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Fantasy Football Draft Advice - Building Your Team Backwards

There are a lot of ways to build your fantasy football team, and let’s face it, that’s half the fun of playing fantasy sports; we get to be the GM. Unlike a real GM though, our drafts are the entire song and dance. Screw it up, and there isn’t a whole lot you can do in free agent bidding or waiver wire pickups to save yourself. That’s why it’s important to come up with a great draft plan. Any bozo can yell out Ladainian Tomlinson when your draft starts, but the truly good players have a solid plan in place for that special day, so let’s take a look at one that you might not have heard of, that might help you win your league.

Fantasy Football Strategy:

Most people come into the draft armed with player rankings, magazines, cheat sheets, computer printouts, and all of the latest tools that they think they need to help them win their league. Most however, don’t come in with a well thought out plan and this is where you can distance yourself from those players and find an edge.

The most common drafting plan that people use is either:

1) Take the best player on the board, in which they are looking for the best “value” that they can find regardless of position in the first 5 rounds without worrying about filling out their roster.

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2) Try and fill out their key positions (2 RB, 3 WR, QB, TE) as they move from round to round.

Both of these plans usually allow you to predict who will be available to take in Round 1, and give you a pretty good idea who will be there in Round 2. Let me explain, if you draw the #4 pick this year, it’s a pretty safe bet that both Tomlinson and Steven Jackson will be gone, so you know before the draft even starts, that you will be picking from a Brian Westbrook or Joseph Addai. If those are your top 5, you are guaranteed one of them. You are going into your draft with the knowledge that you have your #1 back covered.

In the 2nd round, you can get another good idea of who might be there and you will have a list of guys who are targeted to go in that area. Most good drafters have a good idea of who and what positions they are going to have through the first 2 rounds. For example, if you are picking 12th, there is a good chance that you can grab 2 elite WR’s to start off your draft, which means you will be looking for good RB’s in the next few rounds. Once you leave the 2nd round though, all bets are off as you don’t have much control on who will be left. This is why a value-based strategy is used moving forward, but I want to discuss another strategy that works even better. I like to call it “Hit It From The Back”.

The whole philosophy of HIFTB is it gives you control of knowing who you are going to pick in not only Rounds 1 and 2, but who you are going to take in Rounds 5-8. How and the hell do you know who you are going to pick or who will be available 60 picks in is the first question you are going to ask, but it’s a fairly simple thing to find out. With all of the rankings, cheat sheets, and mock drafts available, you should be armed with solid ADP (Average Draft Position) info for your draft and have a solid idea of where guys are going to get drafted in the middle rounds. In order to do this, we need to follow several steps.

Fantasy Football Draft Advice:

Fantasy Football Draft Advice #1: The first thing you need to do is identify your mid round sleepers, or guys you think are going to put up big numbers that are comparable to the people at their positions. I’m not talking Glenn Holt here, he would be considered a deep sleeper. I am talking about guys like Santonio Holmes, Tony Gonzalez, Dwayne Bowe, Matt Hasselbeck, etc- all guys who right now are being drafted in rounds 6-7 of Fantasy Jungle football drafts (We just use these players as an example, do your own research to pick your guys in these rounds)...We can toss out RB’s, because the RB market is too fragile to count on someone being there that late, so we want to focus on QB, WR, and TE because the depth of those positions allow mid round guys to occasionally out produce or put up numbers that are close to the top guys at their position who are drafted in the first couple of rounds.

Fantasy Football Draft Advice #2: Now that you have your mid round guys in mind, you need to project an ADP for each one of them. Here is the important part. You need to take that projection and beat it by at least a half of a round, if not a full round. For example, if you like Dwayne Bowe and his ADP is middle of the 7th round, than you should plan on grabbing him in the 6th round. If you like Matt Hasselbeck as your QB and his ADP is the middle of the 8thth round, than you need to grab him in the 7th round. This ensures your chances of landing theses players you are targeting. Who cares if you are taking him a little early. Remember that if you have identified him as a guy who is going to be one of the top guys at his position, it will be worth grabbing him a little early. By doing this, you are pre slotting your middle round picks. We will get to the benefits of it in a moment.

