This league was formed in order to allow for strategies to play out over the course of many seasons, as teams can choose to keep as many players on their roster as they'd like. That nuance in the rules has far reaching implications in how we play the hands we're dealt, from evaluating younger talent to making trades involving future draft picks.

Teams can keep as many players on their roster as they wish, from season to season. They lose the same number of draft picks, so if a team keeps 5 players then they don't have a draft pick until the 6th round.

There is no minimum number of players that must be kept from season to season.

These deadlines are in place from season to season:

January 1: Receive annual Quid deposit.

June 15: Finalize rules, confirm retention of ownership and participation on the upcoming season.

July 15: Pay entry fees (see below) and declare list of kept players.

After the draft order is set by the draft lottery system, owners have until midnight on July 15th to select the players they intend to keep for the upcoming season. Each player retained for the upcoming season is retained in lieu of the team's highest available draft pick (i.e., the 1st player retained takes the place of the owner's first round pick, the 2nd player retained replaces the owner's 2nd round pick, etc). All empty rosters spots after July 15th become draft picks.

The annual cost to play will be $50 plus the cost of the engraving of the trophy; we'll have a trophy that will act like the Stanley Cup and go to the champion each season. The first season, the cost is $60 to fund the initial purchase of the trophy.

The end of season prize fund will be $400 and will be distributed in the following manner:
1st Place: $200
2nd Place: $125
3rd Place: $75

Each team can keep as many players from their last year's roster as they wish, but they lose that same number of draft picks. For example, if a team keeps 4 players on their roster, then they would not pick until Round 5 of the draft.

There are no preset ratios of positions that need to be drafted. Owners can fill their team as best they see fit. Of course, they still have to start 1 QB, 2 RB's, 3 WR's, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DL, 1 LB, 1 DB, and 1 Coach...

Once the rosters are set with kept players and the draft order is set, all draft picks become fixed commodities that can be traded for players, Quid, or other draft picks. This becomes a "zero sum" environment where each individual team's draft position remains as it was before any trade. Basically, a team's portfolio is fixed with commodities (players, Quid, picks) and those can be traded, but not created or destroyed out of thin air.

For example: if Team A kept 7 players, then their first pick in the draft is in round 8. If after July 15 and before the draft they trade away two of their players for Quid or other picks, they still have their first pick in the 8th round; they don't jump up to #6 just because they only have 5 players left.

The reasoning behind this is pretty simple. Team A made valuation decisions when determining how many players to keep, and that determines the worth of the resulting draft set. So did every other team. This can best be seen in another example: let's say that Team A traded away every one of their 7 players to other teams for a total of 300 Quid and some future draft picks. In such a case, it is ridiculous to say that Team A should then get the #1-5 (or more) picks in the draft, PLUS 300 Quid in their bank, PLUS future/later draft picks. All of a sudden, their net value of players, picks, and Quid would triple or quadruple. It has to be a zero-sum system.

The draft order in the first year will be selected at random. In all following years, the draft order will be selected in a lottery format in order to prevent teams from throwing games to get a better pick in the next season. There will be two drawings, one for the top 5 teams and one for the worst 5 teams.

The team who finished worst in the group of 5 will get 5 entries in the lottery, the 3rd place team gets 3 entries, etc. Final position is determined by the playoffs.

The draft is serpentine style, the team that picks #10 also gets #11 as the picks come around in the second round.

If a team has elected to keep 3 players on their roster, then they would not pick until the 4th round. If a team trades away a future season's draft pick, then they are capped in how many players they would keep. For example, if Team A traded away next season's 5th round pick, then they could not keep more than 4 players on their roster for the following season.

Teams are allowed and encouraged to wheel-n-deal with their draft picks.

In order to make final preseason adjustments to rosters, a free agency bidding process will take place on the Wednesday prior to the first game, at 8 pm. This will help teams make final tweaks in order to account for injuries since July 15 as well as filling any empty slots.

