How to stream your way to a playoff victory

Hey everyone,

The playoffs are just around the corner, and for some, it has already started. The best strategy to help improve your chances of winning in H2H leagues is streaming. 

Not everybody is familiar with the concept, so here's a quick guide on how to do it (which involves having a roster spot (or 2) dedicated to adding and dropping players to get the maximum amount of stats (through playing extra games).

Things you need to know before you plan your streaming strategy:

• How many transactions you're allowed each week
• Your strong categories compared to your opponents

There are a few different ways to know how you compare to your opponent - the most recent is the Match-up planner for Yahoo H2H category leagues - set the week, your opponent etc. and it'll give you a projection of how you stack up for the week. 

Others include using the league scouting report, or manually looking at past match-ups in your league.

If you're in a 9 cat league, you want to focus your efforts on the 6 (or 7) categories you have the best chance of winning.

Using the above screenshot, the 6 best categories that I have the best chance of winning are: FG%, REB, BLK, PTS, STL, AST (keep in mind when streaming, you'll also be adding more TOs, so you generally punt that category when streaming).

So my aim is to use all of my transactions for the week that help contribute to those 6 categories.

The next step is to identify how many streaming spots you want to keep open - this is usually your worst player. You'll have this roster spot dedicated to adding and dropping players who are playing for you over 2 of the next 2 (or 3) days. (edited) 

You can go through your roster manually, once your roster is set for the week.

Let's say, for example, I have available roster spots this week on TUE, WED, FRI, SAT, and SUN.

You can then go to the premium schedule grid, turn off any categories that aren't in your top 6, and try and find players who are playing in the upcoming 2 days where you have available roster spots (that way you can get 2 games out of the 1 transaction). Eg. TUE and WED (using my example).

 (this is a very deep league, so the WW is pretty thin), but these are options to stream in who are playing on the TUE & WED B2B.

If nobody comes up, pick somebody who plays on TUE, and then try and get somebody who plays 2 games in the next 2 days (WED&FRI).

The idea is to try and get as many games played from that one roster spot as possible. If you can get somebody playing on every available day, that's an extra 3-4 games worth of stats you'll be able to get, compared to just having somebody sitting in that roster spot playing 2-3 games.

If you feel like you have your match-up won and have a transaction left, use it on Sunday night, and bring somebody in who plays on Monday. You get an extra game without using a transaction in the next week. Also, don't hold fringe borderline rosterable players if they're injured or going to miss 1-2 games. You don't want to miss too many games in the playoffs. (edited) 

(I'm planning on adding more functionality to the match-up planner so you don't have to go between 2 different pages).

Best of luck with your playoffs!

Chat soon,
Joey