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0 Subject: New game opportunity - playSPEX

Posted by: Guru
- [330592710] Thu, Mar 19, 2009, 12:06

I have begun a marketing affiliation with a new salary cap/market game called "playSPEX". This game has recently launched and begin active advertising. To be successful, it will require a large base of active users - but I do think that if they can achieve that, it offers promise for fun and profit.

There are two important aspects to this game, and you may actually participate in one without being active in the other.

The first is the "stock market" for player contracts. For those familiar with TSN or RotoHog, this market differs in several key respects:

  • For the most part, prices will be set by willing buyers and willing sellers. If you want to buy a player, you will buy him from another market seller - and vice versa. The exception is that there will be a facility to sell new contracts into the market as the volume of market participants grows.
  • You can own multiple contracts of the same player. If you believe the price of "Player A" is too cheap, you can buy a bunch of them, and attempt to profit by selling them later at a "fairer" price.
  • Player contracts are traded using REAL money. Although at inception, you can get some free funds as marketing incentives, you essentially deposit real money to make transactions, and if/when you sell players, you can withdraw profits in cash.
  • The game operator makes its money by charging trading commissions of 5%. This is the only true "cost" of the game. Player contracts are currently priced between $0.50 and $10, so a trading commission ranges from a few pennies to 50 cents.
The other aspect is Prize Eligible Contests. These will be held throughout the season. The first contest will run during April, with a top price of $5000 and total prizes of $10,000. This contest works like many traditional contests You have a roster each "game day" which accumulates contest points. The point formula is the same one used in the RotoHog game, so some of you will be familiar with it already. In order to have a player on your roster for a given game day, you must own at least one contract of that player. But you can adjust your roster every game day, either by moving players to and from you bench, or by trading players in the market. Some "game days" will actually cover a span of 2 days. For example, the first game day is really April 5-6.

There are lots of nuances and details, and I suggest you check out the site and read through the rules - which can seem confusing at times. Eventually, I think most rules will become intuitive. But expect a brain cramp the first time your read through them.

As is often the case, I expect that some of the best opportunities for astute managers will come in the early going. It may be possible to generate a decent return without ever getting involved in the contests. But the contests may also offer a great opportunity for managers who are willing to figure out the optimal strategies, and who can learn quickly how to best exploit the idiosyncrasies of the game and of the underlying market.The game site is still in development stage, and while it is up and running, some important enhancements are still undeveloped, including tools for sorting and filtering market data. To assist you in better evaluating the data, I plan to maintain price and point data in my sortable stats. Prices will be updated daily (at least, that's the plan), so they may always be slightly out of date. (This is also true for the RotoHog game.)

If you decide to try this game, I ask that you register using the following link:
http://www.playspex.com/SPEXHomeMainPage.html?affcode=6342336
and when you fill out the registration page, please also enter my referrer code: 6342366 in that field. I have been fiddling around with the game for several weeks, and while I will admit that the site design can be rather daunting (very graphical, not always intuitive, occasionally buggy), I have been able to figure most of it out, and think that there is interesting potential if enough people register to play. Whether the game will be able to develop sufficient mass appeal is anyone's guess. But you can register for free, and you can be reasonably active with a modest deposit, especially with some of the current deposit incentives. So for those of you who like a fantasy challenge with lucrative potential, I suggest you check it out.

Please use this thread to ask questions. I'll answer what I can - although I'm no expert. I'll also invite one of the game's developers to stop in from time to time to respond to questions.

1Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Thu, Mar 19, 2009, 18:18
By the way, I find that the site works OK using Firefox. However, there seem to be some real sluggish issues with both MSIE or Google Chrome - at least, today.
2 Alex
      ID: 3217239
      Thu, Mar 19, 2009, 20:55
I'll probably give this a shot. Looks like it could be worth the time...although you're not kidding about a brain cramp after going through the rules once.
3 Alex
      ID: 3217239
      Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 06:02
Anyone care to take a shot at interpreting exactly what this paragraph from the rules means and what the implications are?

o The Salary Cap is progressive. During each game day, playSPEX will calculate the changes in current salary from the moment that the player was locked till the end of the game day. The players' salaries will be updated accordingly (Adding or subtracting the change to/from the "frozen" salary). In addition, the Total Salary Cap of the fantasy team will be updated accordingly but no matter what, the Salary Cap won't get lower than the initial Salary Cap (50M). This will enable the entrants to improve their positioning during the season through the ability to enhance their Total Salary Cap.

