Intro

I'm sure everyone has heard of fantasy sports. Fantasy football, basketball, whatever. Basically, a group of fans get together and choose players to be on their fantasy team. Then, as the season progresses, they each get points based on how their players perform. At the end of the season, one person is crowned the champ and everyone else has to bow to their will!!! Well... ok, not exactly. But you do get bragging rights.

Anyway, EVO 2015 starts tomorrow and it is basically the biggest FGC event of the whole year. Players from all sorts of games will be gathering together for a weekend of fighting game awesomeness. Personally, I plan to watch the Super Smash Bros: Melee and in doing so, me and some friends are planning a fantasy draft. We will draft pro players onto our "teams" and we'll get points depending on how they place. It's a lot of fun, especially if you compete for a trophy or a pot of some kind.

How to Play

Playing is easy, so long as you know a thing or two about esports and the players involved. Here's what you do:

Determine pick order

Obviously first pick gives someone a decent advantage. To fairly decide the pick order, you can do an auction. Players will wager their points to figure out who goes first, second, third, etc. At the end of the tourney, each player loses the points the wagered for their pick position.

Take turns picking

Once you know the order, you start picking. The order of the picks goes first to last and then back again. Like so:

Round one: A B C D E F G

Round two: G F E D C B A

Round three: A B C..... you get the idea

The list of all the players for all of the games can be found here.You can continue this for as long as you want, but 8-10 rounds is usually good. Once each player has their team, all that's left to do is watch and cheer for your players. That and determine the winner...

Scoring

Scoring is tricky, and honestly, I don't know exactly how it works. I used a this point system from the MeleeItOnMe website. For Melee, the tournament is all double elimination, so I assume you could use the same points system for any double elim tourney. Add up the total for each player on the team and subtract the initial wager and you're done.

Tips

Here are some basic tips if this is your first time:

• Wagers should be from 5 to 30 points or so if you're using the scores I linked above. More is ok, but picking first isn't that important. Spending more points than the difference between 1st and 2nd place just doesn't make a lot of sense.

• Do some research. Even if you only know a little bit or if you know a ton, make sure you know who is attending and what their odds are. You should be able to guess who all of the round 1 picks are going to be before you even start.

• Pay attention to what pools your players are in. In most pools, only the top 2 players advance (could be more or less - see tip 2). So having multiple players from the same pool wouldn't make a lot of sense. Also, if 2 other people in your draft have already picked the best 2 players from a given pool, picking a third might not be the best idea.

Conclusion

So, who has done this before? Is anyone interested in trying for the first time? I'd be happy to answer questions or have discussions about Smash players and other people's fantasy drafts.