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FSN 6 9.30 a.m. 20 March 2001

Welcome to FSN 6 where we take a look at recent fantasy football game reviews on FISO.


PureFantasyFootball - simulated football management

http://www.purefantasyfootball.com/cgi-local/map.pl?pfg&1009

Pit your wits against other fantasy managers in a virtual football management world. Decide on team line up, positions, tactics, training, PR, transfers, player loans and friendlies in a fantasy football management game that has been running for over 10 years. Your decisions affect your team's fate! Over 200 teams to choose from.


2-1 Fantasy Football - simulated football management

http://visit.to/2v1

2-1 Fantasy Football is a play by mail (PBM) simulated football manager game. 3 divisions of teams are run with each turn every 12-14 days costing £1. Managers are in control of financial and squad issues with prizes (real and virtual) to the most successful managers.


Football Knockout - result prediction

http://www.footballknockout.com

Football Knockout is run by William Hill bookmakers. The rules are simple: select the outcome (home win, draw, away win) to about 10 selected football matches each weekend. These are listed in order (i.e. from 1 to, say, 10). If you predict the correct outcome to the first match then you stay in the
competition and so on until someone is 'the last man standing' i.e. the football knockout. Entry is free and great prizes are on offer (as we write this - £5,000 per week). Only takes a minute or two to play each week.


Unpredictaball - result prediction

http://www.unpredictaball.com

The Unpredictaball crowd are inviting people to join their game! Every week try and predict the results of 10 weekend UK football matches. Expansion is planned for 2001/02.


AlphaFantasyFootball - real-life fantasy premiership

http://www.alphafantasyfootball.co.uk

Alpha Fantasy football is a Fantasy Premiership game based on Premiership and FA Cup matches. Spend £55m on 11 players with no more than 2 from any one club. A total of four transfers are allowed in the season, with last game entries by 30 September. Goals score 5, 7, 10 or 20 for S, M, D or GK. Clean sheet and 'star man' points can also be scored. Monthly and season long prizes offered from the small entry fee.

WAFFL - real-life fantasy premiership

http://www.waffl.co.uk

WAFFL - The World Association Fantasy Football League - is based on the FA Premier League but has a twist from most fantasy football games in that you pick 4 components from the EPL teams. For example Spurs Goalkeeper, Liverpool defense, Man Utd midfield and Chelsea attack. Points are based on actual performance by each team from which you have a component - in essence goals let in by your GK and defense teams are subtracted from your midfield and attack's team goals. Your team plays against another team each week in a league format. WAFFL has grown from a results prediction game for a dozen British ex-pats based in Kuwait and is now aiming for 4 divisions of 16 teams each for 2001/02. Promotion and relegation from each Division at stake as well as prize money for the top places. A cup competition and monthly prizes are also on offer. Currency for entry fee and prizes was in Kuwait Dinars but will be in £ Sterling from 2001/02.


FSN 7 1.30 p.m. 28 March 2001

When a group of friends met in a New York restaurant called La Rotisserie Francaise and made the first venture into Fantasy Competitions with their fantasy baseball league (named after the restaurant - The Rotisserie Baseball League) little did they know what they had started! Not only has the fantasy competition concept been applied to most sports but it seems that only a lack of imagination prevents it being applied elsewhere. Below we take a look at non-sports fantasy games.


Fantasy Share Portfolio Games:

The Times' Fantasy Shares 

The Times' Fantasy Shares game challenges you to invest a fantasy £1 million in real-life stocks and shares and build a world-beating portfolio in ten separate categories of shares. Stunning prizes are on offer each week. The online trading game 'Fantasy Shares' is run by The Times and Bloomberg and gives you the chance to win incredible prizes by proving your share dealing skills are better than the rest. Game on!

Channel 4's Show Me The Money

Channel 4's Show Me The Money dares you to invest a fantasy £100,000 in 5 stocks and make just one trade a week. Their online share trading game offers weekly prizes of £1,000 along with a ten weekly prize of £10,000 for the top fantasy share trader!

Investor Factory

If you would like to take advantage of a realistic and educational online trading experience where you can:
- win £500 cash
- enhance your investment knowledge
- build your confidence

then Investor Factory could be for you!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! invite you to trade $100,000 each month on a fantasy stock portfolio. This is an easy to play fantasy share game with cash prizes. 

