FBC Octagon Rules

[samo]

Playoffs start in a couple days. Top 4 finishers in all three Octagon leagues advance to the the "upper" league next season. Here's a refresher on what H2H managers should know for the playoffs:

3.1 The final standings of H2H leagues shall be determined by cumulative winning percentage (by categories not weeks) for the entire NBA season, i.e., the regular season and fantasy playoffs combined.

3.1 (B) The second exception to Rule 3.1 is that in a First Division H2H league in Year 1 or after, a manager who would not otherwise qualify may earn one of the spots in the following year's Champions League if BOTH of the following conditions are satisfied: (i) the manager wins his First Division H2H playoff tournament; AND (ii) the manager has a cumulative winning record (by categories not weeks) in regular season and playoff H2H match-ups against the manager he would displace. If a manager has an opportunity to advance under this exception, the Commissioner of his league may take any and all steps necessary to ensure the H2H playoff finals are fully competitive.

Lets use our Octagon H2H Live Draft league as an example of how this is gonna play out. The current top 4 are:

*1. Dukies 115-64-1 .642
*2. samo 104-74-2 .583
*3. Cotton Camby's 101-73-6 .578
*4. Dynasty Deacon 98-78-4 .556

We have a drop-off in overall record after the current Top 4 as follows, all of whom are still in the hunt for that last playoff spot:

*5. The People's Champ 93-84-3 .525
6. SC 81-93-6 .467
7. NY Knickerbockers 83-95-2 .467
8. BokZg 82-97-1 .458
9. Poppin Da Collar 79-96-5 .453

As the bottom two playoff seeds, The People's Champ and whoever gets that last spot have two ways they can advance to next year's upper league: (1) pass the #4 team in overall winning percentage during the last 3 weeks; or (2) fail to pass the #4 team in overall winning percentage but "win" the league in the traditional H2H playoff sense AND have a better H2H winning percentage in direct match-ups against the team with the #4 best winning percentage.

What this means is Dukies is probably safe and assured a spot in next year's upper league due to his great overall record. Samo, Cotton Camby's, and Dynasty Deacon are looking to avoid finishing the playoffs as that #4 best record, which would in theory put us on the hot seat if the #5th or #6th best team won the playoff tournament. As it stands, we still have at least 9 teams with something to play for heading into the last two days of the regular season. If anybody has any questions or would like further clarification, go ahead and post here. Good luck all and may the fantasy gods be with you!

[thelimey]

Just to be clear by this:

AND have a better H2H winning percentage in direct match-ups against the team with the #4 best winning percentage.

Do you mean the combined score of the previous 2 meetings so for example if:
Team A finishes with the 4th best %age record
Team B wins the H2H tournament but only has the 5th best %age record
The two previous meetings between A & B finished a combined 10-8 in team A's favour.
Then team A would advance, if the games between A & B had finished 10-8 in B's favour then B would advance ahead of A.
Hope that the question is clear

[samo]

Just to be clear by this:

AND have a better H2H winning percentage in direct match-ups against the team with the #4 best winning percentage.

Do you mean the combined score of the previous 2 meetings so for example if:
Team A finishes with the 4th best %age record
Team B wins the H2H tournament but only has the 5th best %age record
The two previous meetings between A & B finished a combined 10-8 in team A's favour.
Then team A would advance, if the games between A & B had finished 10-8 in B's favour then B would advance ahead of A.
Hope that the question is clear

Yes, you have it exactly right. Only thing I'd add is that if Team B wins the playoffs we're gonna look at ALL the H2H matchups between Teams A and B, including playoffs. So if in your scenario Teams A and B have a playoff matchup which Team B wins 6-3, it would advance due to an overall record of 14-13 against Team A.

I'm sure everyone recognizes what we're trying to accomplish here, which is to give overall priority to the win-loss record a manager achieves over the course of the entire season while at the same time giving the "lower seeds" a way to advance by winning the fantasy playoffs. Our goal was to avoid having the entire season for a team like thelimey's "Cotton Camby's" (who had a truly stellar season) go down the drain b/c he lost in Round 1 of the playoffs and finished 5th or 6th as in a traditional H2H league. The compromise we worked hard to achieve in this league may not be perfect but its as close as we could get.

The reason we gave the Commissioner of each H2H league the power to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure a fully competitive match-up if someone like Team B is threatening to displace a 4th place team is b/c we don't want any risk that Team B wins the playoff tourney b/c the team it was playing, such as "Dukies" had already mathematically wrapped up a spot in the upper league and stopped managing its team, setting line-ups, etc. during the "championship" match which it really doesn't care if it wins or not, having already advanced. Its complicated, unfortunately, but we put enough thought into it we think it'll work!

