Some fantasy football players overvalue rookies, making this a great opportunity to take advantage of. There are elite rookies every season. These rookies are very limited and can be counted only in one hand. Perhaps players like A.J. Green, Julio Jones and Mark Ingram can be classified as sure things for 2011, but beyond them everything else is a crapshoot. It may be safe to say that some players have better situations than others, and some have more talent. But when it really comes down to it, it is very difficult to predict who will have an impact in their rookie season, or even make it big in the NFL.

One of the most important things to do to have a successful fantasy footballrookie draft is to study. It’s pretty simple, but it truly is a key factor to figure out on your own why you think a rookie will not only make it in the NFL, but be meaningful in fantasy terms. If you can figure out why you should have taken LeSean McCoy instead of Donald Brown or Knowshon Moreno then you are on your way to becoming a dominant dynasty player. It isn’t easy, but it is straightforward. All the information you need is readily available on the Internet. And if you can piece it together, it will give you a decided advantage over your opponents.

Here are the things you need to keep in mind when studying for your rookie draft:

• Amount of carries

Be wary of the RB who had 300 plus carries a year for multiple years in college. More often than not, he will burn out fairly quickly.

• Pro offense

Move him up a notch or two, regardless of position, if they did come from a pro style offense. The learning curve is that much easier for them when they hit the NFL.

• Yards per carry or reception

This is a very important stat to peruse. The running back who put up 4,200 yards on 1,300 carries moves down on my list. Same thing goes for the wide receiver who averaged under 10 yards per catch. You want to see some play-making ability rather than just guys who get fed the ball a lot.

• One year wonders

Guys can fly up draft boards both at the NFL level and in fantasy football based on their senior season. It isn’t an exact science, but these players are not commonly NFL caliber players.

Lastly, if you have the 1.01 pick in a rookie draft, it has been experienced that someone in your fantasy league really wants it. They will deceptively offer you a low price beyond a rookie’s true value, then probably lowball you again. Stand your ground and make them pay. If they won’t step up with an offer you like, make the pick and make sure he is a surefire superstar. You are going to need a superstar if you want to build a great fantasy football league dynasty.

Are you starting to learn the craft of playing fantasy football? Well, first things first – you should know all the terms and definitions before starting out to manage and draft teams of your own. Let’s begin!

3rd year WR Rule
There was a belief among fantasy football players that almost all of the NFL wide receivers don’t “break out” until their third year in the league. Good examples are as follows: Santana Moss, Chris Chambers, Steve Smith and Javon Walker.

ADP
It is an abbreviation for Average Draft Position which means it’s a report listing the NFL players by the position they were drafted in fantasy football on average. The source can either be from mock drafts or the real ones. The ADP is also a good preparation tool for drafting.

Auction Draft
This is a type of fantasy draft where owners are allotted a certain amount of fantasy cash to fill their roster spots by means of bidding on NFL players. The owners get to take their turns introducing an opening bid for a player.

Basic Scoring
In fantasy football, points are earned only when your starters get to score touchdowns, field goals and extra points.

Bench Players
These are the players who aren’t included in the starting line-up and normally owners don’t get to receive points for their performances.

Bust
This is what a player is called if he is predicted to have a poor season as opposed to general expectations. The player in some case may be prone to injury, have a future star behind them in the depth chart, or just won’t be able to live up to their hype.

Bye week
Out of 17 weeks in the NFL schedule each NFL team gets to play 16 games. The that they don’t get to play is the ‘bye week’. When drafting, it is important to note that your starters and backups don’t have the same bye week in fantasy football since one of the primary reasons for backup players is to have coverage during a bye week.

Cheat Sheet
This is what a lot of good drafters use in order to list NFL players ranked in order of predicted fantasy points; unfortunately there are no accompanying stats, so it may be possible that it is not accurate for a league’s scoring system. Cheat sheets are also available online in case you’ll need one. This is something you don’t really want to share with others if you want to be in the lead.

