How About A $100,000 Grand Prize In The NFBC Cutline?

[Deadheadz]

It sounds like we want Cutline to be everything to everybody but of course that's impossible.

You say you want to "grow the game" but the majority of the people who are asking for changes are the ones who already are playing the higher stakes, higher time commitment leagues.

If you cater to them and eliminate roster expansion you deter early entries from first time players, casual players and players who do have the time for twice yearly faab because they're not already doing weekly faab for 10+ leagues.

Do you have any concerns that maybe too much is going to change all at once? With the new IT crew and new FAAB tools is it too soon to be scrapping the idea of roster expansion before we've seen yet how easy it might be?

Maybe NFBC doesn't have to provide contests that necessarily appeal to everyone. Just because some high budget players want to have 20-50 teams do you have to change the nature of the game so much that you'll push away 100-200 people who would have drafted in December-February but didn't because it's too early to know the players who make the MLB out of spring training?

It's starting to feel a lot like the trend you saw in DFS where the guys who had the time and money to enter 100 lineups into a tournament would have an advantage due to sheer numbers and the ability to tweak each lineup just a bit from the one they found to be optimum. They scared away all the little fish. Do you want a Cutline where 50 people buy 1000 entries or would you like to see 500 people buy 1500 entries?

I won't boycott the game whatever the changes might be but if you want to grow the game it seems to me you want more people and more new people involved not just more entries from the people who are already your loyal customers.

We've heard the NFBC doesn't want to fragment the market by offering too many games or I might suggest the following four contests:

Classic Draft Champions
Best Ball Draft Champions
FAAB Cutline
No FAAB Cutline

Whatever happens it might be good for the Cutline to have some stability rather than changing rules every season. Tweaks are fine but removing FAAB completely before trying it out with the new FAAB system/tools seems agressive.

[Gekko]

Going to a draft of 42 with no roster expansion is OK. However, I think it's mandatory to have two FAAB periods to replace as many of those 42 as you want.

this is the winner

[CC's Desperados]

I'll go off the grid here.

Rather than league prizes, could you just have a prize pool that has enough length to pay 10 to 20 percent of the owners? (Not sure how deep you paid overall prizes in the past). Or something like if you qualify for the championship round, you earn your entry back. In the next round, you double you entry. Maybe the next round, 4 X you entry then the top tier prizes.

How about 42 players to start with a CDM flavor added? Have three add periods, Start of the season, 1st Monday in May, and 1st Monday in June. Each owner has three big moves (one each period) in which that can add any player rostered to help cover major injuries. Next give each owner, 12 adds to replace injured players. There are direct adds (while cutting someone) off the free agent pool so again, there wlll be roster overlap, but this will remove all the time needed for FAAB. The 12 replacement players can be used any time over the first three periods so a healthy team can hold their moves while an injuries plagued team can try to save the franchise rather than lose before the season starts.

Just some thoughts to throw out there...

[Gekko]

Any word on final rules and prize structures?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Any word on final rules and prize structures?

Let us get payments made from 2017 before announcing 2018's contests. The plan for Cutline is similar to last year and a $50,000 grand prize. We like the 42 rounds of drafts without expanding rosters through FAAB. We like two FAAB periods. Working on the rest.

[Cocktails and Dreams]

normal points style scoring and i would play a lot of these. Won't play with what I deem to be poor scoring rules and design. You cannot replicate roto into points nor should it be attempted. Deal breaker for me.

As for the universal FAAB, that is a hell of an idea. Especially if there were to be no league prizes. One problem with contests with lower buy ins is that leagues have vastly different levels of FAAB competition. This takes care of that problem.

One idea is not having faab to make it less time consuming. Rather a priority bidding system where you list the players you want and how many guys you are willing to drop from for that player. Then have some sort of pecking order, whether it be worst to first, reverse draft order, random, or many other options. This saves time consuming adjustments of bid prices for several drops and also prevents the impossible guessing game of how to try to crap the more bang for your buck. It varies by the league so much on what method would have worked best.

