The Pit Stall

We get several emails over the course of the pre-season asking if we can handle all sorts of different Nascar pools.  Here’s a general outline of what we currently offer:

1. Salary Cap

Each team is given $1000 to pick exactly 8 drivers for the season.  You can select any 8 drivers as long as you keep your total salary for your team at or under $1000.  Trades are an option.  Picking teams online is also an option.  Number of drivers and salaries are not customizable.

2. Pick’em

There are 5 groups of drivers, grouped by previous performance.  Select one driver from each group for each race.  If you select a driver for the 6th race, he will be added to all of the following races as well.  Selections can be modified up until the weekly deadline which is generally 12pm (Noon) Eastern on the day of qualifying.  Daytona 500 and scheduled qualifying sessions beginning before this time, will be an exception.  Number of drivers and the groups are not customizable.  Picking online is an option.

3. Pick’em – All

Similar to the  Pick’em Style, but there are no groups.  Select the pre-determined number of drivers for each race out of all available drivers, prior to the weekly deadline.  Number of drivers is customizable.  Picking online is an option.

4. Pick One

Also similar to the Pick’em Style, but you only select one driver for each race, prior to the deadline.  Several leagues using this option also have limits on when and how many times a driver can be selected.  The site doesn’t have these limits set, but commissioners can modify ‘illegal’ picks (according to their rules) if need be.  Picking online is an option.

5. Box

There are 8 groups set up prior to the season.  Pick one car or driver from each of the groups.  Groups are not customizable.  Picks can be made online.  Trades are also an option.

6. Custom

There are basically two sides to ‘Custom’ leagues.  One is you use a set up similar to one of the non-pick’em styles above, but would prefer to customize your own groups or salaries.  All of the cars/drivers are listed, and the commissioner handles the submission of all of the teams.  The number of cars/drivers per team is customizable.  Trades are still allowed, but must be processed by the commissioner.  Picking teams online isn’t an option, as all teams have to be submitted by the commissioner.

The other ‘custom’ option is you let us know how your pool works, and we can work on setting something up for you.  We don’t gaurantee we can set up any type of pool, but if it’s different than anything else we have, we’ll consider it.  We set up a number of custom pool types last year, and have a couple more in the works for this year.  Maybe we’ll add descriptions of some of them, and make them available for selection.

You can also check out our various scoring options.

Filed under: Nascar Pool Help, Site by Site Admin - Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
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We have several scoring methods set up as default options, and we also have a number of custom methods. Here’s an outline all of the different options that are currently available.  New methods will be added once they’ve been used for a full season.

1. Standard Points

Uses the Nascar Championship points scoring system.  Can choose whether or not to count penalties.  Highest score wins.  Only points earned for racing are included.  The Chase reset does not get added for your drivers.

2. Standard Points – Drop Lowest

Uses the Standard Points method, and the lowest score for that race is dropped.  Can choose whether or not to count penalties.  If counting penalties, the lowest score after the penalty is applied is dropped.  Highest score wins.

3. Standard Points – Modified

Uses the Standard Points method for all cars/drivers making the field, and awards 29 points to all cars/drivers that do not.  Highest score wins.

4. Finish

Your points for the race include the finishing position of the car/driver.  If your car/driver finishes 1st, you get one point, and if they finish 30th, 30 points, etc.  If your car/driver doesn’t make the field for whatever reason, they get 75 points.  There are 2 bonuses awarded, one for the pole if qualifying is contested (-10 pts) and one for the most laps led in the race (-5 pts).  Lowest score wins.

5. Top 10

Points are only awarded to the top 10 finishers of the race.  If your car/driver finishes 1st, you get 10 points, 2nd, 9 pts and so on down to 10th place which receives 1 point.  All others are awarded no points.  Highest score wins.

6. Redline (Custom)

The Redline scoring method is a variation on the Finish method.  Points are still awarded by the finish position, but a laps led bonus is -1 point, with winning the pole (whether quals are contested or not) also being worth -1 point.  The race winning car/driver is also awarded a -2 point bonus.  All cars/drivers not participating in the race for whatever reason receive 44 points.  There is a Chase reset in this method and should really only be used for the Redline pool since the reset it limited to a specific number of teams.  Lowest score wins. 

