Rules Explained

Every ySF calculation in plain English • No math degree required
View the formal Rules & formulas ↗
What this page is
The Rules page has all the real formulas. This page explains what they actually mean in everyday language — how you earn Federation points, how each sport scores, and how the Power Rankings work. Each section still shows the formula, then translates it. Every heading links back to the formal version.

Jump to

How you win the Federation Cup How each sport scores Power Rankings (v2.1) — per sport • Federation Dominance (v3) • Cup Projection (v3) • Dynasty & Decade race (v3)

How you win the Federation Cup

ySF is four leagues in one — football, basketball, hockey and baseball. In each league your final placement earns Federation points, and the team with the most points across all four sports wins the Federation Cup.

The points

Finish 1st in a league and you get 12 points. 2nd gets 11. Last place (12th) gets 1. The rule is simply:

\text{Federation points} = 13 - \text{your place}

You play all four sports, so the most you can score is 48 (four first-place finishes). Add up your four leagues and that's your Cup total.

Example
Finish 1st in football (12 pts), 3rd in basketball (10), 5th in hockey (8) and 2nd in baseball (11). Your Cup total is 12 + 10 + 8 + 11 = 41 of 48.

Ties

If two teams end up with the same number of Cup points, we break the tie in this order:

  1. League championships — who actually won more titles.
  2. Combined win % — better overall record across all sports.
  3. Average points per game — who scored more on average.
  4. Head-to-head — how the two teams did against each other.
In one sentence
Place high in all four sports; 13 - \text{place} points per league, most points total wins the Cup.
← See the formal rule (Article I.D)

How each sport scores

Every league uses its own scoring, tuned to reward what actually matters in that sport. Here's the gist — the Rules page has the full point-by-point tables.

Football — ySFFL

Half-PPR (you get half a point per catch). Touchdowns are the big prize — 6 points for rushing/receiving, 4 for passing — and interceptions cost you (−2). Your defense/special teams scores based on how few points and yards it allows, so a shutout is worth a lot.

Basketball — ySFBA

Defense pays. Steals and blocks are worth 4 each — the most of any stat — while assists are 2, points and rebounds are 1, and turnovers are −2. A lockdown defender can out-score a volume scorer.

Hockey — ySFHL

Goals are worth double an assist (2 vs 1). For goalies, wins (+4) and shutouts (+3) are huge, so a hot netminder swings your week.

Baseball — ySFLB

Innings eaters are elite: pitchers earn +3 per inning and +5 per save. Hitters stack up bases, extra-base hits and home runs. Rare feats pay big — a cycle is +15, a no-hitter +30, a perfect game +50.

In one sentence
Each sport rewards the things that win in real life: TDs and stingy defense (NFL), steals/blocks (NBA), goals and goalie wins (NHL), innings and saves (MLB).
← See the full scoring tables (Article V)

Power Rankings (v2.1) — per sport

The standings only tell you who's winning. The Power Rating tells you who's actually playing the best in a given league, even if the record hasn't caught up yet. Each team gets one number, around 1.00:

  • 1.00 = exactly league average.
  • Above 1.00 = better than average; below = worse.
  • Most teams land between 0.70 and 1.30. Every 0.10 is one "step" (one standard deviation) better or worse than the rest of the league.

First, the "z-score" trick

Instead of comparing raw numbers, we measure every stat as how far above or below the league average a team is. That's a z-score. Why bother? Because raw numbers aren't comparable — NBA teams score ~1,200 a week, NHL teams ~90. Turning everything into "steps above average" puts every sport on the same ruler.

The six ingredients

Your rating is a weighted blend of six things. The weight is how much each one counts:

IngredientWeightIn plain English
Win %35%Your record. Counts most, because your record sets your league rank — which sets your Federation points.
Points per game25%How much you score. The best single predictor of future wins.
Margin of victory20%By how much you win. Winning by 50 every week is stronger than squeaking by.
Strength of schedule10%How tough your opponents were when you played them. Beating a great team counts more.
Consistency5%How steady you are. Scoring 100 every week is safer than bouncing between 60 and 140.
Momentum5%Hot or cold lately — your win rate and scoring over the last 5 weeks.