It sounds to me (maybe) as though your salary cap is adjusted each day by the total amount of price changes of your locked players during the period when each of them was locked.
4Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 10:32
Not sure. I raised the question with playSPEX. Someone may post here.
5 Alex
      ID: 3217239
      Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 10:45
The guy from Playspex actually sent me an email confirming my impression on that rule. Very responsive - that's a plus.

On the downside, it took me about 30 minutes to buy a bunch of contracts of Jason Motte at just over $.50, because the system would hang if I tried to buy more than once, and would hang ever few purchases even buying one at a time.
7Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 10:58
[3], [5] I'm still confused about salaries.

If you buy a player (let's use Motte as an example, since that name has been raised) whose salary is $0.50, and you continue to hold at least one contract throughout the game, then his salary on your team will be frozen at that level (unless the market salary goes down).

So let's suppose Motte's salary goes up to $2. If you still own him, you can apparently continue to put him in your lineup at the $.50 value. But does his "marketplace" salary increase also have some influence on your team salary cap?
8Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 11:03
BY the way, although salaries are supposedly related to both performance and market prices, there seems to be a lag. There are currently some top-level players available with absurdly low salaries (because their initial offering prices were quite low.) Obvious examples are Kinsler and Papelbon, who each still have a listed salary of $.50, even though you can't buy them nearly that cheaply anymore. Still, it would seem optimal to buy at least one of those contracts to lock in the low salary level before it moves toward a more sensible level.
9Alex
      ID: 3217239
      Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 11:51
Guru - I believe it does. You get the double whammy of locking him in cheap AND an increasing salary cap. The rules are so complicated that I think its almost inevitable that there are going to be some game balance issues early on.
10Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 11:52
...and also why those who take the time to figure it out will have a tremendous advantage in April.
11 Alex
      ID: 3217239
      Sat, Mar 21, 2009, 11:22
On second thought...hopefully we can get the Playspex folks (who have been checking on this forum) to interpret the salary cap rules for us. Specifcally, if someone bought Kinsler for $2 a few days ago, and holds him through opening day...what is the impact on their salary cap, and how what price does Kinsler get locked into their lineup at? Let's assume that Kinsler's price has already risen to $6 and stays there through opening day.
12 Kevin
      ID: 52212815
      Sat, Mar 28, 2009, 17:21
I wrote about playSPEX recently for rotoanalysts.com. I love the concept and think it has a lot of potential. I think the best strategy is to load up on underpriced players (Kinsler, Phillips, Carlos Lee, Papelbon) and be sure the churn through starting pitchers.
13Jimmy
      ID: 622789
      Fri, Apr 03, 2009, 05:26
Maybe this video they made can explain a bit

14Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Sun, Apr 05, 2009, 14:43
Important: many "game days" actually span two days.

For example, the first game day actually spans April 5-6. Most teams play once during that two day span. A couple teams are completely off. No one plays twice.

The next game day spans April 7-8. Some teams play both days. For hitters and relievers, you would players with two games. For starters, you get your pick of either day.

April 9-10 is the thrid qame day. Ditto.

Here is the game day schedule for April, copied from the rules:

April's Fantasy Baseball Schedule:


Game Day Start End
1 04/05/2009 19:05 04/06/2009 20:05
2 04/07/2009 11:00 04/08/2009 21:15
3 04/09/2009 11:35 04/10/2009 21:05
4 04/11/2009 11:00 04/11/2009 21:05
5 04/12/2009 11:00 04/12/2009 19:05
6 04/13/2009 12:05 04/14/2009 21:05
7 04/15/2009 12:05 04/15/2009 21:10
8 04/16/2009 11:10 04/17/2009 21:15
9 04/18/2009 11:35 04/18/2009 21:10
10 04/19/2009 12:05 04/19/2009 19:05
11 04/20/2009 10:05 04/21/2009 21:15
12 04/22/2009 11:35 04/22/2009 21:10
13 04/23/2009 11:05 04/24/2009 21:05
14 04/25/2009 11:00 04/25/2009 21:05
15 04/26/2009 11:00 04/26/2009 19:05
16 04/27/2009 18:05 04/27/2009 21:15
17 04/28/2009 18:05 04/28/2009 21:15
18 04/29/2009 12:05 04/30/2009 21:10
15 Alex
      ID: 3217239
      Sun, Apr 05, 2009, 14:44
Anybody have a guess how many people are playing this game? When I look at the standings, 'overall' shows only 49 people. But my 'rank' shows up other places as 317, which implies there are more than 49 people entered. I suppose we'll know for sure in the next day or two.
16 Jimmy
      ID: 622789
      Mon, Apr 06, 2009, 04:21
When I asked them they told me that in the standings you can see the "Top 50" and that currently hundreds are participating.
17 Alex
      ID: 3217239
      Mon, Apr 06, 2009, 14:45
How is everyone else finding the game? I love the idea of the game and how they've used real buy and sell orders, but the game feels more like work than like play so far. I think the four issues I have so far are:

1. Market isn't liquid enough, so you're kind of stuck with players once you buy them.

2. Site sometimes seems to hang when making a transaction. Always works if I exit and re-enter.

3. Some actions (like logging in) seem to take too many steps.

4. Rules are SO complicated. Not sure if they could be made better by being simpler, but it's definitely taking some time to understand how things work.
18Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Mon, Apr 06, 2009, 21:39
Market liquidity was better today, but still not good. They need more participants to make this work better. And I'm afraid some of the participants they have now will leave if trading is too difficult.

The site is still buggy, but I've always been able to get things done, even though I sometimes have to exit and then re-enter.

That said, I have made a lot of trading profits already. A lot of that was exploiting some obvious early mispricings.
19 Dan
      ID: 622789
      Tue, Apr 07, 2009, 14:34
agree about the liquitity but think we need wait this is improving each day, "Alex" I don't think the Rules are so complicated,Just different than the regular ones that we already know,when comparing this to TSN Fanball or Rotohog it doesn't seems to much complicated in my eyes.
20Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Wed, Apr 29, 2009, 08:51
playSPEX will be running weekly contests during May, with a weekly first prize of $750, and prizes totaling $1500 each week payable on a graded scale to the top 7. The first "week" will actually run for 10 days (May 1-10)

They've also decided to eliminate the "game day" concept wherein some game days covered two calendar days. Probably a good rule change (the other rule was a complication without much - if any - benefit).

It doesn't sound like many of you have tried out this game, but I've found it enjoyable and lucrative. Trading liquidity is still somewhat limited, but that just adds to the challenge (and opportunity, IMHO).

21Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Sat, May 02, 2009, 11:59
I won the April contest - $5000.

The game still has not come close to achieving critical mass, and the site still has some glitches, but all of that provides for opportunities if you're willing to be diligent.

I modified the sortable stats for this game, showing players salaries instead of prices. For the contests, salaries are more relevant, and don't seem to change much. Buy/sell prices are all over the place, and it's better to simply use the game site to monitor those.

RotoAnalysts.com has recently done some nice essays on strategy:
playSPEX domination

playSPEX week 5 contest

If you do decide to try this game out, the current contest ends on May 10, and the next one starts May 11, so you have a week to get your bearings and assemble your roster. Please use the link in the opening post to register (along with the referrer code).
22Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Mon, May 11, 2009, 11:16
Who is that distinguished looking gentleman? ...
23RecycledSpinalFluid
      Dude
      ID: 204401122
      Mon, May 11, 2009, 19:35
Congrats Guru. Thats awesome!
24Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Fri, Jul 10, 2009, 22:54
Unfortunately, the game went belly up today, before paying out any prizes. They failed to secure the level of capital funding that they needed.

They are continuing to seek outside financing in order to resurrect the game. Frankly, I'm not convinced that the game as currently configured can attract sufficient customers to make it viable. It's a bit of a Catch-22; without sufficient participants, the market mechanism lacks the depth and liquidity to be viable, and without market depth and liquidity, they cannot hope to attract a sufficient number of participants.

26beastiemiked
      ID: 38255111
      Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 13:11
I'm guessing they didn't refund the money you spent trading. Sucks but I would be wary of any game that isn't sponsored by a major site that will back up the game and it's prizes.
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