TFP Originals 2018

Well happy to be involved in this - will start my draft prep now…

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14 have now paid in, 2 still to go… as soon as they are paid and confirmed, I will post up the prize structure, plans for the day etc. Only a couple of months to go !!

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League is now full ! 16 managers are in and paid. Please welcome Toby, who is bravely jumping into the Lion’s Den :lion: He is going to be yet another member of the Surrey posse ( 5 in this league I think?)

I will post full details of prize structure, plan for draft day etc, in the next few days :smile:

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Welcome Toby.

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Welcome Toby! (I feel like a veteran now :sweat_smile:)

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Great news - welcome Toby!

Hoping that this sole representative of the West Country can take down the might of the Surrey massive!

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Welcome toby

Hi all !

Under a month to go now till draft day, so I just wanted to confirm a few points to you all

The draft will take place in the “Hampshire Room” on the ground floor of the Hotel Ibis Southampton Centre – address is West Quay Road, Southampton, SO15 1RA.
We have the room from 11:00 to 19:00. I will be there from 11:00 to make sure everything is set up for us. I would like managers to arrive for 12:00 if at all possible please – we have a few bits of admin to run through to get us ready for the draft to start at 1:00.

The room has plenty of space. There is free tea, coffee, and water. Several plug sockets for chargers. Free wifi. There is a small bar on the ground floor. There is also a McDonalds less than 5 minutes away, which saw a lot of business from us during last year’s draft!

There is free parking for us at the hotel. For those of you driving, I will collect your registration numbers on the day and pass them to the hotel so they know which cars are ours.

The plan for 12 till 1 is:
• Introductions – although there are plenty of old friends (and rivals) I’m pretty sure that not everyone has met each other, so I’m hoping everyone is here in time to meet and greet all their opponents for the season
• Grab a seat – work out who you want to sit and chat with for the day (or who you want to avoid !)
• Grab a drink too – drafting is thirsty work!
• Quick recap of last season’s results
• Draft position – here’s the set up, I will explain it again on the day in case this doesn’t make sense. All managers have a budget of 200 points to use during the season for picking up players from the waiver wire. But these points can also be used on draft day to bid for draft position. Every manager will submit a secret bid of anywhere from 0 to 200 points. Whatever bid each manager makes will be deducted from their season’s budget of points. I’ll then check all the bids – whoever made the highest bid will have first choice of which spot they want to draft from. Second highest bid will have their pick from whatever is left, and so on. If two or managers make the same bid, I will draw lots for who gets priority. Essentially you can aim for your perfect draft slot, but reduce your chance of grabbing players off waivers during the season – or you can keep hold of your bidding budget, but at the cost of having last choice of where you draft from.
(just for info, whoever makes the highest bid and therefore has first choice of draft spot, will be last in waiver priority - however this setting is only relevant if two or more people make exactly the same WAB bid for the same player in the same week)

The plan from 1 till about 5 or 6 o’clock is:
• 15 rounds of drafting !
• We’ll be doing 3 rounds of draft picks, followed by a short break (for fresh air, grabbing food or drink, or to panic about how bad your picks look…). Then 3 more rounds, then a break, and so on
• There are four breaks (at the end of rounds 3, 6, 9 and 12). At the start of each break, I will ask you an NFL trivia question. The closest answer will win a prize (I have assorted reasonably inexpensive football themed prizes for you to choose between). One prize per person so if you win a prize I will ask you to sit out of any subsequent questions.
• To start with, everyone will have 90 seconds maximum to make their pick. Based on past experience, this should see us finish between 5:00 and 5:30. If we are falling behind schedule, I have the option to reduce the time per pick – hopefully won’t come to that!
• In case you are struggling to work out who you want (or the manager before you stole the guys you wanted…), you have one time out. If you use it you get an additional 90 seconds breathing time.
• If your 90 seconds expires, and you have already used your time out, then the manager after you can come up and make their pick (and the one after, and the one after…). This normally doesn’t happen, but last year we saw Noel panicking, to everyone’s amusement!

The plan from 6 onwards is:
• At the hotel, we’ll have the inevitable initial post mortem on how the draft went, and will also say cheerio to anyone who is leaving us then
• We’ll clear out the function room, and wander into the city centre for a beer or two. Then a meal, and then maybe another beer or two. None of this will be too far from either the Ibis or from the central railway station, in case anyone needs to leave part way through the evening. Nobody is obliged to come to any of this, but we usually get at least half the league along…
• On Sunday, I will upload the draft results into the NFL Fantasy site. We will update each manager’s waiver budget to take account of what people bid for draft position. And we will hit the big red button to randomise the schedule of match ups for the season! Then we are good to go…

Obviously, after the league is underway, all you have to do is win the damn thing!
Prizes are as follows:

Winner - £1,000

Runner Up - £375

Losing Semifinalists - £125 X two people

Highest weekly score - £1 per point scored
(last season, Sean would have won £137.02. Simon might try telling people something about £173.16, but just ignore him, he’s imagining it…!)

I need some information from you. Can you message me with your answers rather than adding to this thread?

a) Are you going to be around on the Friday night – if so I will come into town to meet you for a drink.
b) Will you be joining us for a meal – and if do, is there any type of food you just don’t like? I’ll book a table, and will try to find somewhere that meets all needs!

If you have any other questions at all, please give me a yell !

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Do you need Registration numbers for the Car Park? I’m sure Chris and I will be there for the meal and drinks afterwards. Catch up on Noel stories for this past year

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Cheers Al.
Car Reg. numbers on the day is fine

Superb information Jon - looking forward to it - already panicking whether to drink or not to drink in the draft that is the question. Also wish trains was 24hrs - be so much better than having to find a place to crash and panic to get up hungover to check out - might as well sleep on the train if only bars was open all night or at least until first train - lol!

Also welcome aboard Toby - if you’ve never drafted in person before and love NFL you will be amazed how much fun it is doing fantasy gaming this way with people as passionate about the sport and fantasy gaming as you are - you’ll make a whole new set of friends to boot.

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Thank you for the warm welcome.

I will catch you all in a month.

Thanks
Toby

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Jon - love the planning which goes into this Live League. This will be #8 in the Fan Pub Series of UK Live Drafts, hope you all have a great day.

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No 9 I think Dean

3 x Beast
1 x Yorkshire
and the 5th Originals draft

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Gonna miss you not being in the Originals League Dean. :disappointed_relieved:

Thanks Noel - the Southampton Draft will be the first one I’ve missed since your Live Draft Inception in 2014, as Al stated above, it will be the 9th UK game.
I felt it was important for me to support the new Yorkshire game so we can add new people to the Southern league.
Yesterday’s expansion was a success in Leeds and there was a discussion to say The Fan Pub may look even further north to include Scottish players, so perhaps Newcastle will be the next venue in the 16-man live draft series.

Sean reckons there has now been 40-50 live-drafters in the UK, thats amazing in such a relatively short time.
Keep up the good work and enjoy the draft.

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We have 17 in the Beast counting Gordon. There was 18 yesterday with 2 co-owned (minus Dean, Mark, Sean and me) 14. That takes up to 31. Add Chris, Noel, Robert, Toby, Sam, Drew, Andy, James and Dan I make that exactly 40 separate live drafters.

Great to see and great to meet fellow fantasy fans all around the country. Plus a few more that couldn’t make the date.

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Brad Allen too

…and who could forget Spam :tired_face:

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these are just players drafting this year

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