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Go forward to more recent blurbs.

11/27 - The cheapies du jour last night (cheapies du noir?) were "something old, something new", as 30-year-old Alan Henderson and rookie Juan Dixon parlayed their near-minimum TSN pricetags into a combined 82.5 TSNP. Anyone have 'em both? I thought not.

Speaking of "something old", I got a bit nostalgic at the discovery that Joe Tait announced his 2500th Cavs game last night. (The honorary giveaway promotion was "Joe Tait bobble-belly dolls.") Joe Tait was also the Indians announcer when I was a teen, and although he no longer calls baseball games, I can still vividly recall his opening "It's a bea-ut-ifal night for baseball!" He managed to inject some on-air excitement for a team that generally lacked it on-the-field.

On this day before Thanksgiving in the U.S., I'm thankful that server problems occur on "workdays" rather than on holidays. I'll be away from RWH (RotoGuru World Headquarters) for the next few days, and while I'll continue to maintain the usual stats updates, I'll dispense with blurbs for the remainder of the week. Site traffic is always extremely low during holiday periods. Those of you who camp out at the message forum may have trouble keeping a conversation going - although some of you are clearly capable of conversing with yourself for prolonged stretches. Suit yourself.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! May all of your bellies bobble!

11/26 - There Pickoff entrants finished the weekend with 13 correct picks. Tops in points was RotoGuru Hall-of-Famer Sludge 3 with 877 points. (Curiously, 877 points is also his season total!) Right behind him was HooeyPooey with 872 points. Once again, underdogs produced a favorable return, although a straight slate of dogs would have produced "only" 284 points, so the top finishers found a pretty good mix of favorites and not-so-favorites.

With two NFL games on Thursday this week, it's probably a good idea to review the various deadlines:

• For TSN games, any players in Thursday games (Patriots, Lions, Redskins, & Cowboys) will be locked in at noon (EST) on Thursday. You may wait until Sunday (or Monday) to adjust your Sunday (or Monday) slots.
• For Swirve Football, your entire roster will be frozen at noon on Thursday.
• For Progressive Sports Challenge Football, your entire roster will be frozen at noon on Thursday.
• For Football Pickoff, your Thursday picks will be frozen at 12:30 (kickoff time) on Thursday. All other games will remain open until 1pm on Sunday.

11/25 - On the assumption that just about every TSN football team had Priest Holmes yesterday - and his recent price gains certainly suggest that - then just about every team should have generated a pretty decent team score yesterday. Of course, a rising tide floats all boats, so it didn't gain you much of a competitive advantage, but it's still nice to see a big total on Monday morning. And if you found the Atlanta defense and any of the top QBs, then you really must have a nice total to look at. Hopefully, you avoided Drew Bledsoe and Deuce McAllister and Curtis Conway and Randy McMichael, the four of whom combined for 22 TSNP, all of which belonged to Bledsoe.

I thought I was off to a good weekend in Football Pickoff when I was 8-0 after the first 8 games were completed. However, I managed to go only 1-5 from that point on. And so far, no one has missed fewer than 3 games this weekend. I suspect those Texas teams had a lot to do with that.

In the NBA, Kobe Bryant showed that Shaq's return isn't necessarily to be feared. Shaq managed 45 TSNP in just 28 minutes yesterday, but Kobe still found a way to post his third triple-double of the season. Even so, Kobe's 59.5 TSNP weren't the top output of the day, as Steve Francis posted 61 TSNP against the Clippers, including 31 points, 10 assists, and 8 steals!

Incidentally, I was right about one thing regarding my Shawn Bradley pickup last Thursday. If you read my closing comment on 11/21, you'll see that I said, "We'll see pretty quickly how stupid that move turns out to be." And so we did!

Thanks to Gurupie Motley Crue for suggesting today's quote.

11/22 - I wasn't able to watch the battle of the beanpoles last night, but from looking at the boxscore, I have two distinct thoughts:

1. Yao Ming is learning how to play in this league, and
2. Shawn Bradley can only succeed when he has a significant physical advantage.

11/21 - We had an unusual triple-double last night, as Ben Wallace has 19 rebounds, 12 points, and 10 blocks. I don't know what's more ususual for him double-digits in blocks or points. It was only his second game of the year with more than 9 points. Regardless, it works out to 77 TSNP. Less than two weeks ago I was pointing to Wallace as a model of game-to-game TSNP consistency. No longer. His last three games have been 19.5, 47.5, and 77. Which serves to demonstrate the fallacy of over-reliance on early season stats.

