Gekko Season Wrap

[Gekko]

The Good:
1. Draft Room (once all bugs were worked out by beta testers. Thanks MTM!)
2. FAAB interface – The new FAAB interface made my Sundays the easiest they have ever been. I LOVE the feature where you can click on a player and find out what other of your leagues he is available in, what bid amount you have on him and even update your bid amount, all on a single screen. I actually wouldn’t mind playing in MORE leagues next year. NICELY DONE
3. As always, the competition was first rate

The Bad:
1. Some Sundays there were glitches in the availability of the FAAB system. Hopefully that is resolved prior to next season.
2. The new MB doesn’t not encourage folks to participate

The Ugly:
1. During a DC Express, Charlie Morton was announced and shown on the live draft board as the player selected by an owner. I think it was the 11th round. Then, in the 15th round, Charlie Morton was announced and shown on the live draft board as the player selected by a different owner? WTF? Apparently there was a draft room glitch. Multiple owners, including the initial owner who was allegedly awarded Charlie Morton in the 11th, hit the “Help button” and explained what had happened. The facilitator said they couldn’t do anything and the pick stood as is. Morton went in the 15th and some other player was selected by the draft room for the owner in the 11th but showed up as Charlie Morton. WTF is that? Charlie Morton was a target of mine in every draft. I selected him in more than half my drafts and everyone one was before the 15th round. Hopefully that BS is resolved before next drafting season.

Misc:
Yes, as Greg has mentioned, I secured my 7th main event league title and another top 10 overall performance (my 6th?). Since the main event is the NFBC’s signature event, I’m very happy with what I’ve been able to do. It’s tough competing against all of you.

I also had an auction team that finished in the top 10 overall of the auction championship and a DC team that finished in the top 10 overall of the Draft Champion championship. Not to mention various other cashes in other leagues.

I’m hoping to make it to Vegas in 2019 and compete in a large $ league or two. We’ll see if that happens.

Enjoy the offseason.

[Gekko]

Additional points I missed last night...

Good:
1. Greg/Tom/Darik are THE best in the business. Hands down. No one else comes close. These guys work tirelessly to ensure everyone has a positive experience. Best in the business IMO

2. Stewart Hotel was nice. Although this is a baseball forum, I have to say the food spread Hotel Pennsylvania put on a couple months ago for the NFFC was THE best I ever had. Tom - please try to get a similar spread moving forward. I know many other participants loved it as well

[Greg Ambrosius]

The Good:
1. Draft Room (once all bugs were worked out by beta testers. Thanks MTM!)
2. FAAB interface – The new FAAB interface made my Sundays the easiest they have ever been. I LOVE the feature where you can click on a player and find out what other of your leagues he is available in, what bid amount you have on him and even update your bid amount, all on a single screen. I actually wouldn’t mind playing in MORE leagues next year. NICELY DONE
3. As always, the competition was first rate

The Bad:
1. Some Sundays there were glitches in the availability of the FAAB system. Hopefully that is resolved prior to next season.
2. The new MB doesn’t not encourage folks to participate

The Ugly:
1. During a DC Express, Charlie Morton was announced and shown on the live draft board as the player selected by an owner. I think it was the 11th round. Then, in the 15th round, Charlie Morton was announced and shown on the live draft board as the player selected by a different owner? WTF? Apparently there was a draft room glitch. Multiple owners, including the initial owner who was allegedly awarded Charlie Morton in the 11th, hit the “Help button” and explained what had happened. The facilitator said they couldn’t do anything and the pick stood as is. Morton went in the 15th and some other player was selected by the draft room for the owner in the 11th but showed up as Charlie Morton. WTF is that? Charlie Morton was a target of mine in every draft. I selected him in more than half my drafts and everyone one was before the 15th round. Hopefully that BS is resolved before next drafting season.

Misc:
Yes, as Greg has mentioned, I secured my 7th main event league title and another top 10 overall performance (my 6th?). Since the main event is the NFBC’s signature event, I’m very happy with what I’ve been able to do. It’s tough competing against all of you.

I also had an auction team that finished in the top 10 overall of the auction championship and a DC team that finished in the top 10 overall of the Draft Champion championship. Not to mention various other cashes in other leagues.

I’m hoping to make it to Vegas in 2019 and compete in a large $ league or two. We’ll see if that happens.

Enjoy the offseason.

Congrats on another great season Gekko. Your resume after 15 years is right up there with the best, no doubt about it.

We will continue to look at FAAB and see if there are even more ways to save you time this season. Darik had a couple of ideas during yesterday's meeting that would be very helpful. Now we'll see if it's doable from a programming standpoint.