Commissioner
The one responsible for maintaining the league is the commissioner, he is the one that reports the results of the fantasy games, running the draft, collecting entrance fees if there are any and he keeps the things running smoothly so it’s very important for him to be honest and unbiased.

Cut or Drop
This is the term called when removing a player from your roster.

Deep League
This is a league that has more than 12 owners or a large team sizes. There are more players on fantasy rosters in deep leagues than in a ‘normal’ league of 12 owners with total rosters of 16 to 18 players (total of 192-216 players drafted).

Depth Chart
This is a team roster with players classified as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd string and there are websites that has a depth chart that can be viewed for free.

Draft
This is a meeting of owners and commissioners prior to the NFL season.
Owners before the NFL season can select players for their team. There are a lot of methods how, either by auction or serpentine method. Some leagues would give the top spots in the draft to the teams with the poorest records from the previous season. Most leagues only allow one fantasy team to own a particular NFL player.

Dynasty League
This is a type of league where an owner gets to keep his entire roster from year to year. The next season a draft is held in order to improve their team. The draft order is commonly based on the previous’ year’s finish. This is a long term commitment that is why it is overshadowed by head-to-head league and Total-points league.

Fantasy Football
Players, called owners, earn fantasy points for the statistical performances of the NFL players on their fantasy team. In most leagues, NFL Players are assigned to teams va a draft. Each player can only on one team at a time and there are no limits to the total number of players per team. The object of the game is to outscore your fantasy opponent or other owners on a weekly basis so at the end of the fantasy season, you will have most points to win (depends on the league, in this case - a head-to-head league).

FF
An abbreviation of Fantasy Football

Flex
This is a spot on your starting lineup that you can use more than one type of position player.

Fantasy football is an awesome gaming activity, to say the least, as it allows people who are looking for huge participation and interact with one another to have a good time. Do you want to play a little game with your friends? Go for it. Do you want to engage in a highly competitive campaign against self-proclaimed fantasy football gods from all over the globe? Bring it. However, before you jump the gun and start getting involved in a fantasy football draft, here are three essential tips you need to keep in mind to have a successful draft this year.

1. Mock Drafting Is a Necessity

Going through a fantasy football draft and ending up with an awesome looking team is all about preparation. Unfortunately, no, picking up the fist football magazine you come across with before draft day doesn’t count. The only way to get a feel of the trends of this year’s drafts is to join mock drafts, join another, and then mock draft some more.

After reading this piece, go look for quality mock draft sites and do a mock. After a few days, do another. Keep on doing this every few days and observe the developing trends. Doing multiple mock drafts allows you to play around and adjust your strategies from the start of your draft until the end. You may find yourself preferring to draft a quarterback in the seventh or eighth round, or you may make the right decision to grab a tight end in the third or fourth round. You will never know until you give it a shot, making your draft without mocking takes away the opportunity to iron out potential draft mistakes.

2. Safe Early, Upside Late

Many fantasy football players have become reliant on stat projections to measure fantasy values. While these projections have their place and can be nice discussion material, they shouldn’t be the holy grail of your preparation. A single stat line is never going to capture a player’s full fantasy value.

Now when I say “safe early,” this means drafting the players with the highest floors, meaning they have the lowest chance to be early-round busts. You may not agree with rankings based on upside, but I advise you to manage your risks wisely at the beginning of your draft.

Conversely, all you want at the end of fantasy drafts are players with sky-high upsides. Don’t waste your time getting Lee Evans, Mark Sanchez or Reggie Bush. They may perform at their draft level, but there’s not much opportunity to profit from these picks. Alternatively, you would want to have a quarterback like Tim Tebow, who could be a fantasy football monster if gets to start for the Broncos. If you see any room for a late-round guy to wind up with significant playing time, pounce.

3.Avoid Kickers and Team Defenses

You may have already bitten into the kicker concept and probably have jumped on the concept of devaluing team defenses, but this is not saying you have to leave them out for the end of your draft. This means you should not draft a kicker of defense AT ALL. It may be counterintuitive, but there is good reason for this strategy. As we have mentioned, you want to find some risky picks that have the chance for big payoffs at the end of the draft. You already take away two chances of finding that golden egg by picking a kicker and a defense. Instead, focus on getting more running backs than you could possibly need. Pre-season injuries do happen, and fantasy contributors do sometimes come from the ranks of pre-season warriors.