7. Capper (Custom)

The Capper scoring method is a variation on the Top 10 method.  Instead of the top 10 receiving points, it is now the top 15, from 15 points for first, down to 1 point for 15th.  Winning the pole is also a 5 point bonus.  Highest score wins.

8. Riverton (Custom)

The Riverton scoring method is similar to the Top 10 method, except points are awarded to all cars/drivers in a race.  The first place car/driver gets 45 points, 2nd place, 44 points and so on, down to 3 points for 43rd.  There is a 5 point bonus for leading the most laps, as well as a 5 point bonus for winning a pole (if qualifying is contested – except the Daytona 500).  Highest score wins.

If you have a scoring method you want to use for your league, send us a message, and we’ll try to incorporate it.  We started with only the 3 basic methods (Standard, Finish & Top 10) and have worked with other leagues to make their method work as well.

Filed under: Nascar Pool Help, Site by Site Admin - Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
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Once your league is set up, you’ll need to get all of teams entered.  There are basically two ways to go about this.  Enter them yourself as the commish, or if your pool allows online selections, have people register for the site and add their teams themselves.

Picking Your Team

1. Register and/or Login to the site.
2. If you haven’t already (and aren’t the commish), use the ID and password created by the commish to join the league.
3. Once you’re on the league home page, you can select ‘Pick Team’ from the league menu.
4. If it’s any of the Pick’em style leagues, you just have to submit your team name, and your picks will be defaulted to the first driver in each group alphabetically.  If it’s not a Pick’em style league, submit your team name and select your cars or drivers and click ‘Add Team’.

You should now show up in the team list.  Your team name and overall stats should also show up under your league on your home page whenever you log in.  To make your selections for any of the Pick’em style leagues, you can get to the picks page by selecting your team from the team list, or by clicking the ‘P’ button on the races list.

Adding a Team – Commish

As the Commish of a league, you have the ability to submit your participants picks, as well as modify them in case of error. 

1. From anywhere inside of your league, select ‘Add Team’.  This option will only show up for league commissioners. 
2. Enter the team name, and select the cars or drivers for that team.  You can also enter an email address to notify that person that their team has been submitted.  The email will contain the league ID and password for them to register and join the league.
3. Click the ‘Add Team’ button.

So there’s the basics in adding teams to your fantasy Nascar leagues.  Next up will be some basic steps for managing your league.

Filed under: Nascar Pool Help, Site by Site Admin - Thursday, January 21st, 2010
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To help out all of the new commissioners on Nascar Pools Online this coming season, we’ve put together some quick step by step instructions on setting up a fantasy Nascar pool on the site.

Creating Your League

1. Register and/or Login to the site.
2. Go to the Create League page and give your league a name, a login ID and a password. The ID and password will be used by your poolies to join the league.
3. Select your pool type, and the duration of your season and click the Create League button.

You should now be on the league settings page. You can select the rest of your league options from here. Some options are pre-determined by the pool type you selected on the first page.  The league settings will generally only be able to be modified BEFORE you start submitting/accepting teams.

Selecting League Settings

1. Choose whether you want to score by the car or the driver.  If you choose by car, you’ll get the points for that car, regardless of who is behind the wheel.
2. Select the number of cars or drivers on each team.  All of the default pool types available will have this pre-selected and wont be able to be changed.  If you require more or less drivers/cars per team than in the options, let us know and we can modify it manually for you.
3. Choose your scoring method.  We have a number of options available, including several custom options that other pools use.  If you have a scoring method for your pool that you would like added select ‘Custom’ and contact us to follow up.  If your pool requires a Chase reset, you will need to do this, as no non-custom scoring methods have a reset.
4. If your pool uses one of the ‘Standard’ scoring methods, you can choose to count penalties against your standings.  This will be ignored for all other league types.
5. Select whether or not your league will allow trades, and if there is a cap on trades, put in how many you want it capped at.
6. If you are using one of the default pool types (Salary, Box, Pick’em and Pick One) you can allow teams to be selected online.  You don’t have to, but you do have that option.
7. If you have allowed trades, and are using one of the default pool types you can allow teams to make their trades online.  If you have specific rules about who you can trade and when you can make trades, you’ll want to leave this blank and have the commissioner be responsible for all trades.
8. If you would like your league publicly viewable, you can select this option, which will make available a page where people can view the overall standings without logging into the site.  They wont be able to view team information or race by race results or standings.  The URL for this page will be included in your welcome email upon league creation.