Fantasy Football Draft Advice #3: The next major important thing that you need to do with HIFTB, is have a backup plan for each player. Look, you might be in the same league as Dwayne Bowe’s grandmother and she might take him in the 2nd round. If he was your 6th round guy, you better have a backup plan in place. Once you settle on the mid round sleepers you want, you need to back them up with at least two secondary choices in the event that your guy gets selected. You don’t want to have this plan and become disoriented and dispirited if your guy gets drafted before you can select him. By pulling the trigger on the guy you want a little early, it’s going to help your chances of getting him, but by having a couple backup choices, it’s going to allow you to still implement this plan if you lose your guy. Let’s say that Bowe is gone, but you feel strongly that Calvin Johnson or Lee Evans will produce on the same level as him, then they would be your backup choices. If Hasselbeck is gone, maybe you would feel just as comfortable with McNabb or Bulger. Once you have this info settled, you are set.

Fantasy Football Draft Advice #4: It’s now time to tee off on the top 5 rounds. You now have an advantage that other drafters in your league don’t, and that is that you know not only who, but what positions you are going to take in two of the later rounds. You can pre slot Bowe as 1 of your 3 WR’s in the 6th round, and you can pre slot your QB, Hasselbeck, in the 7th round. In standard leagues with starting lineup requirements of QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, TE, Flex (any positon), you can now go after 2 RBs, 2 WRs, and either a TE or a 3rd RB/4th WR that will serve as your flex, in the first five rounds of your draft, because you know you are going to get a WR (Bowe) and QB (Hasselbeck) in the 6th and 7th rounds. It’s like when a blitz is called, you are going to pin your ears back and go after the QB because you know what you want to do, the offense doesn’t know where you are coming from. Your opponents don’t know what they want to do either, they are reacting as guys are coming off the board waiting to see what value is there, worrying about being caught in position or end of round position runs.

You can sit back and say I am grabbing a top RB or a top WR here. Maybe you want to treat yourself to Antonio Gates earlier than you normally would, go ahead you have earned it. Maybe you want to draft a 3rd RB early this year for your flex, go ahead, your boy Dwayne Bowe is waiting for you later and he is going to outperform the guy who was picked right beside your luxury 3rd RB, three rounds earlier. If you have Hasselback pegged as a guy who can come close to Tony Romo or Carson Palmer, those guys are going to get picked by the end of Round 4. You know you are getting your QB in Round 7, so by passing on one of them in Round 3, you can now bust out the whipping stick on a guy like Andre Johnson or Anquan Boldin. If you have 2 WR’s already secured and you know you will be taking Dwayne Bowe in the 6th round, than you can take that chance of drafting Julius Jones in the 4th round and passing over a WR there because your guy, Bowe, is going to be just as good as what is there at his position in the 4th, the difference is you don’t have to spend an early pick on him.

This strategy works, and it works well. Think about it, you have a good idea of who you are going to pick in Round 1 before the draft starts, and a fairly good idea of who will be there in Round 2. If you can nail down Rounds 6 and 7, than you should basically know who to take in Rounds 3 and 4 because you will be able to capitalize on taking one of the best guys at a particular position in those rounds. So instead of your opponents who aren’t sure who they are going to take and what might be available, you are in command of your team and know who you should take and at what position in early rounds.

Fantasy Football Management:

I can’t tell you how often people realize how much they have f%$#& up their drafts by Round 3 or 4 because they have picked a player from the wrong position and now realize they have a shortage of guys available to them at other positions. The most common mistakes are taking a QB or TE too early, or taking a 2nd or 3rd RB who is not very good way too early. Look if you need a 2nd RB and the best starter left is Thomas Jones, you might as well wait a few rounds and grab a Jerious Norwood instead of passing on a Plax Burress and drafting Jones.

And just because you are using HIFTB, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still take advantage of the same things that value based drafters can if players slip who you didn’t think would be there are. You aren’t married to Bowe or Hasselbeck. Say Brandon Marshall fell and was still on the board when it was time to pick Bowe, and you like him even more, then you can replace Bowe with Marshall. You have the best of both worlds, the people who are reacting and taking the best value often get good players that fall to them, but you also have that same luxury now and can replace your pre-slotted players if something better is still there, only if that doesn’t happen, you are still solid because you have already pre-slotted your players before the draft started and built your team from the back.

What Are The Benefits Of Pawns?

Pawns are the most numerous piece in Chess, yet also the weakest in power. With the exception of their first turn, they can only move one space at a time and can only capture another piece which is diagonal to it. However, Pawns can be of great use to any Chess strategy, as they aren't only useful in causing a diversion, but they can also be traded up for other, more valuable pieces if they should manage to make it the entire way across the board without being captured.