Fantasy People Games:

Celebstatus

icshowbiz give you £35m to spend on 10 celebrities from a database of 'the 500 most famous people in Great Britain'. You can pick up to 2 from each of the 10 categories - Actors, Presenters, Soap Stars (not included in 'Actors'!), Music, Business/Culture, Fashion, Comedy, Ex-sports (Best, Lineker etc), Just Famous (?) and finally Royals. Each celeb is rated either as an A, B or C celeb with higher points being scored for lower rated celebs although to compensate this the A celebs are likely to appear more in the papers. Points are awarded depending on whether your selection appears on the front page, pages 2-5 or elsewhere in the papers. There are bonus points for pictures, impending marriage announcements etc. Six main newspapers are used. The overall winner receives £5,000 with daily prizes also on offer.

Fantasy Politics

The NewStatesman are running a fantasy politics game which asks you to select your cabinet of 21 people from a shortlist of 90 real-life politicians and celebrities. In a similar fashion to 'celebstatus' points are awarded or deducted depending on positive or negative press coverage. So if you fancy Ali-G as Prime Minister and Anna Kournikova or Carol Vorderman as Chancellor of the Exchequer this is the game for you!

Other Fantasy Games:

Fantasy Gardening - Yes, I'll repeat that ...... Fantasy Gardening!

It really does seem that your imagination is the only obstacle in the way of inventing a fantasy competition and as this site states - why should football fans have all the fun? Fantasy Gardening is a serious plant 'testing' site and uses independent researchers using scientific methods to ensure the results from plant research and experiments is meaningful. Simply predict the results that you expect from the plant 'tests' and compare to actual results.

Know of any other unusual fantasy competitions? Let us know via games@fiso.co.uk

FSN8 11.55a.m. Wednesday 4 April

With Tiger Woods perhaps on the verge of history when he tees-off at the US Masters on Thursday 5 April, FISO take an in-depth look at two online fantasy golf games that have recently been launched.

Your-Golf Pick

Your-Golf Pick was launched by SportingOdds.com in February 2001 and is based around either the USPGA and/or Euro tour. Your-Golf Pick is not only one of the simplest fantasy golf games to play but has extremely informative pages on golf tournaments and player statistics. Plenty of prizes are on offer and you are automatically entered into a mini-leagues with 99 other players who entered the game at a similar time to you. This and the use of sub-seasons gives you a fair chance of winning whenever you join. To play simply pick one golfer a week who you feel will perform well in that week's tournament. Once you have picked a golfer you cannot pick him again. You accumulate points equivalent to the prize money won by your golfer (the Ryder Cup has its own points system). The ability to have 'reserve' players and/or email alerts and a 'tournament planner' section really do add to the ease of playing the game. There are even chat facilities both public and private if you want to set up your own. Your-Golf Pick have really tried hard to make this an enjoyable fantasy golf experience, particularly for those who do not keep fully up to date with the latest golf news which is a must for most fantasy golf games if you want to win something. The restriction of only using each player once brings a good level of strategy into the game without over complicating it. The game has an initial 'free to play' period before it becomes 'pay to play' at the end of April 2001 at a cost of £10. The game just covers the US tour at present but it is intended that the Euro tour becomes live at the end of April 2001 and in fact the two tours may be combined.

Fantasy League Golf

The Fantasy League team are clearly not content with just football and F1 for they have come up with another fantasy sports game. Fantasy League Golf 'practice rounds' start on 5 April 2001 (US Masters) and then 'tees-off' for real on 3 May 2001 for a season that spans the 28 weeks to 11 November 2001. The entry fee is £10. Pick 10 golfers from around the World from a $20m budget and score points from your 6 'active' players based on finishing places with bonus points also on offer. 15 transfers are allowed for the season with only 2 between each tournament, although unlimited substitutions are allowed. Team changes can be made up to 15 minutes before tournament start time. Due to the involved nature of the game (managing a 10 team squad for USPGA and Euro tours, points system, transfers, substitutions etc) you need to keep a really close eye on your squad and tournament schedules to have a decent chance of winning any of the prizes on offer which include a fabulous holiday. 

FSN 9 2pm 6 April 2001

The next 10 days of football are likely to play a crucial role in many real-life fantasy Premiership football competitions. Today we highlight the fixtures for this prelude to the Premiership run-in. 

