3/16 - The Puerto Rico Open ended rather Lamely for GuruGolf, as no foursome even had the tournament winner. As expected, team scores were bunched, with a pair of teams carding a -51 for bestball, and another pair tying for the top worstball score of +38. On to the next tournament.

Speaking of the next tournament, the PGA event isn’t the only one starting on Thursday, in case you hadn’t noticed. If you are new to the Market Madness format, don't despair when you read the scoring rules. Even if you don't "get it", fill out a set of picks and try it for a year. Once you've lived through a tournament, you'll catch on, and be much better prepared next year. If you want a few simple tips, try these:

• For your shorts, look for first round upsets, and short the loser. For example, if you think that Lehigh(16) will beat Kansas(1), then short Kansas. You might also try shorting one or two of the top seed baskets (1-3). For example, shorting the #1 seeds gives you plenty of opportunities to profit from an early upset - as long as the tournament doesn't go too “chalky”!
• For longs, pick the 4 teams you expect to survive to the Final Four. In many instances, it's good to take those teams not only as single teams, but also in their basket forms - unless you think the other teams in those baskets are really overrated.
• Pick one or two double-digit seeds as longs. These will pay off well if they make it to the Sweet 16.

3/15 - This is the start of one of the busiest weeks of the year at RotoGuru World Headquarters, with the start of the Market Madness Contest and the RIBC draft. This year, the situation is compounded by the delayed finish of the Puerto Rico Open golf tournament (with the attendant delay in some GuruGolf processing), and the late launch of the TSN RotoHog Salary Cap Baseball game.

Enough whining about my busy schedule. From your perspective, the most critical issue is to get your picks selected in the Market Madness Contest. I’ll post some strategic tips in the next couple of days on how to make your picks, but for now, your job is to register up to three entries and get familiar with this basis of this unique contest. Obviously, all picks must be made by the opening tipoff on Thursday, so there’s not much time to procrastinate.

Those of you who have played TSN Salary Cap games in the past probably got the email announcing their exit from the fantasy game arena. What was not mentioned in that email is that RotoHog is offering a clone version of the TSN baseball game. For more information, see the RotoHog Salary Cap Baseball thread at the RotoGuru Baseball Forum.

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3/12 - Yesterday brought a number of RotoGuru-relevant developments, some short term, and some with potential longer term implications.

In the shortest term issue, the Puerto Rico Open started yesterday morning, but just barely. Only fifteen players had teed off when play was suspended (weather), and there is a chance that today may be a washout as well. If the tournament extends past the weekend, GuruGolf roster setting for the next event will be delayed, since repricing for next week is dependent on the Puerto Rico results.

Second, the Market Madness contest site has been re-activated. There isn’t really much to do for now, however. The site will be offline again on Sunday evening to set up the 2010 brackets, and then reopened by 10pm or so. You can register now if you wish, although you can certainly wait until next week for that.

Third, the RIBC (baseball) draft will be starting on Monday morning (and maybe getting an early jump this weekend.) I’ll post a link to the draft results in Monday’s blurb. For the next couple of weeks, baseball drafting will be a real time killer for me!

Finally, RotoHog launched a Salary Cap baseball game yesterday. Looking at the rules, it is clear that this is essentially a clone of the basic and ultimate TSN games from prior years. Since TSN has not (yet) released a similar game (nor are they even commenting on it), the presumption is that TSN is folding its fantasy games tent and/or RotoHog will be taking over that enterprise – although the total lack of comment from TSN leaves us all guessing if there is more to this story. In any event, it looks like you’ll have to move to the RotoHog site if you want to play the TSN salary cap style of game. I’ll plan to provide comparable stats and tools for that game, although the change in platform creates some technical issues that will delay my ability to produce those stats right away.

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3/11 - Tyreke Evans has been losing TSN ownership in the last several days, but that’s mostly (maybe entirely) a consequence of the crowded field of guards with good schedules, and not a reflection of Evans’ recent performance. In any event, he made his sellers pay last night, notching his first career triple-double. Maybe I should have dropped Rondo instead of Evans in order to pick up Wade. Oh well.

The Puerto Rico Open has teed off, and GuruGolf roster diversity is not in evidence this week, as only 65 different golfers are in play. Alex Prugh climbed over Boo Weekley to be the most widely owned golfer, on more than 40% of active foursomes. Moreover, you need only 14 different golfers to fill 75% of all active spots on GuruGolf teams this week. And 36 different golfers appear on 3 rosters or less – so if any of them has a big week, it could be quite a competitive coup. If not, then the top team scores will probably be clustered together.

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3/10 - It was a “bipolar” day for UConn basketball yesterday. The men’s team completed a late season meltdown, while the women’s team continued to steamroll, winning their 72nd straight game. Evidently, even Jim Calhoun can’t figure out the men’s team, while no opponent can figure out the women.