Fantasy football is a very challenging, rewarding and, most of all, fun gaming activity. It is a relatively easy game to play, but very difficult to be good at, let alone master. We all indulge in this activity for the same reason we play any game—because we enjoy it immensely. Here are a few helpful tips to get you started and make the most out of playing fantasy football.

• Study

It’s one of the easiest things to do when immersing yourself in the world of fantasy football. This mostly involves a lot of reading and researching. There are a lot of hardcore fantasy football nuts out there like me, and it’s safe to say that despite the number of years I have been playing, I still learn something new every year. Utilize a good number of sites to do your research and try to improve your gaming skills. It all comes down to how much you want to know and how much time you are able to devote to the game.

• Cheat Sheets and Rankings

Before making the draft every year, make sure you prepare a cheat sheet. Print out a few rankings from some of the more reputable sites on the net and start building your own master list. A cheat sheet is the single most essential tool on draft day.

• Do Mock Drafts

A mock draft is simply a practice session for your real draft. This is an excellent way to get you accustomed to what a live draft should be like, and it also gives you an idea where all the players are drafted. Draft strategies can either be fine tuned and perfected or thrown in the waste bin to go back to the drawing board. You can do as many mock drafts as you can to help you iron out the bumps in your strategy.

• Join a Fantasy Community

You can have an edge in winning your games when you join a fantasy community. You can post questions about your team, get tips on sleepers, read up on strategies or simply just join in conversation about fantasy football or football in general. The key is having the right information and knowing how to use it to win.

• Try Joining Different Fantasy Leagues

It’s all about playing in a league that fits your gaming preferences. Try as many different league formats, websites and communities as you can until you feel all the pieces starting to fall into place.

• Draft Players You Like to Have on Your Team

While I don’t draft just my favorite players—that would be fantasy suicide—I will pass over the guy I am ambivalent about for the guy I really like if I have them closely ranked. My Sundays are much more enjoyable to cheer for a team of players I drafted that I really like as players.

• Know What You Enjoy

It won’t come to you immediately but when it does, it can turn you into a life-long fantasy football player. It is that simple. If you really enjoy the game, you will play it as long as you can. Take your time, enjoy each format and team you play as you go move along, tweaking what you want from your fantasy experience according to your preference until you achieve your ultimate goal in fantasy football—to be a winner.

A lot of hardcore sports fans with numbers in their heads are aching to try their hand on sports betting. After all, with a good understanding of baseball statistics, handicapping should be pretty easy to beat, right? Oddsmakers set the betting line based on the beliefs of the uninformed public. How difficult can it be to pick winners better than the public?

Unfortunately, achieving a positive result in sports handicapping is not so easy. All it takes is one person with better information than you, and you’re facing an uphill climb. Not only is the best handicapper likely to be betting the maximum amount allowable at any sportsbook they frequent, but differences in the odds from one sportsbook to another are quickly eliminated as line shoppers arbitrage away any significant differences.

So if you’re a sports expert who wants to profit from your knowledge, are there any easier ways to do so? The answer is yes, as a new form legal online sports betting has emerged recently. A number of new daily fantasy betting sites have launched, and they all share a number of advantages over traditional sports betting.

• Fantasy betting is completely legal. Thanks to fantasy sports being specifically excluded from laws affecting online sports betting, these sites are not illegal in any way.

• Money can be deposited via credit card or PayPal, and easily withdrawn via check. There is none of the jumping through hoops and uncertainty found when transferring money to and from gambling websites.

• Because contests are based upon the performance of individual players, a much wider variety of contests are available.

Don’t get the wrong idea, though. These are not traditional fantasy contests. Rather than tying up your money for the full duration of the season, most of these contests just last one day. You pick a team for the day, and results are based on the performance of your players that day. Contests can range from heads up (two players) up to 100 players or more. The sites that host the contests have the look and feel (and the business model) of online poker sites.

