No really, what happened to this week? It flew by. While I will accept the fact that my advancing age is contributing to this feeling at an ever increasing rate, this past week seemed particularly quick. I was scrambling last night to check my starting lineups and get my pool picks in prior to the Browns-Ravens kickoff, as I could have sworn the day was only Wednesday. We couldn’t have shot past Wednesday already, did we? Oh yeah, we did.

Now it is Friday, midday, and my kids have one of those teacher conference days where the kids don’t go to school. If you have school age kids but haven’t heard of such a thing before, just think of it as a randomly scheduled annoyance for working parents. I hate those days. Love my kids, but love my work too and need time to concentrate on that work. Clearly, I don’t need to miss a work day since my brain is losing track of whole days as it is.

Anyway, lets do some quick hits to basically sum up what is going on with Fantasy Throwdown at the quarter-pole of the 2012 season. We have some exciting stuff we are working on, but nothing concrete yet for a big announcement, so consider this a snapshot of what has happened and a sneak peek of what is on the horizon.

• First, let us say THANKS! for playing Fantasy Throwdown. For many of you, you’re back after last season’s beta year. We still aren’t promoting the site heavily (although you are more than welcome to promote it as much as you can). It wouldn’t take much to convince us this is an extended beta, or beta-2 year, but great to see so many returning members, plus some new ones who found us and are trying the Throwdown experience for the first time in 2012. Welcome and welcome back!
• We definitely did have a stats problem in Week 1, and hopefully this is the last time we ever have to mention it. We apologize for that long delay getting the stats as a result of our stats provider service severely dropping the ball. They apparently dropped the ball, kicked it out of the stadium where it landed on a boat and was taken out to sea. We are on to a new stats provider and we feel much better about receiving accurate and timely stats going forward.
• User Scott Kuff sent me an email earlier this week letting me know he and seven buddies formed the first ever – as far as I know – Fantasy Throwdown league! Wow, very cool. They created a 17-week schedule, each playing three Throwdown games per week. The schedule includes different formats they must follow depending on the week, such as standard scoring or PPR, team defense or IDP, bench players only, etc. Here is a shout out to all of the guys in the inaugural Throwdown league:

  Airbus79 Dbrand77 Gmyers Kevin7742

  kuff42 PurpleCurse Scott Kuff Terminalkennedy

  Watch out for Terminalkennedy if you get matched up in a challenge against him. He is in the driver’s seat right now at the top of the league standings at 8-1.

• It didn’t take long until we weren’t happy with how players got ranked on the Leaderboard last year, so this year, that old Leaderboard formula and methodology is out, but as of yet we haven’t finalized the method we want to use for 2012. We are close though. We have something we think is going to work well – a secret formula, if you will – but I want to finalize numbers and make sure all of the calculations are correct before updating the Leaderboard on the website.
• Throwdown t-shirts! They do exist. I’ve been rotating through two of them and I can only guess Matt’s wife Alicia wears one while working on her next big house project, but otherwise not very many Throwdown players have one of these rare commodities. How does one get one? Well, you need to be the “first” to do something to help promote or improve or enhance the Fantasy Throwdown experience. It is an open-ended challenge to earn your own t-shirt.
• Some of the things I’d most love to improve with the website experience, both short and long-term, include the following:
  • Finalize the Leaderboard
  • Redesign the Lobby, so it is more of a landing spot with Site News and forum posts right on the main Lobby page
  • Turn Facebook auto-posts and Twitter auto-tweets back on for connected users, for things like challenge results, but limited to perhaps one per 24-hour period.
  • Add injury report info to the available players list
  • Adjust some backend programming and database design to allow for improved game history results
  • Mobile friendly!

  Of course many of these things are a big project just on their own, so we’ll plug away at them as we are able.

• Taking a lead from Scott and crew, I’d like to start my own Throwdown league. I’m thinking a 6 to 8 week format instead of the whole season. Love the idea about the different game setups each week, too. Hopefully I can get this rolling soon.

