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Gur-who?

Go forward to more recent blurbs.

1/31 - So haw many TSN teams moved from LeBron James to Chris Webber yesterday? I know some who did, and it was more than a handful. (No, not me this time!) LeBron graciously decided to pull out of the Sunday evening game in plenty of time to allow the switch to Webber, whose game was scheduled 3 hours earlier. Then, without warning, Webber DNP’d, leaving many managers “DNP’d off” (although financially ahead). When it rains, it,… well, it sucks.

Enough whining about hoops. GuruGolf 2005 launched last evening. The first official tournament will be the Nissan Open, which is still two weeks away. But, if you register now you can play the next two tournaments for practice. The site is fully operational, and preseason scorekeeping will be provided for the next two weeks, so whether you are reacquainting yourself with the game, or trying it out for the first time, this is a great opportunity to learn by doing. After the next two weeks, the slate will be wiped clean, and we’ll all start from scratch. Meanwhile, you’ll have two weeks of valuable experience, and I’ll have two weeks of field testing under game conditions. A win-win!

There are a number of GuruGolf enhancements this year, although the basic framework is the same. For a listing of all of the new features, read the news page at the game site. One feature that is unchanged is that the game remains completely free to play, and you can enter as many teams as you wish. In fact, you can manage up to 10 teams under s single login, so why not set up a few teams and try out different strategies?

1/28 - I often preach about the benefits of long term planning for your TSN trading. Lately, however, it’s been difficult to plan more than 12 hours in advance. I can’t decide whether TSN’s game-time trade freezes are a blessing or a curse. It’s not always a simple matter to get reliable info on “game time decisions” more than a few minutes in advance of the freeze, and that can lead to some hectic trading, which not only risks a technical snafu, but also risks an untimely brain fart in the heat of activity. Tonight, LeBron and Iverson are both game time decisions, and although Webber is expected to start, you never know with him. I could be spending a lot of time online this evening. For those of you who live east of the Atlantic Ocean, it could be a very late night. And for those of you who actually have a social life on a Friday evening, your best bet is probably to simply “set it, and forget it.”

1/27 - If last week felt like navigating through an injury-riddled mine field, this week looks like more of the same. Last week, it was possible to trade into Webber, then McGrady, then Iverson, and be rewarded with a total of 6 TSN and 2 DNPs. If that describes your team, I’m pretty sure you’re not alone. And there are plenty of variations on that theme with similarly pathetic results. Every season has periods of DNP distress, but this latest spate of injuries, flu, and family emergencies has to rank right up there with the best of them. And beware – LeBron James may be the next installment. At least almost everyone owns him, so moving from Iverson to LeBron probably isn’t an option.

And if DNP-itis has beaten you down, guess what? We’ll only reached the season’s halfway point today! Over an entire NBA season, there are 1230 regular season games. Game #615 happens tonight. Just think of all of the events – injuries, fights, hot streaks, cold streaks - that have happened so far this year. By the time this campaign ends, they’ll all be a faded memory. Some already are.

At least in the PSC game you only get to trade once per week. That means you can get stuck with several DNPs from the same player when disaster strikes. But at least you can’t continually shoot yourself in the foot day after day. There is something to be said for that.

Hang in there. But keep a few trades in reserve while you’re hanging, or you almost certainly will hang. It’s not too late to get the hang of it!

1/26 - The TSN game is anything but predictable. Well, OK, some things are predictable, like a DNP from Chris Webber. But somehow he managed to gain in value in both the Ultimate and Basic games, which means more people bought him than sold him. And I know some sold him. I can’t imagine who would buy him on a day when his playing status was so uncertain. If he gains again today, I’ll really be flummoxed. (I’ll bet that’s the first time the word “flummoxed” has ever appeared in a daily blurb.)

