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| With today being the first day of the league's fifth season a Newsletter is in order... | I'd like to welcome all new members who have registered in the last few weeks, hopefully you enjoy the experience. There are three official games available for sign up with two more unofficial games available. Four of the five games will be run through the league website. The first game of the 2012-2013 season is Fantasy Golf. The game is run through Yahoo! and begins Friday with the first deadline of the season being 3:35 PM ET. The ID is 7050 with a password of 123456, there will be three groups this season. If you're in one of the first two groups, you don't need to join the third. The other official games currently available are for the 2011-2012 season. If you joined ASFL2 on January 1st, 2012 or later, you aren't eligible to earn championship points for the 2011-2012 season. You're still welcome to participate, but you'll only have bragging rights and gaining experience on the line. NFL Playoffs Pickem is the simplest game on the ASFL2 game list. Select the winners for each game of the NFL playoffs before the playoffs begin. You earn points for each correct pick with picks in later rounds worth more than picks in earlier rounds. The deadline to submit your entry for the game is 4:27 PM ET on Saturday. Make sure to sign up for the game before submitting your entry. The other official game available is Fantasy NFL Playoffs, in which you need to submit a lineup for each round of the NFL playoffs. Your lineup consists of a QB, a RB, 2 WRs, a TE, a K and a team defense. The catch is you can't use the same player (or team defense) in more than one round of the playoffs. The player scoring is the same as we use for Fantasy Football. The deadline to submit your lineup for the Wild Card Round is also 4:27 PM ET on Saturday. The first unofficial game available has been running since August. Premier League Pickem will continue until mid-May, but bonus points earned from the game will factor into the 2011-2012 championship standings. The second unofficial game is the first available for the 2012-2013 season. Fantasy Tennis will be back for its second run on the league message board, this time spanning an additional two months. To participate, simply submit your eight-player team for each sex at each of the ten tournaments. |
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The most pertinent item on the horizon for members are games soon to become available. Fantasy NASCAR should be available to join within the next week. Once Yahoo! makes the game available, check the league message board for the new Fantasy NASCAR thread which will have the group ID and password for the open ASFL2 group. As groups fill, the information will be updated with the new ID. The same process will hold true for Fantasy Baseball when it comes available in around a month. The only difference will be a thread featuring available draft times instead of an ID and password. Reply to the Fantasy Baseball Draft Times thread with your draft preferences and you'll receive an email with your designated league ID and password once enough responses are received by the league. For more information about when games become available, check out the league timeline with the breakdown for all games on the official game list. Information on unofficial games is announced as it becomes known, but the list of recurring unofficial games is available on the Fantasy Games section's navigation bar. I hope to announce AFL Pickem's move to the website from the message board shortly after Fantasy Baseball is made available. From there I hope to also move CFL Pickem & College Football Pickem to the website before the summer. After that, my focus will turn to Fantasy NASCAR & Fantasy Golf while tying up some other feature loose ends and perhaps tweaking a few of the existing games to improve performance. Even further down the line are moving Fantasy Formula 1 onto the website and creating games for the IRL, NBA playoffs & NHL playoffs. With my finding employment, I'm still adapting to having less sustained time to get things done and as a result, it's tough for me to know what I'm capable of getting done at this point. |
Elsewhere around the website, I've set up the purchase form for this year's Super Bowl Pools. You can sign up for a randomized pool or an odds-based pool. The randomized pools feature squares worth $1 or $5 with your square determined at random the weekend of the Super Bowl. The Odds-based pool allows you to pick your square, but the squares with better odds cost considerably more than the squares that aren't as likely to win. The Keeper Leagues Fantasy Baseball drafts will hopefully be available in the coming weeks. If you're interested in a Fantasy Baseball Keeper League team, watch the website for more information on when to bid for a team. I also hope to iron out a scoring system that automatically accounts for the number of divisions in each game, but I'm not sure I'll have time before the coming season begins. Beyond work specific to a section of the website, I'm also working toward further implementing sessions throughout the website as well as creating an FAQ section to help new members learn the ropes and provide an extra means of bonus points earning for those that help me respond to questions. Also on the docket, I hope to improve the domain front to include statistics from each of the sports covered by games on the website as well as expanding the number and range of news pieces features on the website. In the mean time, I've been working to recruit new members on Yahoo! for roughly a month and could use help where possible. The website as a whole hit a milestone on January 2nd as it marked the ten year anniversary of the day that set the events that led to the ASFL2's existence in motion. To commemorate the anniversary, I'm hoping to tie up some lose ends from the original simulation league that was run on the website. Once they're tied up, I hope to potentially revive the league under a new format that would see everything managed on the website instead of manually updated from outside programs. If you're interested in a simulation football league, keep track of this thread on the message board. The whole process will take time and likely involve plenty of help to be possible. |
I've finally fully automated the newsletter process to where they are now sent automatically through the website instead of my email account and they are not sent to members that are deemed retired, inactive, or banned. If you want to be removed from the newsletter's email list, you need to update your Member Profile, including your status and which games you do or do not want to participate in. I hope to have the option for active members to no longer receive the newsletter emails in the future. I've also added a "Forgot Password" button to the edit member profile page. |
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