This week, GuruGolf ventures to the Puerto Rico Open, ignoring the WGC event since it offers no cut. In all likelihood, your GuruGolf team will need some adjustments, so get it done today, as the first tee time tomorrow is at 5:55am ET.

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3/9 - RotoHog seems to be slower than usual in launching baseball games. Today, they finally launched their own Stock Exchange Baseball game. I haven’t looked it over yet, other than to notice that the user interface looks like a clone of the TSN/RotoHog interface. There is still no posted launch date for the TSN Salary Cap game, other than “Coming Soon”.

Speaking of launches, I expect to have the Market Madness Contest site up and running in the next few days. Admittedly, there isn’t much to do until the brackets are announced on Sunday night, but I obviously need to get the basic framework setup before then. I just want to confirm for now that the contest will run as usual this year.

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3/8 - We’re in the “eye” of a change in schedule regime in the NBA. A number of popular players have reached the end of their dense schedules (OKC, Atlanta, and Cleveland are three prime examples), while several other teams start a busy period tomorrow. The transitions aren’t particularly seamless, which explains some choppy trading patterns this week. And LeBron’s DNP on Saturday threw a bit of a monkey wrench into plans. But this is a week in the TSN game when having some spare trades comes in handy.

Congrats to Yankee Rebels, whose -43 topped the GuruGolf best ball scoring for The Honda Classic, certainly helped by having Camilo Villegas on the team. Worst ball honors went to jeff2, whose +56 was propelled to the top with an impressive +19 in the final round.

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3/5 - It sounds like baseball fever has even reached the NBA. Here are a couple of quotes from last night’s Jazz/Suns game:

”Basketball is a game of runs…” – C.J. Miles

“I think we did a good job of not letting them hit the home run most of the night.” – Jerry Sloan

3/4 - It must have been “gotcha” day in the NBA – at least as far as TSN Ultimate Salary Cap game is considered. The biggest price loser among active players was Darren Collison, who responded with a tidy 51 TSNP game. The top gainers were Andray Blatche and Rajon Rondo. Blatche’s total of 33.5 TSNP wasn’t bad, but it was more than 30% under his average of the past two weeks, while Rondo’s 23 TSNP was just over half of his recent average.

Boo Weekley is the most widely owned GuruGolfer this week, on roughly one-third of all foursomes. About 10% of his owners dumped him after missing the cut last week, but the desire for trade conservation (or the hope for a rebound) kept his ownership relatively stable.

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3/3 - There’s nothing quite like facing Golden State to get a player’s stat line back on track. Just ask Dwyane Wade, who lit up the Warriors for 35 points, 12 assists, 6 rebounds, and 4 steals. Unfortunately for Wade, the two teams don’t meet again this season.

Incidentally, based on today’s quote, it appears that Don Nelson and Herm Edwards don’t subscribe to quite the same coaching philosophy. Maybe I’m just reading too much into Nelson’s comments, but it seems that Rasheed Wallace’s attitude is more in synch with Nelson’s.

The Honda Classic tees off bright and early (6:50am ET) tomorrow morning, as the PGA Tour moves east. GuruGolfers – get your lineups set by tonight!

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3/2 - One of these days – and the time is coming – Chris Paul will return to action, and Darren Collison will presumably have trouble finding playing time. But he’s not giving any reason for managers to bolt early, including last night’s 10 point, 15 assist, 5 rebound, 2 steal game against the Spurs. There is no set date for Paul’s return, but it should be in mid-March.

If you are working off an old NBA schedule, we’re approaching the rescheduled date for the Atlanta-Washington game that was snowed-out. This will give the Wizards an unusual stretch of 3-straight games (March 11-13) and 5 games in 6 days. For Atlanta, the extra game falls within a period when the original schedule had only one game in 7 days, so there’s no risk of overwork there.

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3/1 - March, eh?

I guess I’d better start preparing for baseball. Curiously, I’ve seen no evidence of any launch date for TSN salary cap baseball. But I’ve got to believe that if they are running golf and stock car games, they won’t skip baseball. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, there are still openings for AA managers in the RIBC qualifying leagues. We hope to fill these leagues in the next week, so if you have been on the fence, now is the time to jump in. One league will be hosted at Yahoo, and the other at ESPN. Choose your preferred host, and sign up: Yahoo league - ESPN league.

In GuruGolf, Wheatridge Deuces demolished the field, posting a seven stroke victory over the second best team for the Waste Management Phoenix Open. I don’t ever recall such a large separation from the pack. Worst ball honors were taken by louky 1, who finshed a more modest 2 strokes ahead of the closest competitor.

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