I considered moving to Brad Miller yesterday, figuring that if Webber was out, Miller might step up his output. I actually did make that move on one team. In the four games that Webber has missed this season, Miller has averaged 44 TSNP (43, 43.5, 31, 59). Admittedly, the sample is small, Webber’s injury is not considered to be serious, and until yesterday, the average was only 39. And when Webber does play, Miller averages only 35 TSNP/G. But if you want to buy some Webber insurance, or if you want to try to benefit from his fragility, this may be a non-stupid approach, especially given the favorable Sacramento schedule.

As promised, I did start working on GuruGolf yesterday, and I’m feeling reasonably confident that the game will launch next week, but only for practice. I’m targeting the Nissan Open (tee off date: Feb. 17) as the first week of playing “for keeps”. That’ll give everyone – especially newcomers - a couple of weeks to try it out. If you are interested in providing feedback on any of the game design features, I’ve started a thread in the Golf Forum.

1/25 - The bad news is that in the last 3 days, my top TSN team has endured 2 DNPs due to the flu, one due to a family emergency, and one near-DNP due to an ankle sprain. The good news is that the season isn’t even (quite) halfway over. Every season brings periods like this. They are frustrating, but you simply have to make the best of it and keep plowing on. Still, it can drive you crazy.

Now that I’ve got my new computer pretty well set up, I’m going to turn my rapt attention to GuruGolf. (If nothing else, it’ll keep me from obsessing over my recent Hoops woes.) I had originally hoped to be up for a preseason go at this week’s Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, but that’s not going to happen. At least I won’t have to deal with a fifth round. If I make sufficient progress this week, I hope to be up and running for next week’s tournament, although it would be in preseason mode only (i.e., for practice). The first week “for keeps” will not be until a week or two later. Stay tuned for further details. The season will extend all the way until the Tour Championship in November, so there will be plenty of time.

1/24 - And then there were two.

Although neither of yesterday’s NFL games were blowouts, they weren’t cliffhangers either, as both Philly and New England lowered the hammer in the 4th quarter to remove any possibility of late game heroics.

And in Football Pickoff, HooeyPooey took commanding leads in both the Overall and Midseason standings. Mathematically, it isn’t necessarily wrapped up yet – and that’s all I’m going to say, since I don’t want to influence strategy. I will note, however, that if the same person wins both the full season and midseason contests, the Midseason prize will go to the Midseason runner-up.

Now we get to wait for two weeks. Argh.

Speaking of “argh”, in the TSN game I made the brilliant pickup of Chris Webber this weekend. I fully expected him to get injured, but not until next week, when many more teams owned him. So I figured I’d get him for a couple of games before the inevitable carnage. Oops! As it turns out, only 31 of the top TSN Ultimate teams have him at this point, and I represent five of those. I guess I should have figured he’d go down at the worst time for me, not the worst time for the most managers. Oh well.

1/21 - Do you realize that the NBA season hasn’t even reached the halfway point? A full (regular) season includes 1230 games, and game #615 doesn’t occur until next Thursday. The good news is that there’s still plenty of time to catch up. The bad news is that there’s still plenty of time to screw up.

Know which team has the most games remaining? Including tonight, Charlotte plays 47 more games. Atlanta and Chicago each play 46. They lead the parade. At the other end, San Antonio plays only 41 more times.

It seems like every year around this time, Chris Webber appears to be virtually unstoppable. And then, like clockwork, we rediscover that it isn’t opposing defenses that stop him; it’s his knees. The Kings are off for the next two days, but then they have the densest schedule until the All Star break, with 15 games scheduled over 25 days. How many of those games do you suppose Webber will suit up for? I suspect that his DNP risk is directly proportional to the number of TSN teams that own him. By next week, that’ll be significant. Buyer beware. You’ll probably decide that you can’t afford not to have him. And you’ll probably regret it. As one of my favorite sayings goes, “Experience is what teaches you to recognize your mistakes every time you repeat them.” I feel a refresher lesson coming…

Don’t forget to make your Football Pickoff picks. There are only 2 games this weekend, but you can double one. Based on the current odds, 300 point swings are possible for this weekend.