The Sunday FAAB/server issues are definitely a thing of the past. Unfortunately, it took us a bit to figure out the problem, but as you can see in football there have been no issues. Basically we will be making a change in 2019 to FAAB (which is already part of football) that helps solve this problem. Last year in FAAB the system automatically saved every FAAB move, every FAAB bid. It's a great feature, but it was part of the overloading problem. So this baseball season you will have to make sure you hit SAVE when you are done with your bids or during any part of your bids. If you forget to SAVE your bids, you'll get a popup message. The onus is back on you to save your bids. Not as nice, but it will alleviate all of the issues we had last year.

Yes, we did have that duplicate player issue in baseball before also resolving that. It happened rarely, but we know how it happened and have fixed it. Sorry about that.

I think you'll like the subtle changes we'll be announcing soon for baseball and Year 2 with the new software will allow us to spend more time tweaking everything and making it better and more presentable. We'll also look at some ways to speed up the Draft Champions leagues!!! I also want to get our history back on everyone's team pages and eventually calculate our Lifetime Standings for our different contests, showing average finishes for everyone who has played during the years. And we're looking at some in-season contests that could add to your season of fun. Lots of good stuff coming your way soon, so stay tuned.

[Tom Kessenich]

2. Stewart Hotel was nice. Although this is a baseball forum, I have to say the food spread Hotel Pennsylvania put on a couple months ago for the NFFC was THE best I ever had. Tom - please try to get a similar spread moving forward. I know many other participants loved it as well

Yeah that was really good. I remember people being very happy with the food at the Stewart in March. I'll do my best to ensure everyone is happy next year as well.

[Red Sox Nation-]

Great read. You're a beast year in and year out. As impressive of a NFBC resume as you can find. See you in March.

Jason

[Gekko]

Great read. You're a beast year in and year out. As impressive of a NFBC resume as you can find. See you in March.

Jason

You are an auction guru! You were a monster in NYC and your other auctions. I’m still trying to find a wa to beat you in that NYC auction. 2019 could be the year!

[TParsons]

Good post, Gekko. I have to agree with most of your points. It's hard to understand how that Morton situation happened. I do like the upgrades that were made to the draft room and FAAB interface. The drag and drop feature is much better than the previous version of FAAB. The one thing that I would add is that FAAB should NEVER go against the stated rules. I don't know how FAAB could ever be programmed to award winning bids in a different order than stated in the rules, but it did happen. Hopefully it was a one off situation, but there is no way that the players can tell if that is the case. Any time an automated process doesn't work correctly, you have to wonder if it may have happened in instances that weren't caught by the players. The players shouldn't have to police this kind of stuff. Rules are rules and there is no excuse for FAAB to be programmed otherwise. It's hard to blame Greg & Tom for this stuff, as I know they lean heavily on their IT teams for the back end. At the same time, this is something that is a sticking point for my partner and I during discussions for next year's investment. I don't think we can get past it without a detailed explanation of why it happened and what has been done to fix it. Maybe we can get more clarity here.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Good post, Gekko. I have to agree with most of your points. It's hard to understand how that Morton situation happened. I do like the upgrades that were made to the draft room and FAAB interface. The drag and drop feature is much better than the previous version of FAAB. The one thing that I would add is that FAAB should NEVER go against the stated rules. I don't know how FAAB could ever be programmed to award winning bids in a different order than stated in the rules, but it did happen. Hopefully it was a one off situation, but there is no way that the players can tell if that is the case. Any time an automated process doesn't work correctly, you have to wonder if it may have happened in instances that weren't caught by the players. The players shouldn't have to police this kind of stuff. Rules are rules and there is no excuse for FAAB to be programmed otherwise. It's hard to blame Greg & Tom for this stuff, as I know they lean heavily on their IT teams for the back end. At the same time, this is something that is a sticking point for my partner and I during discussions for next year's investment. I don't think we can get past it without a detailed explanation of why it happened and what has been done to fix it. Maybe we can get more clarity here.

Not sure what you are referring to here Ty, but I assume it involves the tied bids you asked about late in the year. All FAAB bids did go to the right owners this year. If the question is about tied bids, this was explained to you. The system will display two teams with $1 bids and I believe you questioned why a team higher in the standings at the time got the winning bid. As explained, that $1 bid that shows by the runner-up owner was already eliminated by a previous player that was picked up in FAAB. The system really shouldn't show any competing bid that is out of the running for that player, but it does. We are talking with IT about that next week and many other items for 2019, but in each case the correct owner got the player. We will ask to have runner-up bids that are eliminated from acquiring that player not show up because yes it was confusing last year. It was a display issue that was confusing and we apologize.

But the free agent process worked correctly all year long.