These pieces are unique in the fact that they are the only piece which cannot ever move backwards on the board. The Pawn can only ever move forward, sometimes diagonally if it is making a capture. Any piece directly in front of a pawn stops it from being able to move, whether it is a friendly piece or not. The only time a Pawn is able to move if there is a piece directly in front of it comes when the Pawn is able to diagonally capture an opponent's piece. However, strategic placement of Pawns can greatly aid a player, as they can block an opponent from successfully moving, as if they would go to capture the Pawn, they might easily be taken by another piece. Pawns are most commonly useful as roadblocks, of sorts, allowing the player to shape the chessboard in a way that might be temporarily beneficial.

If the Pawn is successfully able to navigate its way to the complete opposite end of the board, it is then eligible for promotion. Having a Pawn be promoted can be one of the greatest benefits in a Chess game, as it allows that Pawn to become any other piece in the game, save for a King. With Pawn promotion, players are able to have multiple pieces on the board of any one rank, usually of a Queen. As the Queens are the most powerful pieces available in a Chess game, it is usually rare that any other piece is chosen. When it does happen, however, it is usually a Knight piece that is selected due to its unique movement pattern. Frequently, when a Pawn is able to be promoted, the endgame is in sight. Having two pieces available with the power of a Queen is not an easy thing to overcome for any player and often, the best that can be hoped for by the player who did not successfully promote a Pawn is a stalemate.

The Pawns have been a part of Chess since its original conception long ago and has surfaced in every version of Chess that has independently developed around the world. The piece is generally considered to be of the rank of the "common man" in the game, composing the infantry of the royalty which the King, Queen, and Royal Court all stand for. The pieces are generally considered to be expendable, as the entire game revolves around protecting the King from harm. The word Pawn itself is generally considered to mean either "someone who is easily manipulated," or "someone who is sacrificed for a larger purpose," making the Pawns generally be the lesser-loved pieces of the game. Yet, these pieces can still hold their own for it is not easy to win a game without the successful strategy of manipulating Pawns.

Interactive Toys For Learning

It’s unfortunate that more people don’t know this, but toys and playing are absolutely vital for a person’s development. This isn’t only true for babies and children, it’s just as true for adults. Yes, even adults need to take some time to goof off and indulge their curiosities now and then if they hope to continue growing and changing as human beings (or have you never spent hours and hours researching random topics on the internet, just for fun?).

With the right developmental toys, playtime can be a whole lot more than something kids do for amusement. With the right toys, playtime can be a productive learning process. Every toy a child might become interested in has some potential to teach, as the child experiments and, well, toys around with it, but some of the best toys are the ones that capitalize on a child’s tendency to experiment and aim to teach valuable life skills.

Most obviously, we all recognize on sight such educational wooden toys for babies and toddlers as the ring tower, which uses circular, wooden rings of various colours and sizes to teach children about, well, colours and sizes. These toys are excellent for babies and young toddlers still learning how to interpret and interact with the world around them on the most basic levels. There are also the traditional wooden shape blocks which can be dropped into a box through the corresponding holes, and various other classic toys used to teach basic interaction skills.

If you’re looking for baby learning toys or toddler learning toys, you may also want to look into baby walking toys to encourage, well, learning to walk. Bath toys are another excellent form of educational baby toys to encourage basic life skills.

For the slightly older child, these kinds of toys are, of course, kind of boring. Once a child becomes interested in learning mathematics or learning to read, it’s kind of hard to find tiny wooden blocks all that amusing anymore.

For the child who has surpassed the need for such basic learning toys, there are, of course, toys like Intellective toy laptops, which teach a variety of reading and mathematic skills, and of course, the classic puzzles and kids games, creative toys, such as Lego sets (check out the Star Wars lego toys if your kid’s a real space nut), Duplos, Mega Bloks, and build-it-yourself castle and doll house play sets. Sorry for the run on sentence, but the list really does go on and on.

For the yet MORE advanced child, who might consider all that stuff to be children’s toys, between the ages of say, 8 and 12 (though each child advances at his own age, so use your own judgement), there are more advanced toys, like model kits and remote control cars toys. Such toys aren’t generally seen as being educational, but they do require a degree of construction and maintenance (which can encourage the kind of habits most of us wish we had when we bought our first used car as a teenager).

It’s important to know what kind of interactive learning toys are right for your child, based on their level of development and their own personal interests. Most toys will have a suggested age group, but that’s all that that really is: A suggestion. Nobody knows your child like you do, so look to provide them with the toys that seem custom built to their specific needs, and remember that, as helpful as playing can be, the best way to nurture a child’s growth is by taking time to help them learn basic life skills and indulging their curiosities.

How To Be A Master In Online Poker?