I still would like to be involved with getting this faab system designed perfectly. I have done a lot of faab on a lot of platforms and am very much willing to help you guys have the best one that can take advantage of the best of all of them and eliminate the worst of all of them. It is desperately needed for the cutline contests. It is a legendary pain in the ass as it stands now, just having done the footall version this week.

[Deadheadz]

Likewise, another idea discussed in the past would be to have all free agents in one contest-wide pool, so if one player was available in 20 different leagues the top 20 bidders from all 200+ leagues would win that player. In other words, once the draft was over your specific league of 10 is irrelevant, you're competing against everyone in the entire contest for all league prizes and free agents.

this was a Gekko exclusive years ago.

if leagues prizes are gone, there should be universal FAAB. so if you have 210 leagues (2,100 owners) and lets say Bellinger was drafted in 10 of them. there would be 200 Bellinger's available to the 200 teams that bid the highest, even if 5 of them are in the same league. two thumbs up with this one

This universal FAAB sounds cool but wouldn't it mean a player who already had Aaron Judge from the draft could get another Aaron Judge in the FAAB? WTF??

[mbendar16]

It's a universal FAAB suggestion, not a universal league. If only 1 league had judge available, 10 owners would be eligible to bid. If 20 leagues had him available, 200 owners could bid, with 20 getting him, of which 10 could be in the same league. I believe this is how it would work, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Cocktails and Dreams]

Good points. It could work if well thought out. Possibly too complicated for the reasons mentioned.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I still would like to be involved with getting this faab system designed perfectly. I have done a lot of faab on a lot of platforms and am very much willing to help you guys have the best one that can take advantage of the best of all of them and eliminate the worst of all of them. It is desperately needed for the cutline contests. It is a legendary pain in the ass as it stands now, just having done the footall version this week.

We certainly are interested in getting as much feedback from our players as possible before finalizing this new FAAB setup. I am extremely confident that we'll have tools in place to make this better than we have already and a time saver for sure. We definitely will be able to incorporate a quick one-click process for any free agent that shows you what leagues he's available in among all of your leagues. I love the idea the programmers have for this and this will definitely be a part of the 2018 baseball software. I will explain what we saw this past weekend in a separate post shortly.

But yes, we will reach out to several of you for insight and input. We want the best FAAB setup for the best baseball game around and once we perfect it here we'll incorporate it into 2018 NFFC and 2018-19 NFBKC. Let's do this together.

Thanks all.

[Rainiers]

The best ball format is flat-out great fun. Cutline is a blast and I'm all in no matter how you tweak it.

Glad you are looking to try and make it better. Improving FAAB will help all games, especially this one.

I have one minor suggestion regarding free agent eligibility, especially if FAAB is held on Tuesdays. Allow any player that has played in a MLB game through Monday to be eligible. It's frustrating not to be able to bid on a top prospect that has been up and playing the last couple of days.

I have a major suggestion on how you could solve the how-to-keep-the-draft-short-while-limiting-roster-expansion conundrum. Way too late in the game for 2018, but something to consider for 2019. I'd love to share it with you in Arizona in a couple weeks. Over some Coronas of course. On me. Keep up the terrific work guys.

[Greg Ambrosius]

The best ball format is flat-out great fun. Cutline is a blast and I'm all in no matter how you tweak it.

Glad you are looking to try and make it better. Improving FAAB will help all games, especially this one.

I have one minor suggestion regarding free agent eligibility, especially if FAAB is held on Tuesdays. Allow any player that has played in a MLB game through Monday to be eligible. It's frustrating not to be able to bid on a top prospect that has been up and playing the last couple of days.

I have a major suggestion on how you could solve the how-to-keep-the-draft-short-while-limiting-roster-expansion conundrum. Way too late in the game for 2018, but something to consider for 2019. I'd love to share it with you in Arizona in a couple weeks. Over some Coronas of course. On me. Keep up the terrific work guys.

Sounds good Robert. I'll be there in 11 days, but who's counting? See you there and Corona's on you is my kind of deal!!