Your league login ID and password are included at the bottom of this page in case you ever forget what they were.  Once you have your league ready for teams, send out an email with this league ID and password.  Remind people that they have to register their own accounts on the site, and then use the info you give them to join the league.  They will only have to do so one time.

Hopefully that helps you get started on getting your league up and running on the site.  We will add a follow-up post in the near future with how to add your teams, and work your way around managing your league now that it’s set up.

Filed under: Nascar Pool Help, Site by Site Admin - Sunday, January 17th, 2010
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This is the third part of the Nascar Pool Help series.   Part 1   Part 2

Now that you’ve decided the set-up and scoring method your pool will use, your next task is formalizing some rules, and inviting people to participate in your pool.  This is probably the first time you’ll need to put something on paper (or the internet). 

You’ll want to describe in detail how your pool will be run.  The rules regarding how drivers (or cars) are selected and how scoring is calculated are the most important.  The rest isn’t important unless people understand what they’re getting into.  Also add payment amounts, deadlines, and methods, and the general payout structure, or at least a date when it will be announced.  Make sure you have someone else examine it for mistakes, or things you may have overlooked.  Add a second page to the rules which will have your groups, or your selection information, and can be used as the entry form, if you’re accepting teams offline.  Include a spot for team name and whatever contact information is necessary.  If you plan on only having people make their selections online, you wont need the entry sheet, but giving people the information to make their selections is a good idea.  If you plan to use some pre-made pool set-up like Yahoo!, you can pretty much just skip rules altogether as they have an extensive list on their site.  You can just add the payment info on the invitation emails.

Once you’ve decided on rules and prepared some sort of document (I generally like to convert them to PDF format, since the reader software is freely available), you’ll need to round up some participants.  Make a list of friends, co-workers or associates that you know are Nascar fans.  Then make a list of those people that you know are generally up for pretty much any type of fantasy sports.  Give each one of them the info about your pool, and invite them to participate, either by email, a phone call or even better, in person.  Encourage them to invite their Nascar fan friends.  The larger your pool is, and the bigger the payout gets, the more casual the fan you’ll get to participate, as they’re more interested in the prize than the actual pool.
 
Growing your pool wont happen overnight, but if you make your rules easy to follow, make your results easy to access and most importantly keep everything transparent, you should have no problem experiencing growth through several seasons.  Even the largest pools had modest beginnings.  I’m in a pool for another sport that has close to 500 teams, only a few years removed from having less than 50.  Make your pool both affordable and fun, and people will want to share it with others.

Filed under: Nascar Pool Help, Site by Site Admin - Thursday, January 7th, 2010
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This is the second part of the Nascar Pool Help series.   Part 1

Once you’ve decided to start your own fantasy Nascar pool, you’ll need to decide what type of pool to run.    The are plenty of options, and your choice may depend on the number and type of participants in your pool.  Are you aiming for only the most hardcore fans, or even the most casual?  Your choice may also limit the number of participants in the future.
 
The basic types of pools you can run are pick’em, box and salary cap.  You can run all sorts of variations on these types, but generally most set ups come down to one of the three.  

Pick’em - Pick your drivers (or cars) from race to race.  Can be any number of groups to pick from, and rules about how many times you can take a driver.  Can be pre-picked at the start of the season (usually one driver per race), or before a deadline each race.  This type of pool requires participants to put a little more effort in if they want to be successful. 

