Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

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Greg Ambrosius
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Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Thu Feb 15, 2018 9:37 am

We are off to a great start in the NFBC Draft Champions Leagues and we're so glad to bring in so many new customers thanks to the NFBC $50 DCs. The 4-Hour and 2-Hour time frames rather than 8 hours not only has been a big hit for our customers, but is now being copied by our competitors in baseball and football. It's amazing how long it takes to make change and how easily people can adapt to that change.

With that being said, we still have to set a deadline on when we can start these Draft Champions Leagues and get them finished before the start of the Major League season on Thursday, March 29th. We also need to do something about these final leagues taking longer than leagues that start in December and January. Every year we have to shorten the time frame of these last drafts to get them completed, so we plan on being more pro-active this year.

So here's the plan:

We will stop taking signups for the NFBC $50 Draft Champions Leagues after Tuesday, March 6th. Those are all 4-Hour leagues and thus we'll turn those private leagues off so that we have 23 days to finish them. We will still offer nightly $50 Draft Champions Express leagues, but the 4-Hour leagues will conclude after leagues fill on March 6th.

We will stop taking signups for the NFBC $150 and $400 4-Hour Draft Champions Leagues on Wednesday, March 7th. Again, that still gives us 22-23 days to complete them. We probably have a little wiggle room here with this format, but three weeks out is about as close to Opening Day as we want to get for this format.

We won't put a hard, fast cutoff date for the NFBC $150 2-Hour Draft Champions Leagues, but likely the weekend of March 8th-10th will be it. We know we can finish these in 10-15 days, but we have seen them drag on for 17 days or so. Hopefully everyone who enters these last ones will understand a sense of urgency there.

Okay, now for a more drastic change and I think it's something we will put into the rules for 2019:

All Draft Champions Leagues that start on March 1st or later will have their selection times shortened by 1 hour once they complete 30 Rounds. We have seen where these last 20 rounds do drag in NFBC Draft Champions Leagues, especially in drafts that start once spring training begins. A lot of people like to take the extra time to watch spring training performances or reports and thus those last 20 rounds seem to drag on and on. We eventually have to drastically cut those times as we get into those final days, sometimes down to 15 or 30 minutes per pick. We always get these drafts completed, but the idea isn't to force everyone to be online for the last day to complete 10 rounds.

We don't have this technically installed yet, so this is something that me, Darik and Tom will manually do. When we see a DC hitting Round 31 that started on March 1st or later, we will move the 4 hours per pick to 3 hours and the 2 hours per pick to 1 hour. If that speed is too fast for your liking, then definitely don't jump into a 2-Hour DC. But let's see how this goes and hopefully it will be better than changing the time to 30 minutes over the last two days of your drafts.

I know some people have asked us to shorten the time in half for the 4 Hours, but let's see how reducing it by 1 hour works. Again, we're not trying to force these picks on you and we know that you all are working during the day, but the system now is set up so nicely that you can easily put players in your Que for any round. If you get auto-picked, it should be taking a Round 35 pick from the top of your Que. And if you don't know how that works, contact me and I'll walk you through it.

We will also look at shortening the over-night Pause soon. Now that we have the multi-round Ques where you can put different players in different rounds, we feel a 6-Hour overnight Pause is suitable. If we agree to that, we will Pause the draft clock from 2 am ET to 8 am ET. If you're not on the clock before you go to bed, you can easily set your Que for one or more rounds and really not miss a pick even if you sleep 8 hours. Hope this makes sense.

We've come a long way this year in improving the experience of competing in the Draft Champions format. Moving away from 8 hours per pick has been a sweet move and an industry trendsetter. Moving to 2 hours per pick was a smart move. Finding ways to get through the last 20 rounds makes sense, as does shortening the overnight Pause. Let's keep fine-tuning this so that this format continues to grow each year and the experience gets better and better. Keep the ideas coming and let's lead the way in this great, great format.

Thanks all and plan accordingly going forward. We're ready for another record-breaking season in the DC format.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
Twitter - @GregAmbrosius

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Re: Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:36 am

Just a heads up that there are 14 DAYS LEFT to sign up for the NFBC 4-Hour Draft Champions Leagues. We will stop taking signups for this format on Tuesday, March 6th to give everyone 22 days to finish these leagues. Also a heads up that we'll shorten the last 20 rounds by 1 hour in this format, so plan accordingly.