Last week, I expressed some concern over the price outlook for Shawn Bradley. Since that time, his price has been pretty flat, and it now looks like he'll hold up pretty well through this light spot in the Dallas schedule. Frankly, that's a sensible result (which doesn't mean it's not surprising). Bradley has been playing so well that there just aren't any material point additions to be gained at center, even if you shell out significant extra dollars. With only two games this week, his recent averages suggest that 60-65 TSNP is a reasonable expectation. Cheaper centers would probably need 4 games to achieve that total. In fact, not only does it seem sensible to hold Bradley if you already have him, but I actually bought him this morning on one team. I had a few extra bucks to work with, and I figured that 2 Bradley games was probably a better bet than 3 Gadzuric games. Obviously, that could backfire, but with Bradley going against teams without a formidable inside game, and with Gadzuric up against Shaq on Sunday, I figured "why not?" In addition, with the recent demise of Loren Woods, I figure there may be others who decide to move into Bradley early. Regardless, Bradley looks like a good longer term value, and any price hiccup should be very temporary. We'll see pretty quickly how stupid that move turns out to be.

11/20 - This morning, I made a few minor changes to the Hoops sortable stats:

• Previously, points for each player's last game were one option in "Column B", which also allowed for averages over other periods, or even for minutes/game. Now, last game points are shown as a separate column. This allows you to see averages over two different periods plus last game points. This is similar to the setup for baseball. (Thanks to Gurupie J for pointing out this opportunity. I hadn't even realized there was a difference.)
• The schedule outlook string has been expanded to 28 days (previously 21). Several Gurupies had requested this.
• Font size is now customizable. Different browsers and operating systems treat font sizes differently, and Gurupies also use a variety of screen sizes and resolutions. A one-size-fits-all font size is simply not optimal. Now you can select a font size to fit your situation, and the system will store your preference in a cookie file for future reporting. (If your cookies are lost or disabled and you prefer a size other than medium, you may have to reselect this each time you visit the site.)

11/19 - Thus far, there are two passive strategies that have worked reasonably well in Football Pickoff - picking all Home teams, or picking all Underdogs. Neither would land you in the top 50, but either would be keeping your head above water so far. This weekend, home cooking worked pretty well, but dog-picking failed miserably. Entrant no gill almost found the best combination of the two tactics, missing only the "guaranteed" Cleveland-Cincy game, and thereby taking top honors with 15 correct picks and 863 points. Honororable mention goes to imfubar, who also picked 15 correctly, and whose 822 point result pulled him above the break-even mark for the season by 9 points!

In Hoops, three centers topped 40 TSNP. That's unusual in itself, but what makes it even more notable is that it equals the number of guards and forwards combined who achieved the same feat!

TSN added position eligibility for five players yesterday afternoon, each of whom had started at least five games this year at positions other than their listed position. Aaron McKie and Ricky Davis are now eligible at both guard and forward, while Loren Woods, Brian Grant, and Predrag Drobnak can fill either a forward or center slot. You may want to rethink your planned moves in light of this new flexibility.

11/18 - In TSN Ultimate football, a respectable weekend is usually in the mid-2000 TSNP range. The team with the #1 WWR is averaging a little over 2700 TSNP per week. An average of a little under 2500 should get you a top 1000 ranking at this point.

I haven't had a weekend in the 2000s in the last four weeks. Twice I was over 3000, but twice I was under 2000. Feast or famine. Last weekend, picking up Priest Holmes, Jeff Garcia, and Terrell Owens really did me in, as those three combined for 458 TSNP. I decided to hold all three for this week, and the result was what I was hoping for last weekend, a total of 1224 TSNP. Apparently, I'm just a week out of phase.

In the NBA, there were no triple doubles this weekend, and only one player topped 60 TSNP in a game, Jason Kidd with 62.5 TSNP on Saturday. Eleven games in the TSNP 50s were recorded, including two each from Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett. Those two had dramatically different price actions, however, as Kobe gained $220K (TSN Ultimate) over the past 3 days, while KG dropped $120K. Garnett's loss (all yesterday) was at the beginning of 4 games in 10 days. However, he plays in 2 of the next 3, so I doubt if those who held until today will be inclined to sell until at least after Wednesday. Of course, if some managers steer only based on what they see in the rear view mirror, then who knows?