[TParsons]

Not sure what you are referring to here Ty, but I assume it involves the tied bids you asked about late in the year. All FAAB bids did go to the right owners this year. If the question is about tied bids, this was explained to you. The system will display two teams with $1 bids and I believe you questioned why a team higher in the standings at the time got the winning bid. As explained, that $1 bid that shows by the runner-up owner was already eliminated by a previous player that was picked up in FAAB. The system really shouldn't show any competing bid that is out of the running for that player, but it does. We are talking with IT about that next week and many other items for 2019, but in each case the correct owner got the player. We will ask to have runner-up bids that are eliminated from acquiring that player not show up because yes it was confusing last year. It was a display issue that was confusing and we apologize.

But the free agent process worked correctly all year long.

Yes Greg, it's in regards to tying bids in FAAB. No, what you said above is not what happened & that's not how it was explained to me. No, FAAB did not run correctly, you even said so in your response to me. If it ran correctly, why was the winning bid from the automated process reversed and then rewarded to my team? This is why I say we need a clear explanation, because what you said above is just not true. I know you're not an IT guy, but when things don't go according to the rules and money is on the line, I think we are owed an explanation of what happened... There was a tie bid. Your rules state that tie bids go to the team lowest in the standings. In this case it went to the first place team. Your words, not mine:

"We are working with IT to see why the tie-breaker didn't work properly here and will fix it. We have a good idea what happened here, but no doubt that according to our rules the tie-breaker goes to the lower team in the standings and that team is yours. We are correcting the winning bid and fixing what happened here."

Now can we get a reason why this happened and what has been done to fix it. Do you know with 100% certainty this didn't happen in other leagues where it wasn't caught? Let's stop beating around the bush and get this fixed.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Not sure what you are referring to here Ty, but I assume it involves the tied bids you asked about late in the year. All FAAB bids did go to the right owners this year. If the question is about tied bids, this was explained to you. The system will display two teams with $1 bids and I believe you questioned why a team higher in the standings at the time got the winning bid. As explained, that $1 bid that shows by the runner-up owner was already eliminated by a previous player that was picked up in FAAB. The system really shouldn't show any competing bid that is out of the running for that player, but it does. We are talking with IT about that next week and many other items for 2019, but in each case the correct owner got the player. We will ask to have runner-up bids that are eliminated from acquiring that player not show up because yes it was confusing last year. It was a display issue that was confusing and we apologize.

But the free agent process worked correctly all year long.

Yes Greg, it's in regards to tying bids in FAAB. No, what you said above is not what happened & that's not how it was explained to me. No, FAAB did not run correctly, you even said so in your response to me. If it ran correctly, why was the winning bid from the automated process reversed and then rewarded to my team? This is why I say we need a clear explanation, because what you said above is just not true. I know you're not an IT guy, but when things don't go according to the rules and money is on the line, I think we are owed an explanation of what happened... There was a tie bid. Your rules state that tie bids go to the team lowest in the standings. In this case it went to the first place team. Your words, not mine:

"We are working with IT to see why the tie-breaker didn't work properly here and will fix it. We have a good idea what happened here, but no doubt that according to our rules the tie-breaker goes to the lower team in the standings and that team is yours. We are correcting the winning bid and fixing what happened here."

Now can we get a reason why this happened and what has been done to fix it. Do you know with 100% certainty this didn't happen in other leagues where it wasn't caught? Let's stop beating around the bush and get this fixed.

You are correct. There were two $1 bids in Week 27 that we had to manually correct after you and another owner alerted us to this problem. You are right, we likely would not have caught those two mistakes without the help of both owners. We know what the problem was, what caused it in that final week and will correct it.

[TParsons]

You are correct. There were two $1 bids in Week 27 that we had to manually correct after you and another owner alerted us to this problem. You are right, we likely would not have caught those two mistakes without the help of both owners. We know what the problem was, what caused it in that final week and will correct it.

Was the same thing that caused it in place during the weeks prior to the final week? Are you 100% sure that these were the only two instances that occurred? Will you be providing an update on what has been done to fix this?

I don't get why you are being so vague with your responses on this. It's something that my partner and I need to know has been properly addressed before we make the type of commitment that we have in years past. I'm sorry, but "We know what the problem was, what caused it in that final week and will correct it" isn't instilling confidence in us. That was pretty much your response the first time FAAB went down this year and it happened again the very next week. The list of prior IT issues are well documented. With new ownership came promises of better IT support, yet here we are. This kind of programming issue is not just a minor issue when the outcome goes against the written rules of your game. I honestly don't understand why you're treating it as no big deal.

