A Fantasy Football Introduction by PC Drafter and ACI

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Aug 27, 2015, 12:02 ET

BLACKSBURG, Va., Aug. 27, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Where's the Fantasy in Football?

Football has been the most popular contact sport in America for a while now. Mornings at the office are filled with the stories of the wild ending to last night's game. It can get tiring to be continually left out of all the football conversations; not to mention being totally left out when the office is putting together a fantasy football league. Well PC and Gold Drafter has written an excellent introduction to fantasy football. The intro is a list of the basic concepts that provide the knowledge and tools necessary to quickly become a dominate player in any fantasy football league!

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General Concepts

The general concept of fantasy football is that participants hand-pick a virtual team of real NFL players and compete to accrue as many points as possible. Participants are known as team owners or managers. Points are accumulated weekly, based on the statistics of the real-life football games. Winners are determined by the number of points their teams accumulate over the year based on each player's real life counterpart. There are five players that can score points on offense (Wide Receiver, Running Back, Quarterback, Tight End, and Kicker) and an entire Defense is usually elected unless league rules allow for Independent Defensive Players. Depending on the league, there are various setups and scoring systems. In general, a touchdown results in points for the scoring player and if a pass was involved, the quarterback also accumulates points. Field goals award points and in most leagues, longer field goals get more points. Players are also awarded points based on passing, receiving, and rushing yards. In the most common scoring systems, one point is given for every ten yards rushing and receiving and one point is also given for every twenty five yards passing. Defenses score depending on the number of points that they give up in an entire game (less points given up results in higher fantasy team points) and are also awarded points for interceptions, fumble recoveries, safeties, sacks, and defensive touchdowns.

Picking Your Players: The Draft

No matter who is hosting a league, the draft will be conducted either by using a computer with users in separate locations or on a whiteboard with everybody together in the same room. Selections are usually made depending on each player's projected points for that year, but this statistic alone will not always lead to a successful draft. What position to draft first? Who are really the best players at each position? How many players does one need at each position? Should one draft that stud tight end or that playmaking quarterback? The list of questions goes on and there is not one particular strategy that guarantees success.

Draft Nuances

Next, we get into the actual drafting process. Is the league using a serpentine, cyclical, or auction style draft? The serpentine draft assigns each user a spot in the draft for the first round and then reverses the order in the next and so on. (Ex: in a 10 team league it would be 1,2,3...10,10,9,8...1) Cyclical draft does not reverse the order every other round so users keep their same position in each round. Finally, an auction style draft allots users a certain amount of fantasy cash to fill their roster by bidding on individual players.

As the draft progresses, the list of top players will change significantly. Why? Well, with the top quarterback and the top 5 running backs all off of the board, those quarterbacks and running backs remaining might represent a fairly level playing field. There's a need to snag the difference maker.

Emotions, Mathematics, and the Pentium

The computer can be used as an extremely powerful tool and can make the drafting process much easier and less stressful. Enter the power of PC Drafter to assist in creating the most successful team possible. ACI created PC Drafter just for this purpose: it is software that you install on your PC to take the guesswork out of the draft. It considers the current league needs (not just a specific team's needs) and also uses the league's customized scoring system to recommend the best suited player that will make the largest contribution to a specific team. In addition, PC Drafter downloads the latest player projections, via the Internet. 4For4.com updates these player projections numerous times from May through the first kickoff in September, so that whenever the draft happens, the very latest information exists. PC Drafter does not just recommend the best overall player; the Gold Algorithm recommends the top difference makers. The software takes into account exactly how much better a player is when compared to other available players at that same position.

Conclusion

Fantasy Football lasts the entire football season, and makes football very personal for millions of us mere mortals. There is not one standard method that can be used while drafting because of many other factors which can affect a particular player's value. With the latest player ranking updates, customized scoring system, player value calculations, team and player tracking system all influencing the GOLD algorithm to recommend your draft picks, one is almost guaranteed to dominate every other competitor in a league. PC & Gold Drafter supports an unlimited number of leagues from keeper to auction drafts and even provide realistic mock drafts to practice before the official draft day. Why try to conduct a draft without PC Drafter? Registration is $17.95 via the online store. You can have everyone in your league regretting that they ever invited you to join. Take advantage of the GOLD algorithm now and sack the competition!

Find out more on pcdrafter.com

SOURCE Automation Creations, Inc.