Help and FAQ

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Getting Started - League Settings

Make sure your League Settings are correct.

  • League Size - Set your number of teams, player count, and optionally a Roto game limit. This limit is for the team so if it's 82 games per player, and you have 10 active players, set it to 820.
  • Active Roster Spots - Though optional, ideally these will be set since we use them to determine best active players. Also, if set, the Bench will be auto-populated.
  • Auction Settings - For auction leagues, dollars will be calculated if these are filled out. For $1 players, we typically suggest setting this to the total bench players for all teams. So if you have 10 teams and 4 bench, 40. This value is needed to push money towards the top player since this is typically how auctions go.
  • Quality Games - A quality game occurs on a day with a light schedule and is based on your designated game limit (default = 5). More quality games means fewer wasted games, where the player plays but remains on your bench due to a heavy schedule (10+ games).
  • Playoff Weeks - These dates are used to determine # of playoff games, and you can optionally change the end of the season to the end of the playoffs.
  • Fantasy Provider - This is critical since it makes sure your player positions are correct. This is also required when importing rosters or connecting with the Draft Tracker.
  • League Defaults - Stats - This will be the default stats display for most pages.
  • League Defaults - Value Type - Total Value calculates values based on total stats so missed games will reduce value. Per Game calculates values on average game stats so games played are not considered. We recommend Total Value with Added Replacement Games -- like Total Value it uses total stats, but it also adds estimated free agent players (for missed games) to give the player a total of 82 games.
  • League Defaults - Calculate Using Owned - By default, we use the top players to find average values for your league. Check this if you'd rather use the actual owned players regardless of their rank. It's recommended you use this.
  • Categories - You can configure your league as a category league or a points-based. For category leagues, you can optionally enter a weight if you want to emphasize or deemphasize categories. Typically, weights are not needed.

Tools

Use these tools to manage your leagues.

  • Team Players - If you use Yahoo!, ESPN, CBS, or FanTrax, roster management is simple. Go to team players, enter the needed info to connect to your league, click automatically update rosters, and then import. The site will then automatically import your rosters as needed (daily or more often if you're active).
  • Projections - These are our projected ranks for players based on your settings. These are constantly updated, and should be used often to find free agents that may help your team.
  • Draft Tracker - This also shows projected ranks and includes tools to connect to your draft room. Click here for a tutorial.
  • Player Rankings - These are ranks based on games already played. For instance, use this to see last season's rankings or this season's once games have been played.
  • Projected Standings - Use this tool for Roto leagues to see your expected standings. If you can typically swap bench players in most days, set Bench % to 100. If the bench only plays when starters are hurt, something lower like 40 is a good estimate. For H2H leagues, this will show projected win %.
  • Team Analysis - Use this to see a detailed analysis of your team to highlight strengths and weaknesses. You can view projected team analysis or see how your team has preformed recently. In addition to your team, you can view other teams to see how you compare.
  • Trade Analysis (classic) - Use this tool to see how a trade balanced out and see the effects on your team analysis and projected standings.
  • Trade Monster - This will analyze trades similar to the Trade Analysis plus it will intelligently balance trades if needed. Before the regular season, it will also compare two teams and suggest fair trades that benefit both teams.
  • Smart Tools - Use this tool to get suggested adds to improve your Roto projected standings or H2H weekly matchup.
  • H2H Tools - During the season, use these tools to plan your head to head matchups, and improve your chances to win.

What are Extra Values?

Extra Values are values you can show in addition to the default player Value. For example, you can show Josh's projected Value as the default and then also show Kyle's Value, Last Season's Value, Past 20 games value, etc. You can also specify the Value Type as Per Game, Total, or Per Minute. Here's some sample Extra Value samples:

  • 2018G - The 2018-19 Per Game Value.
  • 2018G_25g - The Per Game Value for the last 25 games of the 2018-19 season.
  • JoshG - Josh Lloyd's projected Per Game Value
  • JoshT - Josh Lloyd's projected Total Value
  • KyleG - Kyle McKeown's projected Per Game Value
  • 2018Skill - The 2018-19 Skill Level Value (a Per Minute Value using only players > 10 m/g)
  • Day - Uses stats from the past day
  • NextWk - Uses projected stats for the next week, typically Monday through Sunday
  • Short - Uses projected stats for the 2-3 weeks
  • Value30 - This is a theoretical per game value assuming the player plays 30 m/g. We take their projected per-minute stats, multiply by 30, and then compare that player to your league per-game players. This can be useful in determining a player's potential given minutes.

Finally, a value may end in:

  • _np - The non-punt value for the player if you're punting categories
  • _r - The value using Add Replacement Games. Using Add Replacement Games causes us to use estimated free agent player values to fill any projected missed game. For example, if LeBron is expected to miss 10 games, we add 10 games from an estimated player to similate you using a free agent in his place.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What are Values? - Our values are z-scores where 0.00 is your league average. Typically, a number 3 or higher is very good and -3 or lower very bad.
  • How often are the projections updated? - We manage two projection sets, and they are constantly updated based on news or changing opinions. Since our tools rely on accurate projections, our top priority is keeping these up to date.
  • What are Standard 8-Cat and 9-Cat? - Standard 8-Cat includes the following categories: pts, 3s, reb, ast, stl, blk, fg%, ft%. 9-Cat includes the same categories plus TOs.
  • How does Category "Punting" work? - In your league, if you ever decide to give up on a category, you can ""Punt"" it. In this case, the Values on the website will not include the punted categories. However, since others in your league still value that category, we show the LeagueV/League$ (value/dollars to the rest of the league including the punted categories) and the Punt+ (the additional value gained by the player through punting).
  • What is Balance Value? - Balance Value tells you how balanced a single player's categtories are. For example, someone giving most of their value in blocks will have a low Balance Value.
  • What is Positional Value? - Positional Value is an adjuted Value based on the scarcity of the player's positions based on your active roster spots. For example, if your league requires two starting centers, and centers are hard to find his Positional Value will be higher than his Value. This can be useful when determining a tie-breaker between two players.
  • What is Advanced Ownership Percent (Adv%)? - This shows the ownership percent of money leagues (likely well-managed) for standard sized leagues (156 players or 12 teams x 13 players). This is maintained daily so you can see the change in ownership over a given time period. This can be used to see what active owners actually think of players.
  • What is the Own column? - The Own column contains a color if the player is owned by one of the league teams. Here are the color codes:
           My Player Active
           My Player Inactive
           Other Team Player Active
           Other Team Player Inactive
  • What do these columns mean?
    Conf - the projection confidence from 1-5 with 5 most confident
    USG - Usage Rate
    Columns ending in V - Value for a single category
  • What are the Depth Chart abbreviations?
    ST = Starter
    mST = Matchup Starter
    BN = Rotation Bench
    mBN = Matchup Bench
    EM = Emergency Only
    NVR = Never Plays
  • What do the injury tags mean? These tags quickly show you why a player is being marked injured.
    Injury
    Illness
    COVID
    Rest
    Personal
    Coach's Decision
    Possible Suspension
    Dental
    Trade Pending
    Other
    Contract
  • What are DARKO values? - These are dynasty values projecting an 8-category value 5-years out. You can select this as a scoring category under Settings/League Settings. These are independently maintained by Kostya Medvedovsky (@kmedved) on Twitter. More info can be found at www.darko.app.