Fantasy sports

What fantasy sports are

Fantasy sports are games in which you assemble a team of real athletes and score points from the statistics they produce in real games. A touchdown, a catch, a yard gained: all of it converts to fantasy points under a scoring system, and your team's total is ranked against other teams in your league or contest. The classic form is the season-long league, where a group of friends drafts rosters before the season, sets lineups each week, makes trades and waiver claims, and plays head to head until a champion is crowned in the winter.

From that root grew the faster formats. DFS resets the roster every slate, best ball removes weekly management altogether, and pick em strips the roster down to individual player calls. What they share is the unit of play: a player's statistics.

An example

A twelve-team league drafts in late August. One manager takes a running back first, another a receiver, and every pick after that is a guess about how the season will go. In week six the first manager's back is injured and the waiver wire decides his season. The second manager trades for a quarterback in week ten and rides him into the playoffs. The champion is decided in the final weeks of the regular season, after four months of lineups, trades and Sunday afternoons refreshing a box score.

How Speed Survivor is different

Speed Survivor keeps the thing fantasy players love, knowing football better than the people around you, and removes the roster. You do not pick players at all. During one live game you answer twelve yes-or-no live questions about what happens next on the field, score for being right and more for being fast, and try to survive the cuts that remove the bottom of the field.

The survivors split a prize pool funded by the entries, and it settles the same night instead of at the end of the season. A fantasy manager's instincts about game flow and play calling carry straight over; the difference is that you use them in real time. How it works walks through a full game.