BASKETBALL LEAGUE From: prb@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Botts) Date: Mon, 09 Sep 1991 22:34:23 +0000 HEY THERE NBA AND FANTASY-POOL FANS! I've worked out a plan for a new kind of fantasy league (or rotisserie league if you prefer), based on the National Basketball Association, and ideally suited for playing by email. I'm posting this to see if there are a couple dozen people out there on Usenet who would be interested in trying it. I would even offer a couple of modest prizes for the winner and runner-up. The basic difference between this plan and other fantasy leagues is that instead of playing the role of a team gm creating a "roster" of players, the player would play the role of a stockbroker assembling and managing a portfolio of _team_ stocks. At the end of the season, each share of a given team would be redeemed, paying a dividend of X dollars times the number of games that team won during the season. Each team's initial stock price before the season starts would be based on X dollars times the number games it won _last_ season, and teams would also pay a small monthly dividend based on how many games they won that month. I've got the numbers worked out, but I won't bore you with them here. Everybody would ahve a certain amount of cash with which to pick out an initial portfolio. During the season, the league functions as a stock exchange, with the moderator (me) playing the role of the offer board. Players would buy and sell stocks in the various teams freely, by posting an offer with me or accepting an offer posted by me (on behalf of another player). So, there would be a constantly changing market value of each team's stock. Naturally, players would be trying to buy low, sell high, and turn profits; as the real-life NBA teams' performance changed, the market value of their stocks would fluctuate (since those end-of-year dividends will be paid out on a per-win basis). So there would be real opportunities for people who can predict the teams' performances There would be some flexibility in posting offers - a player could post an offer to sell _up to_ 20 shares of the Celtics at $4000/share, and another player could accept only 10shares of the offer, for instance, leaving the other 10 shares still available. I envision two postings of offers each month, sent out to all players on the 10th and 20th, with buy orders being fulfilled first-come, first-served. At the end of each month, those small monthly dividends would be paid out to the player who owned each share of team stock at the beginning of the previous month. At the end of each month, I would send out and post on rec.games.pbm the standings, including all sales, each NBA team's last sale price, each player's cash-on-hand and portfolio, and so forth. Trading would close on March 20th. At the end of the season, everybody's stock is cashed out as explained above, and the winner is whoever has the most cash. Presumably the winner will be someone who both held the right stocks at the end, and did well in the buying and selling of stocks during the season. So, my question is, is anybody interested? Anybody who thinks they would participate in this (note that a reliable email connection would be essential) should please send me a note at prb@chinet.chi.il.us; if I get a decent number of responses, I'll start it up in early October. Paul Botts prb@chinet.chi.il.us Up