1/20 - It won’t be long before LeBron James assumes the same “gots to have” status (in the TSN game) that Kevin Garnett currently enjoys. He’s almost there now. Of the top 100 TSN Ultimate teams, Garnett is on 98, while King James is now on 93. By next year, LeBron will probably be as pricey as KG as well. In total TSNP, James still ranks only third, but he’s now only 2 TSNP behind Duncan, and if recent trends continue, Duncan will soon be left in LeBron’s vapor trail.

NBA schedule alert: Originally, the NBA had Miami playing at Philly on Jan. 23. and New Orleans playing in Miami the following day. Back in November, the league switched those two games, just in case the Eagles would also be playing in Philly on Sunday. And as it turns out, they are. The various RotoGuru schedules have been updated for awhile, but I’ve still noticed some inconsistencies on some other sites. And if you are working with a schedule that was printed or downloaded some time ago, it might need to be adjusted.

1/19 - A lot of points were scored in the NBA last night. Four of the five losing teams topped 100 points. Sixteen players had at least 40 TSNP.

Today is RotoGuru Hall of Fame Day, when I enshrine the entire Class of 2004. Congratulations to the following Gurupies:

• Eric Ramos, Football Pickoff
• Shawn Collins, Market Madness
• Pete Stover, Market Madness (no basket units)
• Dave Richards, RotoGuru Invitational Hoops Challenge
• Peter Nash, RotoGuru Invitational Baseball Challenge
• Daniel Minjarez, GuruGolf
• Erik Urban, RotoGuru Invitational Football Challenge

1/18 - One week ago, Phoenix was 31-4, way better than any other team. Today, they return home from an 0-4 road trip, having made a convincing case for Steve Nash for MVP.

Does Troy Murphy only produce when no one has him? About three weeks ago, he induced a buying spree with a series of good games and a favorable pending schedule. Once he’d been bought up, he promptly put up 57.5 TSNP – in his next three games combined! Of course, that touched off a wave of selling. So he countered with an average of 47.4 TSNP/G over his next 4 games. And with only 2 games in the next 8 days, don’t expect the buys to resume. Which I guess means you can expect about 100 TSNP in those two games. I also had Murphy at the beginning of the season, and he didn’t start producing until after I pulled the plug. Maddening.

I was just perusing the current ownership tally for TSN Ultimate. I was mostly interested in the Larry Hughes flows. He had 350 sells yesterday, but he’s still the 6th most heavily owned player, on 1268 teams – most of which are no doubt tradeless until tomorrow. What I found puzzling, however, was that Dwyane Wade was sold from 22 teams yesterday! Now, why would 22 teams wait until yesterday and then sell? I could understand if one or two managers simply fell asleep at the switch, but 22 sounds like a lot – although I guess one or two managers could control 22 teams. Maybe there’s a low roster value competition going on out there.

1/17 - Was it the weather? Did the Colts have an off-day? Is Bill Belichick a coaching genius? Or perhaps all of the above?

Regardless, the Patriots dominance of Indy completed a totally “chalk” weekend of NFL playoff action. There won’t be any Wild Card teams sneaking into the Super Bowl this year, as the top four seeds all advanced, with Pittsburgh being the only team that had to sweat it out.

Thirty-six Football Pickoff slates had all four games picked correctly, and sixteen of those had the optimum double (New England) as well. With only three games remaining (two of which can be doubled), the contest is not settled yet, but the list of contenders is narrowing.

The NBA weekend was not kind to most TSN teams. Two heavily owned players (Nash and Hughes) were suddenly injured, and many teams lack the trades to be able to adjust before Wednesday. By then, Nash may have returned (although that’s far from certain), but Hughes is out for 4-6 weeks. The news on Hughes wasn’t out until late yesterday afternoon, too, so I’m sure some teams got an unpleasant surprise this morning.

Today is a national holiday in the U.S. (Martin Luther King day), so there are a lot of NBA games with afternoon tipoffs. If you still have trades available, don’t assume that you have until evening to make them.

