The essence of the perfect season...

[RavennaAl]

What makes the perfect solitaire season??? I've often wondered what it takes. Is it having a lot of teams? Short games? High scores?

When you think about starting your solitaire season, where do you start? Should you start with 6 teams, 8, 10, 12, or more? How many weeks, or games should you play? Should you have 2 divisions, 3, 4 or simply just 1? Should you shorten your games in order to get more games played in less time? These are all just some of the things you need to consider before you start your season.

When I did my fantasy league, I had decided that I wanted to have at least 8 teams, and to put them into 2 divisions. I thought that I would have the teams play each of the other teams in their division twice, and play the teams in the other division once. This created a 10 week schedule, which resulted in a 40 game season. I figured I could play 2 games a week. One on the weekend, and another during the work week where I got in a quarter a night, leaving me a little room for working on stats and posting the results. As it turned out, the season took about 5 months to complete, including 2 playoff games and a championship.

I've always liked playing with 20 plays per quarter, not including kick offs. I developed my teams to be as competitive with each other as I could. As a result, I often get long 12, 14, 15 play drives and didn't want one team to have the ball for an entire quarter, so I go with the 20 plays. I also like having penalties and fumbles. Using the dice added an element of surprise and frustration to the game which made the results more realistic than if I didn't have them.

I played where I was always the offensive coach, and used dice to determine the defense. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I had quite a few high scoring games, and often wondered if maybe my rules were favoring the offense too much. Then, at the end of the season, I had some defensive gems and thought that they were just right.

The result? Well, as it turned out, I was pretty happy with the way it worked out. There was a brief period around the 7th and 8th weeks when I was just getting antsy to have the season over with. Sort of like when you're painting and you're getting tired and just want them finished, but you know you still have a ways to go. The fortunate part was that the teams found a way to keep me entertained. No matter how much I thought the games were going to play out in a certain fashion, the little guys always found a way to surprise and entertain me. You just never can tell what will happen.

So, before you start, think about how you want your season to go. Should it go 1 month, 2 months, 4 months, or longer?? Will you get bored or tired before it's over? Would you rather play shorter games in order to get through the season sooner, or longer games for a more realistic feel? Will your rules create high scoring shoot-outs, or 3-0 slug fests? Will you be willing to make changes mid-stream to correct these problems? Do you have the stamina to finish you season?

These are important questions you need to ask yourself before you begin.