11/15 - Only three NBA games were on tap last night, and two were televised nationally. So a lot of us got to witness the disappearance of Kwame Brown. Or perhaps we witnessed the reappearance of the real Kwame Brown, and the guy who wore his number for the first week was an imposter. In any event, those who held onto him to try to squeeze out a few extra games are getting whacked in both price and points.

Shawn Bradley has shown remarkable price resilience this week. With impending schedule weakness, I thought he might begin to leak following a dismal 12.5 TSNP result on Wednesday night. But he eked out another $40K in the Ultimate game, and another $120 in the Basic version. I imagine he's benefiting from his status as a center. Still, he's now got the largest YTD price gain in the Ultimate game, and starting Sunday, Dallas plays only 3 times in 10 days. It's hard to imagine that his price will hold up until the trade refresh, in spite of the fact that he does play on Tuesday night. I realize that comparably priced alternatives at centers aren't very appealing. So I expect to see upgrades at center, possibly financed by a cheapening in the forward slot, where Nene Hilario has been attracting attention, and where Amare Stoudemire will probably follow suit as the Phoenix schedule picks up the pace. Arguably, if you could engineer a swap from Bradley to Stoudemire (yes, I know they are at different positions, but perhaps you have a center-forward to bridge the gap, or perhaps you can do another simultaneous trade), it seems that the best time to move (from a TSNP perspective) would be one week from now, prior to next Friday's freeze. But while that garners a couple of extra games, it will most likely cost quite a few shekels. And who knows what a couple of extra games from Shawn Bradley are worth. Lately, he's been either over 40 TSNP or under 15. Since Raef LaFrentz went down, Bradley has averaged about 31 TSNP/G, but he has yet to post any single game in the range from 28-41 TSNP. A classic doughnut, with a rather large hole.

(I wonder if anyone has ever referred to him as a doughnut before?)

11/14 - There were six TSN Ultimate hoops players who gained $50K or more yesterday. Those six players had produced at an average of 32 TSNP/G. Last night, those six averaged just under 20 TSNP per game. Only one of the six did better than his prior average - Maybyner Hilario, whose 31 TSNP was substantially above his 22.8 TSNP/G average. Gilbert Arenas was only marginally below his average. But the other four (Bradley, McKie, Posey, and Buckner) were collectively more than 60% below their averages. Yech!

Two of my Ultimate teams are entered in TSN autodivisions this season, and you never know whether the luck of the draw will land you with a ringer, or a bunch of "walkovers," or perhaps a reasonably competitive race. It's still too early to tell, although I noticed a few teams yesterday that may be about to run out of steam. For example, I saw one that was already out of trades for the week and still owned Kwame Brown. That team may have trouble keeping his value up this week. It's nice that TSN now provides a division page which lists all team values. It would be even nicer if that page showed trades remaining for each team. Maybe I'll make that suggestion, because having trades-in-hand vs. your competition is certainly worth something, and it would be nice to have that info summarized in one place.

11/13 - With TSN trades refreshed today, I expect a lot of activity. Whether it results in larger than normal gains depends on the dispersion of the buys. But the losses could be ugly for some players.

Start with the year's biggest TSN Ultimate gainer, Kwame Brown, who is up $810 since opening day. His last three games have been lackluster, and his schedule goes soft later this week. If you were planning to wait until 11/18 to sell him (he does play 3 times in the next 5 days), it will cost you a lot of moolah. Widely held players almost always start to bleed several days in advance of schedule holes, especially if recent performance is modest. I expect him to be today's biggest loser. My advice is to take the money and run. That also applies in the free TSN game, where his cumulative gains are $1.4 mil, although the constant creation of new teams may soften the blow somewhat in that game.

For the first couple of weeks, making money in the TSN game is not difficult. It's the next 2-3 weeks that many find more problematic, as leaks tend to pop up all over the place. The way to preserve those gains is to anticipate the losses and sell early. There will be plenty of managers who burn all of their weekly trades today, and then get totally torched when forced to live with Kwame and several others whose schedules begin to wane. This is a critical time when those with the ability to conserve and advance wealth can get a real leg up on the competition.

