How do you run your Keeper League?

[Sam]

I\'m curious. How do you all run your keeper Leagues?

1. E-mail: Everyone emails the commish about trades, votes, etc. and then he goes and updates the pool manager for everyone to see.

2. Website: A separate website with a Message Board where everyone can discuss pool issues, trades, votes. Maybe an official section of the Message Board where poolies can make their moves and the commish uses this as the official record for League happenings?

3. Pool Manager: Is there a Pool manager out there where you can do all these things automatically?

Others???

All these options have their pro\'s and con\'s. Any input?

Thanks.

Sam

[The Comish]

Hi Sam,

I commish two keeper pool and am responsible for tracking transactions (trades/pick ups) and weekly stats in two others. I currently use excel for all this. I\'ve been looking to go online if I can find one that will support my pool format, but have yet to find one that doesn\'t cost a fortune.

In the pools I run, when a trade is agreed upon, both teams send me an email confirming the deal and then I send out a trade notification to all in the pool. Same with any pick ups, I send a league wide email as soon as possible.

A friend who is commish of his league has a website that we can access the latest stats (updated once a week), rules, transactions and message board.

Ideally, I would love to be able to do everything online, but that would mean we have to change some of our rules and I lose some control:S

If you\'re very confident about your hockey knowledge, don\'t allow voting on trades. It opens the door to potential problems. Maybe a guy votes against a deal because it takes him down in the standings. Maybe he calls his other two or three friends and asks them to vote against the trade as well. You could end up with groups of owners who veto all trades THEY don\'t like.

I think there are several pool managers that are free. If you\'re starting a keeper league from scratch, check out some free sites and tailor your rules in order to use the free site. I guess Yahoo is the most popular, but there are many others. Just google \"hockey pool\" and you\'ll get pages of links.

[repenttokyo]

i\'ve been using yahoo for the last few years. I don\'t allow voting on trades anymore for the exact reasons mentioned by the Commish - it gets too petty.

[Dobber]

Trades are emailed to me and I announce them. All trades have been allowed so far, as they should be (18 years and 5 years pools). If it\'s clearly a buddy deal, then we have a grievance process in place.

Pool managers are just used for tracking and occasionally trash talking...

[repenttokyo]

one year a guy in my league traded satellite equipment for some players, but it didn\'t get past me - i had my ear to the ground

[leaftodd]

2 real pools.

My 15 year running one is all run by me. Trades come into me and i keep a log. The two sides of the trade announce the trade to the entire pool at the same time. In 15 years 1 veto has happened and that was dealing with a player who was quitting and didnt care what he did. We locked his team and expantioned it. I\'m a firm believer in non-veto\'s.

The pool stats pack is rather odd so i have built an excel program to monitor it. I\'ve distributed it to all members so they can update as frequantly as they want but official updates are done by me.

Pool 2 i just joined is run on a forum and using yahoo\'s pool management. Its easier but less complicated.

My one big piece of advice to a fresh pool is to make your rules clear. And then follow them. That will solve all your worries since i assume all members in your pool will have either helped decide your rules or at least agreed to them.

Hockey pools to me are the cheapest form of winter entertainment. I love them dearly. Just dont let them stress you out or they lose that.

[GoJetsGo]

I have been running our pool since its inception. Our salary/contract system and segmented scoring does not fit into any online pool tracking system.

So, I have built a database application in FileMaker Pro that handles it all. I also run the leagues website, which I am in the process of re-building to work with PHP and MySQL so that the info can be presented dynamically from the database and be less work to maintain and update.

[Sam]

Hey guys.

I just set up my official website for my new league. I added a discussion forum that we will be using to conduct all official pool business, trade talks, and general discussion.

I\'ve set everyone up with user names and passwords and locked the boards so that once you post a message (ie. trade, sign free agent, etc.) you won\'t be able to delete it. I\'m hoping to use this as the official record of all pool happenings. As commish I will use this when I go to update all pool activity. The team owners will be able to see all events as they happen and I won\'t have to e-mail everybody all the time. The other bonus is that owners can send each other private messages.

I\'ve even added a link on our pool manager so the League website is just a click away. Almost one-stop shopping!

I will be backing up all official records just in case I have any problems.

Anyone else use this idea? Any tips or advice?

Thanks

Sam