Box - Pick your drivers (or cars) from boxes or groups, one from each box.  The number of boxes, and drivers per box will change from pool to pool.  Generally these types of pools are the easiest to pick, and tend to grow the largest, since they don’t require alot of effort and can be selected quite easily by even the most casual fan.  They are usually season long pools, and can feature a limited number of trades. 

Salary Cap - Each driver (or car) is given a value, based on previous performance and popularity.  Pick a selected number of drivers, while keeping the total salary of your team under the selected total value.  These pools generally run season long, and can feature a limited number of trades.
 
Some people also run their pools more like a lottery, so anyone can participate whether or not they follow Nascar.  Usually run just for one race (although several ‘pools’ do them all season long), basically everyone draws a number from 1-43, and they get the car that starts in that position.  The highest finishing car wins the pot.

Once you’ve decided on what type of pool to run, you’ll also need to choose some sort of scoring system.  You can use the tiered points system that Nascar uses for each race, or you can make up your own based on pretty much anything you want.  You can even have some sort of ‘Chase’ reset if you desire.  It’s probably best to keep it as straightforward as possible, so it’s not that difficult for participants to figure out what their scores should be each race.

So there’s your next step in setting up your Nascar pool.  Again I want to stress to keep in mind the type of participant you want to draw, and the size you want your pool to be when choosing the details of your fantasy Nascar league.  The more people you want to draw, the more straighforward you’ll want to make it.  If you want it to be a smaller tight-knit group of the same 20-30 people year after year, by all means make it as complicated as you like.  Maybe even set up a scoring system that you’d like to see adapted in the Cup series, and see how things would shake out.

Filed under: Nascar Pool Help, Site by Site Admin - Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
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This is the first part of the Nascar Pool Help series.

The first step in getting a fantasy Nascar league up and running, is deciding you want to manage one.  Office pools for any sport can be a lot of fun, if promoted and managed properly, and we want to help you make your Nascar pool be successful as possible.  
 
Before jumping head-long into being the commissioner of your very own Nascar pool, you’ll need to make sure you meet some basic criteria.  First off, and this should go without saying, you need to be a Nascar fan.  A decent group of friends and associates that share your love of the sport will also be key in getting your league off of the ground.  You’ll also need to possess decent organization skills, and be trust-worthy.  You’ll most likely be dealing with holding on to a decent amount of other people’s hard earned money, so being transparent and making sure everything is above board and accounted for is of utmost importance. 
 
As I mentioned earlier, a group of Nascar fans is important in getting your pool started.  Whether it’s a group of friends that like to get together to watch the big races of the season, or a bunch of co-workers looking to add a little competition to the ‘water-cooler’ discussion, a good base of interested participants will be vital in starting and growing your league.  Here at Nascar Pools Online, we also have pools organized by bars, websites and garages.  They can be a great way to draw some attention to your business, whether online or the traditional brick and mortar type. 
 
Keep in mind, that no matter the size of your league, whether you keep track of everything on paper or use a website like Nascar Pools Online, there will be some amount of work required.  Depending on the style of pool you manage, how you decide to keep track of results, and how you’re tracking payments, will be the determining factors in how much time you’ll spend.  Time will be required in the pre-season rounding up participants, gathering payments and making sure everyone knows the rules of your pool, regardless of what kind of pool you choose to run. 
 
A couple things you should also look into before you get started is the legality of office pools in your area.  Different states and provinces have different gaming laws.  We here at NPO don’t pretend to be lawyers, so we suggest you find out what is and isn’t allowed in your home province or state, before you set up your pool.  Most of this information can be found online with a little effort.  Also, if you’re running an inter-office league, you may want to check your company’s policies on fantasy sports and office pools.  Better safe than sorry. 

The hardest part of building a large, successful office pool in any sport, is getting it started.  Make your pool enjoyable for those involved from the start, and you’ll have no problem growing it.  As always, if you have questions, feel free to drop us a line.  We wish you the best in getting your Nascar pool started this season!

Filed under: Nascar Pool Help, Site by Site Admin - Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
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