11/12 - We almost had an undefeated slate in Football Pickoff this weekend. Well, almost-almost, since there was a tie. By the way, this was the first tie game in the NFL since the birth of Football Pickoff. Since there is no winner, the game is simply ignored in scoring. The top entry of the weekend, sbern, started the slate with a zero and ended with a loss. The twelve games in between were all correct, for a top weekend score of 566. And although his cumulative score for the year is still negative, he has taken the early lead in the midseason standings.

My horrendous TSN football weekend had a silver lining. If I had a few more $, I'd have traded away Michael Vick for Brian Griese. So the marginal poverty saved me almost 200 TSNP. Still, I managed to drop Rich Gannon in favor of the "surer" Jeff Garcia. That one cost 438 TSNP. Ouch!

There were only 4 NBA games last night, but five players managed to exceed 50 TSNP, headed by 71 from Paul Pierce. At least I had him on one of my teams.

Thanks to Gurupie Motley Crue for suggesting today's quote.

11/11 - I really thought I had a good TSN football lineup going this week. I had heavily barbelled my lineup, going with a number of cheapies in order to be able to own Jeff Garcia, Marshall Faulk, Priest Holmes, Terrell Owens, and Green Bay. They had all been producing well, and the matchups seemed very attractive. The pricetag for that fivesome was just a tad under $50 million. The output? 779 TSNP. I was hoping for that from any two of the five, and certainly not for all five combined. This game drives me crazy.

Going cheap was definitely the way to go this week - at least at QB. The top pair (so far) - Marc Bulger and Tommy Maddox - cost less than $3m TSND combined. And each of them came very close to topping my fab 5 combined.

At least my servers behaved during my absence this weekend. Murphy's Law was acting on my teams, and not on my machines.

11/8 - With 28 points and 24 rebounds, Kevin Garnett had his ninth career double-doubledouble. His 75 TSNP virtually lapped the field last night, although there wasn't much competition with only 3 games played.

Consistency is a difficult commodity to value. If you hold a player for a long term, consistency may not be important at all, assuming that the overall stats are good. But inconsistent results can really torch a short term trading plan. So while Ben Wallace has probably been a slight disappointment to some by averaging only 34.3 TSNP in his first six games, you've got to admire the consistency. His worst game was 32 TSNP, and his best was 37 TSNP. You can't get much more consistent than that! Compare that to Jermaine O'Neal, for example, who has a similar average of 38.6 TSNP/G after four games of 25, 36, 42.5, and 51. You never know what to expect from him. Ditto for Donyell Marshall, whose 35.7 TSNP/G average includes individual results of 12, 31.5, 36.5, 41, and 57.5. And I'm sure the members of the volatile category greatly outnumber the steady-Eddie's.

For those of you who believe in Murphy's Law, beware Sunday! I will be away almost all day, which means that the server is bound to do something unfriendly. I'm particularly nervous about Football Pickoff. By all means, let me recommend that you get your picks made before Sunday, and then change them on Sunday if a need arises. I will set up the game to automatically shut down the ability to make new picks at 1pm EST, and I've got my fingers crossed that nothing happens to reset the clock. In addition, I may be unable to update basketball stats on Sunday morning. If not, you'll just have to wait until late Sunday night. Price updates will definitely be delayed until Sunday night. Thanks in advance for you patience.

11/7 - It looks like the early season "gotcha!" was working well last night, as several popular overachievers reverted "meanly." For example, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, after several days of big price gains, responded with a pitiful 8.5 TSNP. Paul Pierce managed only 22 TSNP after a 4-day layoff. Glenn Robinson returned to earth with only 24.5 TSNP. Donyell Marshall had only 12 TSNP. Steve Nash - just 16 TSNP. Those guys all enjoyed TSN price gains yesterday, a consequence of good starts and refreshed trade capacity. But this morning, I suspect there's a lot of buyer's remorse going around.

Not all gainers were busts, of course. Aaron McKie's owners should have been satisfied with his 34 TSNP. Kwame Brown rebounded from his Tuesday disappointment with 30.5 TSNP. Dirk Nowitzki had 50.