Each week, your team faces one other team (determined by the season schedule posted before the season starts), and every owner submits their starting rosters (the 11 positions defined below) prior to kickoff in that week's first game (usually Sundays, but sometimes Thursdays or Saturdays; for weeks with early games, Sunday's players can be declared on Sunday). The 11 starters each week are always in the same positional ratio: 1 QB, 2 RB's, 3 WR's, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DL, 1 LB, 1 DB and 1 Coach (C).

These players earn points for their fantasy team through actual real-life scoring and yardage bonuses. The total points earned by those 11 players is that fantasy team's final score, and the winning team is determined by highest score between the two teams which faced each other. There are no ties (see below).

Teams accrue win-loss records throughout the season, in an attempt to qualify for the playoffs.

If the score of a game is a tie, then the tiebreaker becomes total defensive points by starters. The second tiebreaker is total bench points. Third tie-breaker is total defensive points by bench players. This also applies to the playoffs.

As of kickoff of Week 12, all team rosters are locked down. Only the strong survive.

At this same time, all Quid effectively becomes worthless, as they cannot be used to acquire players nor as a part of any trade. This effectively keeps a salary cap in place from season to season. Final Quid balances will be noted and then accounts will be cleared of any leftover Quid.

If anyone would like to open a discussion of having Quid rollover from season to season, please feel free to do so on the message board. This may actually be a grand idea. When doing so, play devil's advocate and try to address any possibilities of abuse that could grow exponentially worse as the seasons go by. We do not want to risk upsetting game balance from season to season.

Once the playoffs begin, all regular season games are considered final. All statistical adjustments must be made prior to the playoffs.

The winners of each division, determined by the overall records within the division (and not merely the division record), get the top 2 seeds in the playoffs and home-field advantage in the first round. The two teams with the next best overall W-L records get the final two playoff spots. #4 faces #1, #3 faces #2.

The championship game is played on a neutral field, with no homefield advantage being applied.

In determining playoff qualifications, the tie-breaker is total points scored by starters that season, and the second tie-breaker is the head-to-head matchup. The third tie-breaker is the total points scored by defensive starters that season, and the final tie-breaker will be a vicious game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, 3 out of 5.

The teams that don't qualify for the playoffs will have their own playoff bracket to play out the rest of the season as well as to determine each team's final position.

As in the NFL, every team enters the playoffs with a clean slate. In case of a tie in the playoffs, bench points are compared to come up with the winner in "overtime."

Homefield advantage only takes place in the playoffs, prior to the championship game. The final game is held on neutral ground.

The home team gets 2 bonus points to start the game with, reflecting their home-field advantage.

Once the season begins, one extra slot becomes available for each team: Injured Reserve.

There are no legal definitions for qualifying a player for IR, but it is a one-way street, where any player placed on IR cannot be reactivated without cutting them first and trying to reacquire them through Free Agency.

This results in owners having to carefully consider placing a player on IR. If one player is on IR, and another player becomes injured and the owner would prefer to keep him instead, then the second player can take the place of the first, and the first IR player would be a Free Agent.

IR players can also be arbitrarily cut, and placed into Free Agency.

IR players can also be traded, but they still remain on IR with the team that just acquired them, and the same restrictions apply to the new team.

The Aces High currency are called Quid, and Quid are used when bidding on free agents each week, as well as being able to be used in trades.

Starting in 2006, each team will receive an annual deposit of 50 Quid. In addition to that, starting
in 2006 the +1 Rule will be back in play. This +1 Rule grants a team +1 Quid for each win over .500, per week, and it has an annual hard cap of 5 Quid total that can be earned from it. This reflects jersey sales and other slight economic benefits that success brings.

After the second game of the regular season, there will be a free agent list posted every week and all owners can look it over and bid on any player on the list, keeping in mind that the roster size is limited to 22 players and one IR spot.

All bids have to be submitted by 8 p.m. on Wednesdays. All bids are resolved simultaneously.

On other important rule to stress is that all team rosters will be locked down for the 24 hours prior to the Free Agency bid. Ergo, no trades or cuts will be allowed from between 8 p.m. on Tuesday until after the Free Agency bidding is resolved (Wednesday night). This is so everyone will have an understanding of the needs and thus personnel strategies of each team, which will affect bidding.