Okay, lets call it a day with that. Best of luck in your Week 4 Throwdown matches. Frank’s Flops returns next week!

Last week we lost Rydawpark off the Leaderboard. And when I say lost him I don’t mean his ranking fell or his win percentage was too low to rank. He sports a 9-8 won-loss record (.529) and he has the fourth most games played of all Throwdown players. His name however, just disappeared off the Leaderboard after I scored the Week 5 games.

Even I was surprised, and assumed it was a glitch in the matrix. Upon further investigation however, I learned the reason he got bumped was because he didn’t meet a condition of the top-secret formula developed to rank our Fantasy Throwdown players. So top-secret, I even forgot all the parts of the formula. So I am going to spill the beans on how our Leaderboard formula works. Here is what you need to do to get ranked:

1. Must play five or more games

2. Must play against two or more different opponents

3. Must play against X or more different opponents where X = number of games / 4 (rounded up)

Once you’ve met all conditions, then you get a spot on the Leaderboard and the rankings are by win percentage.

Rydawpark hit the first two conditions, but once he got 13 games under his belt, Throwdown no longer gave him a ranking. At 13 games he needed to play against four different opponents (13 / 4 = 3.25, rounded up to 4). So far he’s played against raptors (which as our current #1 player should be worth something), Ravage (reverse effect, right Jay?) and myself, or three different opponents.

The reason for us setting up the Leaderboard ranking formula like this is to promote challenging different people, which helps us get more people to play Throwdown, but also gives more legitimacy to the rankings. If someone is racking up a lot of wins against one or two people, then they shouldn’t be ranked ahead of someone who earned his win percentage against a larger, more diverse group of players.

That was our theory anyway when we developed the ranking methodology, and we’re sticking with it for now. When I told raptors about how this works he asked, “so if I just keep playing the same guys I’ll eventually fall off the Leaderboard too?” “Yes.”

So help these guys, and yourself, by accepting public challenges in the Lobby to increase the number of different opponents each of you has played against. Now I just need to double check the system is counting the different opponents correctly. One more thing for my to-do list.

Welcome New Users

Don’t forget to check the weekly Fantasy Throwdown stats posted in the forum, here. I added a new query to my stats to identify new users who played their first Throwdown game last week.

With that I’d like to send out a welcome to Oman!!, Steve smithpres, steelersrock and rj12. Welcome aboard guys and thanks for playing!

Leaderboard Update

I didn’t have a good week so raptors not only beat me, but I fell a few games behind him on the Leaderboard thanks to losses to newbie steelersrock, tpmathis and Rick (again – Rick is on a roll!). At least I won my $5 / week game against akareckas and I beat Matt by a narrow margin thanks to Santonio Holmes coming through for me on Monday night.

fudbuccaneer pulls up into third spot on the Leaderboard with a .500 record. ThunderMonkey and BuffaloMudwings are a game behind, but it is unlikely both of them jump up the standings at the same time since they tend to beat up on each other.

We have about 30 different users playing Throwdown, but only 8 on the Leaderboard currently. We’ll see who meets all three conditions after Week 7 and where they land in the rankings.

Site Changes

Last thing before I sign off, is I know in prior weeks users have been unable to check their Throwdown games from the Game Manager once the NFL games start on Sunday, to remember what players they drafted and what players are going against them. The games would then re-appear in the Game Manager after they are scored final late Sunday or Monday night.

I believe this issue is now fixed, although we can’t truly test it until this weekend. All games should remain in the Game Manager – Current until they are scored final, at which time they move to Game Manager – History. Keep an eye on that this week and let us know if you notice any issues.

Thanks again for playing Fantasy Throwdown! Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter @FantasyThrowdwn (not a typo; we’re one letter too long for Twitter), and go challenge some friends to a game of Throwdown.