Technical advisory: If you have saved bookmarks for the message forum or for any of the applications that resided at the rotoguru3.com domain, you should revise them to refer to rotoguru1.com instead. I have set up rotoguru3.com to automatically forward to rotoguru1.com in most cases, but directing your bookmarks to rotoguru1.com will be more efficient and probably more reliable. (Note that this does not apply to the rotoguru.com or rotoguru2.com domains, which remain distinct from rotoguru1.com.) If you use the links from this page (or from the forum), they are already updated. But your stored bookmarks are obviously your responsibility.

11/6 - Staring at so many available trades in TSN Ultimate Hoops, it is tempting to use them quickly, as trade-a-holics will attest. It isn't difficult - especially early in the year - to find multi-player swaps that look like they should pick up significant points over the next week or so. It is easy to get seduced by the early point averages when they really aren't very stable. So it's not unusual for today's slam dunk 3-player swap to look like a boneheaded move just 3 days later. Oftentimes the best strategy is to use trades slowly, making only the most obvious moves to pickup points and value. If I'm on the fence about the advisability of a particular swap, my mantra tends to be "when in doubt, do nothing."

One nice side effect of managing multiple teams is that you can try alternative approaches at the same time. I've decided to trade fairly aggressively with one team, hoping not to get burned by excessive injuries in the first month. With my other two teams, I'm going to pace myself, hoping that a few more days of information allows me to make better, longer term decisions. The fantasy Hoops season has 164 game days, and so far we're only through 8 of them. There's plenty of time to recover from missed opportunities, if needed.

Happy trading!

11/5 - Congrats to Football Pickoff entrant skinneej2 who got 13/14 correct this weekend for 773 points. Honorable mention goes to lfrit who also picked 13 winners, but whose point total was 50 back. In addition to taking the top weekly honors, they are the early leaders for the midseason prize, which now appears as a sort option for the Pickoff standings.

If you had both the Green Bay defense and Ahman Green for last night's game, you got a handsome return of 858 TSNP, made even sweeter because those picks appear to have been rather uncommon for this week. After a weak start with negatives in its first two games, the Green Bay defense has really come on strong, and now ranks second in TSNP/G (behind only Tampa Bay.)

Six NBA players achieved TSNPs in the 50's last night, and none were named Kobe - since he didn't play.

TSN Hoops trades get refreshed for tomorrow's trading pleasure. This does not necessarily imply that gains and losses will be larger tomorrow. Remember that gains and losses are related the proportion of trades for a player relative to the total trades for that day. If there is a central theme to tomorrow's trading, some values may be exaggerated, but it will not be solely due to the higher overall trade volume.

11/4 - I looked back at last year's Lakers games in which Shaq was absent. There were 14 such games, during which Kobe Bryant averaged 45 TSNP, which is pretty respectable, but doesn't suggest anything that would lead one to expect his outrageous production in four games this year: 66 TSNP/G, 2 triple doubles, and two games above 80 TSNP. So far, he's been the fantasy difference-maker. Check the top teams in your league, and you'll probably find him.

The Lakers play only 6 times in the next two weeks, so if you don't have him now, it might be a little tardy to be adding him. On the other hand, I'm reminded of Shawn Marion's start two years ago, when he continued to rack up huge total points in spite of a lighter than average schedule. At 66 TSNP/G, light schedules don't matter. You'll just have to decide whether this version of Kobe will keep showing up.

I could have used Kobe on my TSN football team this weekend, where his 170 TSNP would have topped six of my actual starters. In fact, he singlehandedly outproduced the combined threesome of Michael Vick, Fred Taylor, and Deion Branch! After a big weekend last week, I "mean-regressed". And I really mean regress!

11/1 - The Halloween hard disk massacre!

I'm still not quite sure what the dimensions of the rotoguru1.com server failure were. Last night, the server went down at about 10:30pm EST for "emergency disk maintenance", with an expected downtime of an hour. This morning, it finally came back up at 11:45am EST. It appears that all files ( forum threads, stats, pickoff picks) have been salvaged, but I have not done a thorough reconnaissance yet. If you notice anything that looks awry, please let me know.

I'm currently working on a backup version of the sortable stats, and if rotoguru1 fails again, I should have an alternative available the next time. The Assimilator is on a different server and was not impacted. The forum is less easily transported, and my previous backup alternative (with Swirve's public forums) is no longer available. I'll look into alternative backups for that.

Ugh.

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