1/14 - So much for Kobe vs. LeBron. Now we'll get to see whether the Lakers are a better team without Kobe than with him. So far, the results are reminiscent of Toronto's successes in recent years whenever Vince Carter was injured.

With only three games scheduled, five players topped 50 TSNP last night. If you had the right mix of players, you probably had a very nice result.

Remember to make your Football Pickoff picks before tomorrow afternoon's first kickoff. We had about 200 sets of picks last weekend, but so far, we're only about halfway there.

1/13 - A lot of TSNP were produced last night. Among the top 100 TSN teams, seven exceeded 400 TSNP, and another ten were at 308 or better. But don’t tell that to those teams that held on to Dwyane Wade for one last gasp. Wade rewarded their patience and perseverance with nothing but pine and price decline. On most of my TSN Ultimate teams, I moved Wade to McGrady yesterday, which seemed like a no brainer. But on one team, I already owned McGrady, and debated whether to move Wade to Hughes immediately, or to be a contrarian and wait it out. At the eleventh hour, though, I got cold feet and decided to go with the flow. Sometimes the profit flows don’t align with the point flows, but this time the alignment was nearly perfect. Better lucky than, … well,… unlucky.

This was the week that I had penciled in to be working on programming updates to GuruGolf. Unfortunately, my desktop computer operating system failure and recovery has really chewed up my "spare time" resources this week. I've got a new computer arriving shortly (it's already "in the mail"), and once that arrives, I'll have other setup and file transfer projects. So GuruGolf will have to wait a few more weeks, I'm afraid. I'm still hopeful that I can have something ready by the end of January, perhaps for a week or two of preseason "beta" activity. But I can’t promise hard dates yet. That's the unfortunate consequence of being a one-man operation. I'm the analyst, writer, office manager, accountant, product developer, programmer, computer (tech support) guy, and I also oversee quality control. When I have to unexpectedly strap on my computer guy hat, some of the other hats have to gather dust. Thanks for your patience.

1/12 - It was kind of a bloody night for the prices of many of the more popular players in the TSN game. The alignment of light trading, some recent disappointing performances, and the emergence of several attractive alternatives in all price ranges produced a lot of big swings, probably without a lot of trades in an absolute sense. Those who got an early jump on either LeBron James or Josh Smith got the double bonus – price gain and big points. The price benefit was magnified if they sold Troy Murphy, Steve Francis, or Tim Duncan. Sadly, one of my teams still owns all three of the latter. Yikes! Duncan has been a particular disappointment, as I've been holding him since late December while he's lost more than $800K. I keep hoping that he'll return to Duncan-like form, but so far, my patience has been punished. Sometimes, patience is a virtue. But virtue can be very expensive.

Yesterday afternoon, in the process of trying to eradicate some adware on my desktop computer, I somehow managed to corrupt my Windows 98 operating system badly enough that I couldn't even boot into safe mode. Fortunately, I had recently backed up most files, and most of my RotoGuru processing has been done from my laptop recently, so the episode is an irritation, but not a calamity. Still, I'll have to go through the process of reinstalling the operating system, and then apply all the released patches and updates from the last five years, and then try to get all the software to work again. By the time I'm done, it may work better than before. Or not. But it sure will take some time to reassemble all of the pieces. So, permit me to abort this blurb now while I go back to the salt mines…

Thanks to Gurupie Pacers Rule for suggesting today's quote.

1/11 - Only five players topped 40 TSNP last night, including just two over 50. One was Iverson (50.5), who isn't on many TSN rosters right now, especially since he recently DNP'd. The other was Garnett (52), who's everywhere, and for whom 52 is an off night. The three forty-pointers were Grant Hill (who is on more rosters than anyone, although Garnett is more heavily owned among the top 100 Ultimate teams), Mehmet Okur (who has rebounded rather nicely of late, after having been unceremoniously purged from a lot of rosters last week), and Chris Mihm, who just escaped gravity yesterday.