Anyone that is a beginner in online poker truly is not equipped enough to start the play anywhere in the money tables except in free tables.Unless you snuff up enough concepts about the poker variants and the many approaches and apply them in free games and verify your performance you must not risk entering money games. Only those that have completed the learning by playing in free games online do qualify to start up with online poker games for money. Even in such a case there is going to be a lot of losses with monsters that are experienced; however, there is nothing called an all safe game in poker and one will have to just start with low limit money games after a considerable amount of study.

There is nothing that can equal real time playing experience and when you play it with investing money in online poker your commitment increases and your concentration is deeper than in a free game. Once you have learnt the ups and downs of online poker you can just continue playing in the same site or you can play in multiple sites based on what you decide personally and based on how better your bankroll can support you to play in multiple sites.

When you play online poker you will not be able to master all the poker variants instantly. You must master one poker variant and graduate to the next poker variant gradually and not abruptly. If you are already well-versed in playing one variant of poker in online poker and you want to get equipped with another poker variant that you do not know, then you will have to just learn the rules and strategies and work your way through free games first and them in to cast games.

Regardless of how well-versed you are in poker if you are going to play online poker for the first time, you need to practice a lot of free tables and then enter in to money games. Playing poker without a solid foundation will lead to financial loss and in extreme cases a total hatred towards the game after the failure. So, before you set out to play online poker get to know what you need to know before you actually begin to play.

Truly, if you need to make a moderate amount of money in online poker you need not be one of the best players in the world. A substantial understanding is enough for a reasonable winning.

Trivia Games: What Do You Know?

Trivia Games have become all the rave today. Many television shows, online games and board games have many thousands of people answering questions that cover many different topics from pop culture to food.

One example of a trivia game is Trivial Pursuit. This is a classic board game where players aim to make their way around a board, answering trivia questions to earn pieces. The first player to collect a different colored piece from every category makes his/her way to the center of the board. Then, if the player correctly answers another trivia question from a category chosen by the competitors, this player is considered to be the winner of the game.

Trivial Pursuit is just one of the trivia games that is offered world wide for people who love trivia. There are a variety of trivia games that are geared to the audience that buys it. You may find trivia games that feature different topics such as music, television, or fashion, each focusing itself on knowledge and popular trivia, allowing players to test their skills when it comes to brain power.

Many trivia games have cards that are numbered or some that are color-coded by category, such as the classic edition of Trivial Pursuit which features six different types of categories, each with its own color. Geography questions are denoted by the color blue, while history is seen as yellow. Entertainment questions are pink, and science and nature is green. Arts and Literature is denoted by brown, and sports and leisure is orange. These six categories make up the thousands of questions that Trivial Pursuit can provide its players, giving them a number of ways to challenge both themselves and friends. Only through a broad base of knowledge can players get any advantage over their competitors.

Some games have questions on a variety of topics which can include pop culture, music, drama, and a ton of others. Trivia games made for beginners will have only a couple of hundred questions on very easy questions. However, the more advanced the game, the more the questions available to stump even the most advanced trivia player.

Many trivia gamers use some sort of marker on their board to show who is winning. An example of this are the game pieces used for Trivial Pursuit. Each player uses a circular token as his/her piece during the game. Each one of these pieces is divided into six sections, with space for different pie slice shapes. As the players make their way around the board, they aim to land on a certain, central space for each of the main six categories. Players who land on this space and correctly answer the question, fulfill one of the requirements for the game and earn themselves a pie slice for the corresponding color of the category.

The goal is to fill the game piece with each color pie slice before heading to the central starting location on the board. Once there, if a player can successfully answer a question from a category chosen by the competitors, that player is considered the victor of the game. Collecting the pie slices can be challenging, however, for many people are often strong in one category and weaker in others, making the potential for the game to turn competitive, high.

Many of the trivia types of games have various versions that enhance the game or offer you more options. The original versions of the games usually contain the classic categories, with newer versions adding other categories. There are many different versions of games like Trivial Pursuit available to suit any number of people or fans and interests. Special editions of the game are available that are specifically geared toward a certain icon, such as The Simpsons, Star Wars, or even Lord of the Rings.

By the same token, versions of trivia games are available that are geared toward younger players, or specifically for literature, film, or even periods of time, such as the 80s or the 90s. No matter what the players' interests are, there is a trivia game available to suit them.

These classic, challenging types of games have become one of the most popular entertainment options for people because they rely on skill and knowledge, not just random luck. It takes a degree of intelligence to play, often making it the chosen game type for a number of groups. After all, trivia games are some of the rare types of games that allow you to ask: "What exactly do you know?"




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