[Doctor Who]

Ty, I get it but you likely won’t ever get the response you and your partner are looking for. There was a case in an Ultimate league where 30 minutes before the FAAB deadline, Tom reversed a player being dropped from the PRIOR week. Not only is that crazy in itself, but the player was allowed to be picked up and was picked up with a 30 minute warning that the incident had occurred. When asked why this was allowed, I was basically told to hush up as I’m continually the guy complaining about FAAB. Both moves stood and nothing was even given thought on how terrible a decision it was.

Again, in a super. A team was employing a no starter strategy and showed 932IP with one week to go. Obviously he would need starters to make it to the min IP. I spent the rest of my FAAB blocking several sp’s so he wouldn’t be able to get them and then fall short of the IP requirement. The next day, his IP CHANGED to around 968 IP which is a huge difference for a week. When asked to Greg, he basically said he had sent an email about IP, that my situation was unique and that the error had been received on Sunday and then reaccessed on Monday, which was the change. Luckily, that didn’t cost me $, but it very well could have and influenced the game 100%. Which is why you and your partner will always be playing catch-up on the tech issues when it comes to here. I hope you get the anwsers you are looking for, but I highly doubt that you will. So it just comes down to if you are willing to play w the defects in the software that may or may not be known at this point in time.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'm not treating it as "no big deal" Ty, but yes we do believe these were isolated cases in Week 27. In your case, I believe you had 8-10 FAAB bids that week and it involved one of your last pickups. Same thing with the other owner. It involved the long string and the timing of when that player was processed. It's being addressed.

As for Dustin's case, he's correct in Week 26 for some reason Innings Pitched were not being updated over the weekend on Team Stats. Not sure why and we didn't realize it at the time, but the IP totals for teams in your league remained the same over the last several days on Team Stats. You could see your own IP totals increasing, but if you were like Dustin and needed your opponents' IP totals so that you could block someone from acquiring SPs for the final week, the totals were not correct. Why? I'm not sure why it didn't update that weekend, but he's right that we reset the program on Monday and the correct totals showed up for your opponents. It's a glitch that affected everyone who used their final FAAB dollars to block their opponents from reaching the 1,000 IP limit. Our bad.

Thankfully Ty alerted us to the tie bid and so did another owner that week. Both were corrected and both owners who won the players originally were notified and got their backup free agents. And glad you still finished in the money Dusty, even though our error caused you to spend your final FAAB dollars differently. We wish everything was perfect and if you think this proves that our new IT is worse than what we had before then we stand guilty as charged. We'll keep improving the software and hope that everything runs better each year going forward. And as for the FAAB slowness this year, we've already stated that we understand why that occurred and we have taken the steps to eliminate that problem (as is proven in football now). You will now have to Save all of your FAAB bids like in past years, rather than have the auto Save after every single FAAB pickup and bid change.

Sorry your thread isn't about you anymore Gekko!! Time to return to that subject.

[TParsons]

Ty, I get it but you likely won’t ever get the response you and your partner are looking for. There was a case in an Ultimate league where 30 minutes before the FAAB deadline, Tom reversed a player being dropped from the PRIOR week. Not only is that crazy in itself, but the player was allowed to be picked up and was picked up with a 30 minute warning that the incident had occurred. When asked why this was allowed, I was basically told to hush up as I’m continually the guy complaining about FAAB. Both moves stood and nothing was even given thought on how terrible a decision it was.

Again, in a super. A team was employing a no starter strategy and showed 932IP with one week to go. Obviously he would need starters to make it to the min IP. I spent the rest of my FAAB blocking several sp’s so he wouldn’t be able to get them and then fall short of the IP requirement. The next day, his IP CHANGED to around 968 IP which is a huge difference for a week. When asked to Greg, he basically said he had sent an email about IP, that my situation was unique and that the error had been received on Sunday and then reaccessed on Monday, which was the change. Luckily, that didn’t cost me $, but it very well could have and influenced the game 100%. Which is why you and your partner will always be playing catch-up on the tech issues when it comes to here. I hope you get the anwsers you are looking for, but I highly doubt that you will. So it just comes down to if you are willing to play w the defects in the software that may or may not be known at this point in time.

Thanks for making us aware of these things. I'm beginning to see your point here. Greg has posted responses to my messages in this thread twice now, but has failed to answer the questions each time. Says a lot for a company that claims full transparency.

[TParsons]

Sorry your thread isn't about you anymore Gekko!! Time to return to that subject.

Or you could answer these questions that I've asked over and over again.

Was the same thing that caused it in place during the weeks prior to the final week?

Are you 100% sure that these were the only two instances that occurred?


Please explain to me how the length of the bid string is what affected the winning bid. Why wouldn't FAAB be programmed as a loop with the same priority order (High Bid. If tie, then lowest in standings) for every single bid until all bids are processed in each league? Why would the priority ever change?