Winning the FFTOC championship has been an awesome experience for me. It is still hard to believe I am $10,000 richer. It feels great!

The FFTOC format is tremendous. It requires you to make many key decisions each week and removes almost all the traditional random factors. My family thinks I am so lucky. But what they don’t know is this league requires extra skill and strategy. This isn’t drafting a team one night before the season starts and basically holding it all year.

You need to know what is going on in the NFL big time. Each week is huge. It was fun and agonizing each week for me to choose my players - you want to play the great players right away and every week. When you do, you are worried they will have a bad game. If you don’t play them, you worry they may have an awesome game or end up getting hurt and then you lose them and potential points later in year.

Many decisions…..What to do? My heart is beating faster just thinking about it. Well, having this passion is a key to winning – don’t you think?

My initial plan was to win my division, beat five other guys and double my money. I thought that would be cool and a nice profit. Each week my team was solid and consistent, but not spectacular.

I did just enough to win my division and make it in the top 33% to get into the playoffs.

It almost didn’t happen though. The last week I was in the top150 but the amount of points from 150 to 200 wasn’t that great. Yet, I figured I had the playoffs in hand with just an average week, so I saved many key players for the playoffs. Well, my QB I played went out on the first series so I didn’t get anything from him. The rest of my team didn’t do great but just good enough. I just made it into the playoffs by about 10 points and held on to win my division. Whew!

From then on, I knew I had a lot of solid players left but I had to strategically pick and choose each week. My goal was to get in the money (top 15 last year, this year it’s the top 30).

The FFTOC Finals last four weeks and are designed to reward those that have saved studs and managed their squad strategically from over the first 12 weeks of the NFL season.

The first week of the Finals I had a great week and was in the top 5. The next week was ok and I dropped down but was still in the money. The next week was strong and I moved up into second place. With one week left, I still had good players and I liked the match ups. It came down to three key position decisions and the match ups. I chose correctly and had my best scoring week of the year and ran away with the championship. Every position did great except tight end.

That final Sunday I was out of town at the in laws for a holiday party. I swear I was on their computer more than I was socializing. By the end of the day, I felt like I had it but wasn’t 100% confident. It didn’t seem real that I had the opportunity to win $10,000. I couldn’t believe it but it happened. I did it! All my hard work and research paid off.

How did it happen?

Well, I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked the questions: How did you win it all out of 600 teams? What strategy did you use? How did you both make the playoffs yet still have enough quality players left to win it all?

These are all good questions. I am going to give you a few tips I believe will help you succeed. Forgive me if I don’t give you all my secrets (I’ll once again be battling in the FFTOC this year).

1. Have a plan. Do you just want to make the playoffs and double your money or do you want to hold back a bit, still make playoffs but have a chance to win it all? If you want to just win your division, you can use your studs early. If you want to win it all, you have to save some studs and strategically place your line up each week.

2. Follow the NFL. Because random luck is taken out of this league, you must know players, teams, match ups, history etc. You have little chance unless you do this. Read, read, read...

3. Make sure you have a fully optimized line up each week.

4. Naturally, watch those injury reports.

5. Don’t take a week off. You may be out of town or busy. Set your line up early in the week. If you forget or take off one week, you may be out of it.

6. Matchups. This is the key. Play the players who will be facing weak defensive teams.

7. You must play second tier players each week or you will run out of quality later in the year and have no chance of winning it all. Choose accordingly depending on match ups.

8. Go with your instinct. If you continually change players right up to kick off, you will get frustrated when the player you had in scored many points. Pick and stick with it unless you get breaking injury news.

There you go. These are some quick tips minus one or two I am not revealing. Yes, I’d like to win it all again this year.

Good luck to everyone and have fun!

Todd Charnetski
FFTOC HALL OF FAMER

---

FFTOC Site - http://www.fftoc.com
FFTOC HOF - http://www.fftoc.com/hof.php
Todd’s Amazing Season - http://www.fftoc.com/T000105/M0001578.PHP
Todd turned $50 into $10,100 last year!
---