We're embarking on a period during which a lot of top players have pretty good schedule density. Detroit plays 6 times over the next 8 days, and nine other teams play five games over the same span. Meanwhile, the Dwyane Wade purge has only just begun. While some managers will decide to hold him until the bitter end (i.e., Friday), many others will jump ship early, especially with so many other attractive alternatives at guard. That's a rather amazing statement in a way, as it wasn't so long ago that "attractive guard" was an oxymoron.

1/10 - Last week, I thought about pointing out that home teams win about 75% of all NFL playoff games, so the key in Football Pickoff was probably to figure out which visiting team would win. It's just as well that I decided not to make that comment, as the key turned out to be to be finding the one home team that would win. Two entrants sported perfect slates for the weekend - Goldcoach and frisbeegolfking. Meanwhile, the previous overall leader went 0-4 this weekend, and the race for the season title is probably as wide open as I can ever recall at this juncture.

While there were some big games for individual players in the NFL, the NBA provided a few as well. On Saturday, we had two triple doubles, from Baron Davis and Jason Kidd, Then yesterday, Tracy McGrady had a 45 point, 12 rebound effort which produced 70.5 TSNP. And Kevin Garnett completed his 4-in-5 with a 72 TSNP result. Over those 4 games, he averaged almost 66 TSNP. When stud players have a compact schedule period - like 4 games in 5 days - it's not uncommon for production to fall off a bit. But that certainly didn't apply in this case, even though the Timberwolves didn't benefit much from KG's largesse, dropping three of those four games.

1/7 - The top fantasy producer last night was Tim Duncan. That doesn't see so remarkable, especially with only three NBA games on tap. But for those managers who have held TD through the past few weeks, and for those who noticed that he had only 10 TSNP at halftime, it was a welcome surprise.

Remember that Football Pickoff continues throughout the NFL playoffs. Picks for all four playoff games this week will freeze at the time of the first kickoff - 4:30pm ET Saturday afternoon.

1/6 - Cheapies! Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em!

Roughly 500 TSN Ultimate teams sold Gerald Wallace over the past two days. Some of them (like me) swapped into other cheapies like Nenad Krstic. That may have been a profitable financial swap so far, but after Wallace produced 54 TSNP last night to Krstic's 3.5, many of us are left shaking our heads.

Twelve NBA games were played last night. Tonight features only three. Seattle plays on both nights, while Denver rests on both. A lot of the top teams have no players going tonight, so if you have more than one player active tonight, you'll probably make up some ground (which you probably lost last night).

2004: December. . . November. . . October. . . September. . . August. . . July. . . June. . . May. . . April. . . March . . . February . . . January

2003: December . . . November . . . October . . . September . . . August . . . July . . . June . . . May . . . April . . . March . . . February . . . January

2002: December. . . November. . . October. . . September. . . August. . . July. . . June. . . May. . . April. . . March . . . February . . . January

2001: December . . . . . November . . . . . October . . . . . September . . . . . August . . . . . July . . . . . June . . . . . May . . . . . April . . . . . March . . . . . February . . . . . January

2000: December . . . . . November . . . . . October . . . . . September . . . . . August . . . . . July . . . . . June . . . . . May . . . . . April . . . . . March . . . . . February . . . . . January

1999: December . . . . . November . . . . . October . . . . . September . . . . . August . . . . . July . . . . . June . . . . . May . . . . . April . . . . . March . . . . . February . . . . . January

1998: December . . . . . November . . . . . October . . . . . September . . . . August . . . . . July . . . . . June . . . . . May . . . . . April . . . . . March

RotoGuru is produced by Dave Hall (a.k.a. the Guru), an avid fantasy sports player. He is neither employed by nor compensated by any of the fantasy sports games discussed within this site, and all opinions expressed are solely his own. Questions or comments are welcome, and should be emailed to Guru<davehall@rotouru2.com>.