2 High Dollar Roto leagues have vacancies

[joshturin]

The Couchpotato Rotisserie League, entering its 9th season, has 3 vacancies. The Norse Rotisserie League, entering its 4th season, has 4 vacancies. EF is $2000 with all money returned in prizes after league expenses. The rules of each league are similar. These are keeper leagues with very strong anti-dump rules. Anyone who joins will receive a competitive team as adjustments will be made to any currently sub-par freeze lists.

Format: separate AL & NL auctions, $270 for 24 players (10 pitchers). Standings are based on combined AL + NL scores.

The Couchpotato League auctions live in Las Vegas on Friday, March 28. Attendance is mandatory. The Norse League auction will take place either on Thursday, March 27 or Saturday March 29. This auction is on-line. Both leagues are run on Onroto.

If interested respond here of email me: josh_75247@yahoo.com. I can send you a copy of the league rules & allow you to tour the league website.

Happy Holidays to all my Rotisserie friends throughout the country! I made a few new ones at First Pitch AZ & hope to make more. Good luck to everyone in 2014.

Josh Turin (Dallas)

[joshturin]

I see a lot of views but thus far only one response to this post. We are now down to 2 vacancies in each of these leagues, so if anyone in the BHQ community is interested in these highly-competitive leagues and ready to make this serious a commitment to Roto, now is a good time to decide! The advantage of these private leagues is the ROI. They pay 100% of EF's in prizes, minus league expenses. Couchpotato, which is a live auction, has higher league expenses: $800 - Las Vegas conference room; $150 - NJ Fantasy Sports draft wallboards (the ones used in NFBC); $350 auctioneer fee; $200 stat service; $500 - annual commish fee (these are approximate figures). So about $2000 come out of the pot for these expenses, meaning that $2000 X 12 = $24,000 - $2000 = $22,200 is paid back in standard, Waggoner prizes. In the Norse league the payout is higher, as only ~$700 of the above expenses are incurred due to the online auction. So ~ $23,300 of EFs are paid back to league members in prizes.

I hope to fill both leagues in December--so if anyone is interested, please email me now:

josh_75247@yahoo.com

Thanks & have a great holiday season.

Josh Turin

[Cigar]

That's a pretty high rake in either case. As a commissioner of a football league who takes no "annual commissioner fee" and a player in 2 baseball leagues that don't either, I would find that difficult to stomach.

[usualsuspects]

That's a pretty high rake in either case. As a commissioner of a football league who takes no "annual commissioner fee" and a player in 2 baseball leagues that don't either, I would find that difficult to stomach.

Maybe there's an auctioneer/commissioner vacancy?

[joshturin]

Thanks to you two gents for your off-hand remarks. A great deal of work goes into fairly running a year-long contest. Part of that work is recruiting when a league has vacancies. In the past 8 years, we've had no more than one. But if a league runs long enough, meaning that it is successful, people will retire from play for any number of reasons. One of our owners had a death in his immediate family. Another became a father & made lifestyle changes.

So when necessary, this seems a logical place to recruit, as one would like to think the readership @ BHQ, which people pay to subscribe to, would include people seriously interested in Rotisserie baseball.

It amazes me that intelligent people will spend money, in some cases a considerable amount to play in online or large public leagues, where winning a prize is such a longshot that it is closer to buying a lottery ticket. I should like to think that people who spend a considerable amount of time reading about Roto sabermetrics, including the fantastic stuff published by BHQ, would wish to take that knowledge & apply it in formats that reward carefully managing a Roto team all season.

Hopefully I'll get some interested replies. Merry Christmas & Happy New Years to all.

[usualsuspects]

Heck, I'm serious. They guys in my league just hand me a bottle of Tanqueray and call it good! Take no offense, your league sounds quite grand and if I had any knowledge of the AL at all I'd sign on.

[joshturin]

Good point. I've posted more details in the past. Usually someone interested will click on the email link. The leagues are 5X5, standard categories. The roster structure is: 24 players (2 C, 1B, CI, 3B, 2B, MI, SS, UT, 5 OF, 10 P), $270 auction money. This I believe is standard in AL-only & NL-only leagues since the Astros moved to the AL.

I'm not bashing all large contests. I've played in NFBC & it was fun. The odds of winning are though, if not astronomical, something like buying a valuable lottery ticket. Even if you're really skilled & work hard on your roster & in-season management, you can only hope to win if you get lucky + avoid a key injury. Of course this can happen in a 12-man league, too. But the odds of winning the $100K in a contest with several thousand entrants are long.

The public on-line leagues, some of which can be played for as much as $5000 EF, probably rake at least 35%. All you have to do is add up the prize list & multiply the EFs by the # of entrants. Typically they pay back only 60%. Unlike NFBC, in which the main contests are live, this is just to play anonymously on the net. Anyone who ponies up $1000, $2000+ to play in such leagues is, to put it politely, not being very smart. No one is skilled enough at Roto to beat a 40% vig.

Someone did contact me from IS to join Couchpotato & we're now down to only 1 vacancy in that league. The Norse League still has 3. I've found that the best public forum in which to advertise serious private Roto leagues is the poker site, 2+2=4. The reason is because the poker players who frequent that site are accustomed to wagering money intelligently & some of them will gravitate to Rotisserie contests. But I continue to advertise here, despite the catcalls, because I continue to assume that the readership here is Roto-savvy, even though a high stakes contest is not everyone's cup of tea. I'm only looking for one or two people serious enough about their interest in Rotisserie baseball to commit to a live league for significant stakes. These two leagues currently have members from: NY, NJ, VA, MN, SD, TX, AZ & CA--and we meet once a year in Las Vegas and have a tremendous time.