[thelimey]

Thanks for clarifying that, I wanted to make sure I had understood the rules correctly especially as there are still a lot of possible permutations in our league, for both the 2nd and the 6th spots

[Dutch]

Now explain this part to me:
AND (ii) the manager has a cumulative winning record (by categories not weeks) in regular season and playoff H2H match-ups against the manager he would displace. If a manager has an opportunity to advance under this exception, the Commissioner of his league may take any and all steps necessary to ensure the H2H playoff finals are fully competitive.


Does this only count for matchups against the #4 best winning team, cause reading it I do not see it.

[samo]

Now explain this part to me:
AND (ii) the manager has a cumulative winning record (by categories not weeks) in regular season and playoff H2H match-ups against the manager he would displace. If a manager has an opportunity to advance under this exception, the Commissioner of his league may take any and all steps necessary to ensure the H2H playoff finals are fully competitive.

Does this only count for matchups against the #4 best winning team, cause reading it I do not see it.

Can you be more specific about which part doesn't make sense? Its exactly what thelimey and I have been discussing in the posts above so I'm unclear what additional clarificiation you'd like. I'm happy to discuss it until everyone is clear.

As a general proposition, the Top 4 teams by overall season win-loss record will advance, with a very narrow exception that allows a team with a lower percentage record to advance (displacing the 4th place team) if and only if the lower placed team "wins" the league the old-fashioned H2H way by winning the playoffs AND (to protect the 4th place team being displaced) has a winning overall H2H record against the team it would be displacing in all the match-ups between the two managers over the full 24 week season.

The reason for this rule is b/c when we were hashing out the rules for this league several "traditionalist" H2H managers were not prepared to entirely give up the importance of the H2H playoffs which have always in the past entirely decided the order of finish in H2H leagues. The compromise we reached (after 3 weeks of heated debate in this forum) maintains the concept of rewarding the top teams over the entire fantasy season, while giving the winner of the fanasy playoffs a shot at advancing if they would not have otherwise based on their win-loss record.

Whew. I hope that clears things up, but if not then keep asking questions until its all clear to you.

[Dutch]

the manager has a cumulative winning record (by categories not weeks) in regular season and playoff H2H match-ups against the manager he would displace.

[/quote]

Sorry but where does it say the 4th place team here. It only says:
"the manager he would displace"

As far as I am concerned that could be any manager from the top 4.
I do see that it is stated clearly in the rules that it only applies to the the 4th place team, unless it is somewhere else.

[samo]

the manager has a cumulative winning record (by categories not weeks) in regular season and playoff H2H match-ups against the manager he would displace.

Sorry but where does it say the 4th place team here. It only says:
"the manager he would displace"

As far as I am concerned that could be any manager from the top 4.
I do see that it is stated clearly in the rules that it only applies to the the 4th place team, unless it is somewhere else.

Ahhh, gotcha. Its definitely the 4th place team (by cumulative win-loss record after Week 24) that would be displaced b/c only 4 managers are making it out of each of our 3 leagues this season. USA may be getting a reputation for making up rules to fit the result we want but assume for the sake of argument we're not like that in this league. To make our league work with all its moving parts, the Rules got longer and more involved than we would have liked. Where we could reduce the number of words or where things seemed self-evident, we tried to minimize, believe it or not, lol.

In the somewhat unlikely event the team that wins the playoffs has the 5th or 6th best win-loss record on the season, the only relevant analysis will be the overall H2H record between the team that wants to take advantage of this narrow exception and the team with the 4th best win-loss record after 24 weeks.

If this "displaced team" thing was unclear to anyone else, let us know and we'll tighten up the Rules to clearly specify that the only team that is eligible to be displaced by a Playoff winner would be the team with the 4th best win-loss record after the full 24 week season. I guess part of the reason we didn't specify "4th place team" is that next season only the Top 3 teams from each lower league are moved up (Bottom 6 from upper league move down and Top 3 from each lower league move up) and if "4th place team" was specified in the rules it wouldn't work next season. Whichever team is the "lowest ranked of the teams moving up" is on the hot seat as the team an H2H Playoff winner could potentially displace. I appreciate the question b/c the reason I started this 2006-07 Playoff thread is so everyone who cares enough to ask will know exactly how our playoff structure is set up and how our winners will be determined.