Some of the features that differentiate these sites from each other include:

• Widely varying user interfaces
• All sites offer salary cap format contests, some also offer live draft contests where player selection resembles a traditional fantasy sports draft.
• Varying rake, from as high as 20% to less than 10%.
• A variety of sports available. Most sites offer baseball, football, and basketball. Some also offer one or both of hockey and NASCAR.
• Chat features give some sites more of a communal feel than others.

Be prepared
We all know that the apocalypse is coming so be prepared, you should also be prepared when drafting fantasy football.
Get copies of rules and it should include the drafting method, scoring system and prize disbursement for the league. If this is your first time then why not learn all the terminologies? Look online and it will show, from there you can read several articles particularly about fantasy football.
Spend time to make a cheat sheet or take from experts or internet sites available online.
Don’t forget to look at the sleepers list, always check our sleepers pages in several websites as it may help.

Take your drafting equipments and be ready.
Your money should also be ready in cases of entry fees. Taking your cheat sheet is also important and an outdated FF magazine (that will be loaned to the guy who wants information from you). Several pens and pencils may also be needed for obvious reasons. Highlighters, at least two because one color will be for your pick and another color for other’s picks.

Take a clipboard with you too, I’m sure you don’t want to write on your knees for two hours. Folders are your friends when it comes to keeping things private.
Paper will be used to jot down ideas and notes to yourself.
A Blank draft roster grid should help and you can even take one from a site and print it out.

Observe more and talk less
Always observe other people’s picks and if everyone has already taken 4 running backs and you still have two then you are in big trouble.
Keeping quiet will only make you seem mysterious, while talking too much may give you a bad label.
Simply watching the other drafters will give you a picture of what you should and shouldn’t be doing.

Beware of bye weeks
A Quarter Back should never be drafted that has the same bye week as your starter for it defeats the purpose of drafting him.

It’s a good start to draft the best players available and not fill your roster in order.
A few people since they don’t know any better would draft QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, TE, K, D, QB RB, RB, WR, WR, K. Little did they know that it’s much more important to get your third RB before a kicker. In its simplest form, the value of a player is determined not by the number of points he scores but by how much he outscores his peers at his particular position.

Keeping these in mind will make you good at fantasy football!

The thought process for position players in daily fantasy baseball is different, but similar in some ways. You will not have a betting line to look at to determine how your player will do. However, you do know who your player will be batting against to start the game. Since pitching is so important, it is a good idea to know who you will be up against, and who will be giving up more fantasy points than others. For this, ERA is a good guideline. You should review the ERAs for the starting pitchers and find the worst and the best pitchers based on the ERA for today's games in your daily fantasy baseball. In general, you will want to draft position players who are playing against the pitchers with the highest ERAs, and avoid drafting players who will be up against pitchers with the lowest ERAs. You also probably want to avoid players going against the pitcher that you have on your fantasy team for the same reason. The starting pitcher is the most important factor in determining your starting position players, but several other factors are in play as well, if you want to dig deeper.

1. Streaks

Hot players who have been putting up big numbers over the last couple of weeks are better than cold players.

2. Home Field

Players, in general, play better at home than on the road. Home players will not bat in the bottom of the 9th on average half the time. You are losing about 1/18th of your plate appearances at home. You are actually better off taking position players on the road, unless they are simply poor road performers.

3.Left or Right Matchups

Is your position player a switch hitter? If so, which side are they more productive on? If not a switch hitter, which handed pitchers is your player most productive against? Don't start players who struggle against certain handed pitchers when facing those same pitchers.

4. Cap Values

High cap value players are riskier than low cap value players even though they put up higher numbers in general. If you spend 40 points on a player, they need to put up four points for you to "break even" on the selection, while a 20-point player only needs two points. There is more upside and less downside with low cap value players.

5. New Starters

Utility players who do a lot of filling in early in the season and get promoted to starters later on are usually of good value. Their rank cap value will be depressed by the many partial games played earlier in the season.