 & 32. Add up totals for each player's game. Discard players from losing teams and bonus players. Draft replacement players, by position, so if you lost a C, 4-6, you must replace with another C, 4-6. If the entire is out the tournament (like, seeds 13-16), then pick from the next group. If playing with a group, redraft by lowest point total first. Pick two new bonus players.
  3. Round 2 = 16 & 8. Scoring is same as Round 1. For the Final 4, only redraft for the 5 positions from the four teams left; must use at least one player from each team. No bonus players are used. Availability of players at this point would make having many contestants a problem. So perhaps we do away with drafting altogether and hope the earlier constraints will create plenty of variety.
  4. Round 3 = semis & final. Calculate points as before. Most points win.

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