Saturday, 7th April 2001

Aston Villa vs West Ham [15:00]
Derby vs Chelsea [15:00]
Leeds vs Southampton [15:00]
Leicester vs Coventry [15:00]

Sunday, 8th April 2001

Everton vs Manchester City [15:00]

Monday, 9th April 2001

Middlesbrough vs Sunderland [20:00] SKY

Tuesday, 10th April 2001

Ipswich vs Liverpool [19:45]
Manchester United vs Charlton [20:00]
Tottenham vs Bradford [19:45]

Wednesday, 11th April 2001

Manchester City vs Arsenal [19:45]

Friday, 13th April 2001

Liverpool vs Leeds [11:30] SKY
Bradford vs Charlton [16:00]

Saturday, 14th April 2001

Manchester United vs Coventry [12:00] SKY
Arsenal vs Middlesbrough [15:00]
Aston Villa vs Everton [15:00]
Chelsea vs Southampton [15:00]
Ipswich vs Newcastle [15:00]
Leicester vs Manchester City [15:00]
Sunderland vs Tottenham [15:00]
West Ham vs Derby [15:00]

Monday, 16th April 2001

Coventry vs Sunderland
Derby vs Leicester
Middlesbrough vs Ipswich
Newcastle vs West Ham
Everton vs Liverpool (KO 18.00) SKY

Tuesday, 17th April 2001

Charlton vs Aston Villa
Tottenham vs Chelsea


TBA Matches:

Liverpool vs Chelsea
Newcastle vs Arsenal

If Liverpool or Arsenal do not make the FA Cup Final on 12th May then these games are likely to be played on Sunday 13th May.


Below is also a brief summary of the final run-in:

Saturday, 21st April 2001

Man Utd vs Man City at 12.00 SKY
The other 8 matches at 3pm
Sunderland vs Newcastle at 18.00 SKY

Saturday, 28th April 2001

Full fixture list (except for Charlton v Ipswich) with the Sky game being
Leeds vs Chelsea at noon.

Monday, 30th April 2001

Charlton vs Ipswich 20.00 SKY

Tuesday, 1st May 2001

Bradford vs Liverpool
Newcastle vs Southampton SKY

Saturday, 5th May 2001

Full fixture list (except for Ipswich vs Man City)

Monday, 7th May

Ipswich vs Manchester City SKY

Sunday, 13th May 2001

Bradford vs Leeds
Southampton vs Manchester United

Saturday, 19th May (final games)

Full fixture list, all 15.00 hours

Whilst every care has been taken to compile the above lists FISO cannot be held responsible for errors made.

FSN 10 11 a.m. Saturday 14 April 2001

Before we kick-off with a look at new game reviews on FISO, there are a few updates to the forthcoming premiership fixture list covered in FSN9 as follows:

Liverpool vs Tottenham - moved from Saturday 21 April to 3 p.m. Sunday 22nd April
Liverpool vs Chelsea - now confirmed as Tuesday May 8th
Newcastle vs Arsenal - now confirmed as Tuesday May 15th


New fantasy sports games reviews on FISO:

UPredictF1

UPredict's F1 game is a FREE to enter competition which starts on 15 April 2001 (San Marino GP). You are given a budget of £280m for the season and must select 2 drivers and 1 team for each race. The points scoring system is quite straightforward - you're basic aim is to select drivers/team who both qualify and finish as high up as possible. Cash prize to the winner at the season end.

Dreamracers

Dreamracers (formerly FantasyF1.org.uk) is now in its 5th year of Fantasy Grand Prix. Dreamracers offers a prize fund valued at over £1,000, including a PC, F1 Merchandise, Videos and more. It is FREE to enter and you can join at any time during the season. Over 1,500 entrants are expected for 2001. Choose 3 drivers, 1 chassis, 1 engine supplier and 1 tyre supplier using a £75m budget. The site also features a forum, and access to all the latest F1 news and information.

F1 Portal

F1 Portal's developers are based in Belgium and their (English) website went live on 1 March 2001. 2 free F1 games are currently offered, a simple prediction game (predict top 3 for qualifying and top 3 for the race) and a traditional fantasy F1 game (pick 2 drivers, 1 engine and 1 chassis using a budget of $50m). It is envisaged that a simulated F1 game will also be run soon.

ISM

ISM (International Soccer Manager) is a PBEM (Play By E-Mail) Simulated Fantasy International Soccer league (results are calculated with the @esms software). ISM starts its first season in April 2001, and there are currently over 50 managers with room for many more. ISM gives managers the chance to manage any nation in the World of Soccer, from Brazil to the minnows of San Marino. All the real players are included, and each manager can call up extra players. There is a coaching feature in ISM which allows each nation to hire, fire and transfer coaches. All the real competitions are included from the World Cup and the World Cup Qualifiers to the Copa America and Confederations Cup. 

In next week's newsletter we take a look at the status of premierwin.com, the £1m prize fantasy football game, whose helpdesk has not been operational for the past few weeks.