At the beginning of the season, each owner will have 100 Quid. Each week, teams submit a list of secret bids for free agents, and all bids are simultaneously resolved, with the highest bids getting the players; in case of a tie, the team with the worse record gains the player.

If there is still a tie, then both teams submit rounds of secret and simultaneous bidding until it is resolved.

Currency can be traded amongst teams, even in the preseason, but do not carry over from season to season.

Owners can bid on as many players as they would like, but keep in mind the following important considerations:

The total amount of money that is bid cannot exceed the total amount of money held by the team. One cannot bid "20 Quid on Alfred Pupunu, only if my bid of 40 Quid on Mathew Hatchette is unsuccessful." For successful bids, the respective bid amounts are deducted from that owner's bank account.

For every player that is bid upon, a player has to be designated as being cut. This is a mere 1 to 1 correspondence for the number of players that would be waived, but this information can be presented in list form; the players to be cut don't have to be linked to specific acquisitions, though that is an acceptable form, as well. In other words, the system allows you to bid on two players, and define your waive strategy as being either "if get A then cut X, if get B then cut Y" or "regardless of who is acquired, waive players in this order: G, H."

All roster acquisitions performed through free agency have to remain on the roster for two weeks. They cannot be waived for two weeks, though they can be traded or placed on Injured Reserve.

Teams receive weekly income in one of two ways. Gate receipts are split and the home team gets 3 units of currency, while the visiting team gets 2 units. In addition, each team's Win-Loss record is examined and for every game over .500 that team gets 1 more Quid as income.

Teams can trade amongst themselves in nearly any way they wish, with the exceptions of during the weekly lockdown periods (24 hours before Free Agency, and after 8 pm on Saturday). These periods exist in order to allow for two reasons, respectively: fair Free Agency bidding, and an opportunity for league review and approval (see Shenanigans Rule, below).

That being said, trading in a dynasty league can be nearly as robust and imaginative as the real NFL. Teams can trade multiple players among multiple teams, they can trade Quid as part of any deal, they can trade future draft picks, and they can even make "conditional" trades. A conditional trade involves having the future draft pick be based on their performance during the current season; for example, a team could make a trade and then say that if that traded player gets X yards during the a time period, then the compensation for that player would be a 2004 season's 4th round draft pick, otherwise it would be a 7th round pick, etc. This can be as complex or as simple as the teams would desire.

Note that any future trades of draft picks will affect the number of players that can be kept by that same team. For exmaple, if a team trades away their 4th round pick next season, then they can only keep 3 players on their roster, at most.

All trades are pretty much legal and are automatically approved, but they are subject to any other team calling for a "Shenanigans" vote. In that case, all league owners will hold a vote on whether the trade should be approved or not, with a veto taking place if 50% or more of voting owners are against it. Any teams involved in the trade in question are prohibited from voting.

This rule exists only because it asks as a checks and balances mechanism, and it is the hope and expectation of everyone that this rule should never need to be applied. It does need to exist, however, because of the longevity of the league and the impact that a bad-faith trade can have on everyone else for years to come.

Because of the necessity of the Shenanigans Rule, the trading deadline is 8 pm on Saturday night. Other owners need to have the opportunity to appraise all trades before the games actually begin.

All other owners have until 8 am on Sunday to call for a Shenanigans vote. If one is called for, then eligible owners are able to cast their vote up until 11 am Sunday. At 11 am, the vote is resolved and the trade is either approved or disapproved; 50% is considered a veto.

Teams are not allowed to "loan" or "trade for a day" players to other teams.

Teams are also be able to include Quid as part of a trade, as well as future seasons' draft picks.

As soon as the NFL regular season is completed, trading is allowed. No teams have Quid to trade (pending another league discussion - this may actually be a cool idea), so all trades would be subject to the regular season constraints (see Shenanigans Rule) but without any Quid.

1st: $300
2nd: $150
3rd: $50