How to Play
How do I play fantasy sports?
Fantasy Football is a game of skill in which you (as "owner") assemble and manage a group of active football players (your "team") that compete against other teams in a league in head-to-head matchups. Most commonly, fantasy leagues consist of 8, 10, or 12 teams, but may contain more or less. Once you join a league, you will create your roster by drafting against other teams in your league. Each week, you "start" players at the various positions (QB, RB, WR, TE, etc.) based on your league settings. Players not in your starting lineup make up your “bench”, and do not accrue stats for you while they are inactive. The statistics your active players accumulate on the field serve to calculate their point total for the week, and total points of all the players in your active lineup make up your weekly score. If you have a higher point total than your opponent, you win the game.
Each week will determine winners and losers through a predetermined schedule, and the teams with the top win-loss records at the end of the season will advance to the playoffs. Whoever wins the remaining games in the playoffs becomes the last team standing – the champion.
The Waiver Wire
After the conclusion of Week 1, it is important to try and improve your roster through the waiver wire. The waiver wire is a system in which you can add players that are not currently on a roster in your particular league. If you make a claim for a player that no one else wants, that player will be added to your roster. If you make a claim for a player multiple teams want, the team with the highest priority will get that player. In order to add players, teams will have to drop players at the same time in order to comply with the roster limits of your league.
Whether it’s to replace injured players or simply grab gems that can help you immediately (or down the road), smart handling of the waiver wire is a key to the success of your season.
Trades
Another way to add players to your roster is by trading with other owners. Often, you’ll find you’re a little heavy or a little thin in certain areas of your roster, and trading with another owner can help balance things out. When attempting to trade, it’s wise to look for the needs of others before making offers; trades that help both teams are the ones most likely to go through.
YouRulz has created unique Multi-Team Trade functionality. This feature allows you to do more than the basic 2 team trade that most sites allow. The YouRulz trade system allows you to create complex trades between any number of teams in your league. Once all players involved agree and the trade is approved, all players change teams at one time. You no longer have to use multiple 2 team trades to accomplish these more complicated types of trades.
A trade deadline will be set by each individual league.
What are the different types of YouRulz leagues?
Free - Participants pay nothing. Run a totally free private league or join a free public league – participants pay nothing. Customize your rules and scoring with all the features of our major competitors, but with a subset of features available to Premium subscribers.
Premium - Users may subscribe to a Premium Subscription for a specific sport for the season. The subscription will allow a user to join or create as many leagues with premium features as desired. Premium users can also create Public leagues in the system. Premium features include all of the features in Free Leagues, plus our patented In-Game Substitutions, Automatic Player Replacement, Points for Pass Interference, and more.
How do In-Game Substitutions work?
What sets YouRulz apart from every other platform is its patented in-game substitution feature. With In-Game Substitutions, you can swap out an active player with a player on your bench any time during the game. Just like a real coach, whether your active player was injured, ejected, or is simply not having a good day, you may swap players to improve your team’s performance. Swapping your players will allow you to retain points that Player 1 already accumulated, and begin earning points for Player 2 at the point of the swap. For example, if you replace a player that played 7 minutes in the first quarter with a player whose game has not yet started, the replacement player will not start accumulating points until after 7 min in the first quarter have passed. This ensures a 60 minute game clock is adhered to. This feature is completely customizable as well. You can control how long to wait in between swaps, or how many swaps can take place during a game week. You can also turn it off completely if you choose to for your league.
You can learn more details about In-Game Substitutions HERE.
What is Automatic Player Replacement?
This is a part of our patented substitution feature but allows for additional controls. You can have In-Game Substitutions turned off but still use the Automatic Player Replacement. There are 2 options for this feature. The first is to allow the system to replace injured players during a game. When an injury alert comes out, the system knows to make a swap for you. In our system, you create a depth chart for your team so the system knows which player is next on your depth chart when a replacement is needed. The second option is to only allow this feature during pre game. In the football, final player statuses are provided 30 minutes prior to game time. So, if you have a player that is questionable, that you think will be playing, but at the final moment he is changed to Out, the system can automatically replace this player in your lineup with the next player on your depth chart.
How do you give points for pass interference?
This feature allows us to give points to both the passer and the receiver for the yardage they would have obtained when there is pass interference. The system is using the penalty data being provided by the sport and basing the points on the penalty yardage. So, if they move the ball 40 yards down the field due to the penalty, we can give both the passer and receiver the additional 40 yards of passing and receiving, as well as any bonus points associated with that yardage. Like all features in our system, this can be turned on or off based on each leagues personalized settings.
What defensive players do you offer?
We offer several ways to handle Defensive players in our system. Like most systems out today, we offer Defensive Teams as well as Individual Defensive Players (IDPs) which allow you to pick defensive players from any position. However, we also allow you to set Defensive Positions. We took a unique approach to this due to defensive players moving around the field and broke the positions into Defensive Line, Linebacker, and Defensive Back. This allows you great flexibility in how you setup your league to handle defensive players.
Do you have Keeper and Dynasty tools?
YouRulz has a great Keeper League setup to help users handle both Keeper and Dynasty leagues. It can also be used to setup a mirror league of their existing league that is on one of our competitors. The Keeper League option allows the commissioner to assign players to teams ahead of the draft. Once the draft begins, the Keeper players will already be assigned to each team’s roster and removed from the list of available players. We will be working over the next year to add many other Dynasty features to the site.
My league has an offline draft, how can your system help us?
We really tried to think about the many leagues that still do Offline drafts. So many systems today only offer an online draft tool with no controls for the commissioner. Many leagues choose to do an Offline draft just so they are not bound by the clock and bad autopick logic. Anyone that has done offline drafts before knows that things happen during your draft party that you need to be able to adjust to. We have added controls for commissioners in Private Leagues like pausing the draft, undoing the last persons pick, and resetting the draft completly. This means our Online draft can be used by many leagues who have traditionally performed offline drafts simply due to a lack of controls. However, if you still want a true offline draft where the commissioner enters each pick, you will enjoy our Offline draft. It is based on the same draft room used for Online drafts, however, the commissioner enters each pick in the system. You will still have a timer for each pick to help you keep your draft on pace, but when the timer reaches zero the system does not autopick it simply waits for the commissioner to enter the pick. Every team can still sign into the draft room, see the picks in the chat window, review the updated available players in real-time, or view our Draft Board that updates in real-time as the commisioner enters the picks! Bottom line, you have all the great features of the draft room, with all the controls you are used to!
Enjoy Yourself
Fantasy sports are supposed to be a fun escape from the often-challenging situations in our every day lives. The expanded options YouRulz offers are designed to expand that fun through countless additional strategies and new situations. At the end of the year there can only be one champion, so don’t get discouraged if that isn’t you. Keep improving your skills, and that title you grab down the line as the result of your hard work will taste that much sweeter.