We are closing in on 100 DC leagues to date with a goal for over 200 leagues. We have some work to do, but we expect a strong push for these, the 2-Hour Draft Champions Leagues and the Express leagues. Let's do it.

Jump in now and let's compete for the $30,000 grand prize, the highest top prize we've ever had for this format. Thanks all and good luck.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
Twitter - @GregAmbrosius

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Re: Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Thu Feb 22, 2018 9:31 am

Just an FYI: We'll likely end the $50 Draft Champions 4-Hour Leagues earlier than we first thought. We are seeing these last a little longer than the $150 DCs and so we'll likely cut them off earlier than those. Look for these to likely stop next Tuesday or Wednesday, certainly before March 1st. Plan accordingly and we'll still have the $150 2-Hour and 4-Hour Draft Champions leagues for a week after that. Enjoy.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
Twitter - @GregAmbrosius

Gb2715
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Re: Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by Gb2715 » Thu Feb 22, 2018 10:57 am

12 team leagues taking longer than the 15 team leagues? Wow

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Re: Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Mon Feb 26, 2018 10:19 am

Just a reminder about how the DCs are going to speed up for the last 20 rounds of those that start after March 1st. We'll manual move the clocks up, so plan accordingly. We can do more Draft Champions leagues in March if we make these last 20 rounds go a bit faster. Thanks all and plan accordingly.

Also, the NFBC $50 Draft Champions leagues will be shut off this week. We will still offer $50 DC Express Leagues going forward, but the 4-Hour offerings will be shut down soon. Enjoy and thanks for a great debut season of this format.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
Twitter - @GregAmbrosius

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Re: Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue Feb 27, 2018 1:50 pm

Just a heads up that we are shutting down the NFBC $50 Draft Champions Leagues today. Here's your last chance to jump into these 4-Hour leagues. The NFBC $50 DC Express Leagues will continue through March 28th.

The NFBC $150 4-Hour and 2-Hour Draft Champions Leagues will continue through the early part of next week. Plan accordingly as these also need to stop 21 days or so before Opening Day. Thanks all and good luck.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
Twitter - @GregAmbrosius

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Re: Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by sjwin » Tue Feb 27, 2018 10:36 pm

Were all of the 4-hour DC leagues currently in progress after round 30 shifted to the 2-hour clock earlier than expected? The one that I am participating in has converted to the 2-hour clock.
Scott Winhold

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Greg Ambrosius
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Re: Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Thu Mar 01, 2018 11:08 am

Okay, just a reminder that we have about 7 days left to start these NFBC $150 4-Hour Draft Champions Leagues. Jump into one now if you want to compete for the $30,000 grand prize. The ROI is looking good for this format as time is running out on the $150 and $400 formats. Let's get these filled and rolling.

Also, any draft that starts today or going forward will have one hour shortened on the clock for Rounds 31-50. So once a March 1st DC gets to Round 31 we will shorten the clock to 3 hours. We'll keep an eye on the 2-Hour DCs and shorten them where needed as well. If those are cruising well as is we will leave them alone, but be prepared for a 1 hour clock as we get closer to the end of March. Thanks and good luck.

Also, the overnight pause is now 7 hours instead of 8 hours. We pause the clock from 1 am to 8 am ET each night, but you can still make picks during that time. Thanks all and enjoy.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
Twitter - @GregAmbrosius

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Re: Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by Steel Lugnuts » Thu Mar 01, 2018 12:24 pm

How about, in the 4-hr DC, any team that times out after the 30th rd automatically goes on auto (they cannot remove auto unless they give you some excuse and you decide to take off auto). After two time outs, then even you won't take auto off.

We just had a team TO in the 32rd one-minute before the timer paused! lol

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Re: Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:47 am

Okay, last call for the NFBC 4-Hour Draft Champions Leagues. Let's take signups through the day and try to start the last of these 4-Hour $150 and $400 DCs by Wednesday at the latest. It's been a good year for this format, but we need to build in 21 days to finish all of these. Just a reminder that we will move the clock to 3 hours and possibly shorter for the last 20 rounds of all DCs that start March 1st or later.

Who wants in? Last call for alcohol!! :lol:
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
Twitter - @GregAmbrosius

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