Putting it together

Multiply each z-score by its weight, add them up, and you get the raw rating. Then we slide it onto the friendly 1.00 scale:

\text{PR} = 0.35\,z_{\text{WIN}} + 0.25\,z_{\text{PPG}} + 0.20\,z_{\text{MOV}} + 0.10\,z_{\text{SOS}} + 0.05\,z_{\text{CON}} + 0.05\,z_{\text{MOM}}
\text{Display} = 1.00 + \frac{\text{PR}}{10}

So a perfectly average team (zero on everything) shows 1.00, and each +0.10 means one step above the league.

Why it's not just your record
Two teams both go 10–4. Team A wins every game by 40 against tough opponents; Team B squeaks by weak ones. Same record, but Team A's margin, scoring and schedule push its Power Rating well above Team B's. The rating sees the dominance the standings hide.

The six ingredients, with the actual formulas

Here's each component exactly as it's computed — with a one-line translation. Remember: each raw number below is then turned into a z-score (steps above/below the league average) before the weights from the table are applied.

Win % — 35%

\text{Win\%} = \frac{w + 0.5\,t}{w + l + t}

Plain English: wins plus half your ties, divided by games played. A tie counts as half a win.

Points per game — 25%

\text{PPG} = \frac{1}{W} \sum_{j=1}^{W} s_j

Plain English: your average score — total points (s_j each week) divided by the number of weeks played (W).

Margin of victory — 20%

\text{MOV} = \frac{1}{W} \sum_{j=1}^{W} \left( s_j - s_{\text{opp},\,j} \right)

Plain English: the average of (your score − your opponent's score) each week — how much you win or lose by.

Strength of schedule — 10%

\text{SOS} = \frac{1}{W} \sum_{j=1}^{W} \text{PR}_{\text{opp},\,j}

Plain English: the average Power Rating of the opponents you faced, measured at the time you played them. A brutal slate pushes this up.

Consistency — 5%

\text{CON} = \operatorname{clamp}\!\left(1 - \frac{\sigma}{\text{PPG}},\; 0,\; 1\right)

Plain English: 1 minus how bouncy your scores are (their spread \sigma divided by your average). Steady scoring lands near 1; wild swings drop it toward 0.

Momentum — 5%

\text{MOM} = 0.5\, z\!\left(\frac{\text{wins in last } K}{K}\right) + 0.5\, z\!\left(\frac{1}{K} \sum_{k=1}^{K} \frac{s_k}{\bar{s}_k}\right)

Plain English: half your recent win rate, half your recent scoring versus the league average (\bar{s}_k), over your last K (up to 5) weeks. Are you hot or cold?

Early in the season

Consistency and Momentum need a few weeks of games before they mean anything, so for the first month their weight is dialed down and handed to Win % and Points per game. By about Week 5 all six ingredients are at full strength. The ramp is:

f_{\text{CON}} = \min\!\left(1,\; \frac{W-1}{3}\right) \qquad f_{\text{MOM}} = \min\!\left(1,\; \frac{W-1}{4}\right)

Plain English: f is the fraction of each weight that counts — 0 in Week 1, ramping up to the full amount by about Week 4–5. Whatever weight isn't used yet is handed back to Win % and Points per game.

In one sentence
A weighted report card — mostly your record and scoring, adjusted for how dominant you were, how tough your schedule was, and how steady and hot you've been — squished onto a simple 1.00 = average scale.
← See the formal formulas (v2.1 methodology)

Federation Dominance (v3)

The Power Rating above ranks teams inside one sport. Dominance is the number that ranks you across all four sports at once — it's the headline rating on the Federation standings and team pages.

Under the hood, a model estimates one thing: your chance of beating an average opponent. Dominance is just double that chance:

\text{Dominance} = 2 \times P(\text{you beat an average team})
  • 1.00 = a coin flip (you're average).
  • 1.50 ≈ a 75% chance to beat an average team.
  • 0.50 ≈ a 25% chance.

That formula gives one number per sport. To merge your four sports into a single rating, we don't just average them — we weight each by games played, so a 16-game football season counts more than a 3-week basketball sample:

\text{Dom} = \frac{\sum_{L} g_L \cdot \text{Dom}_L}{\sum_{L} g_L}

Plain English: \text{Dom}_L is your Dominance in sport L and g_L is how many games you've played there. Multiply each sport's Dominance by its games, add them up, and divide by total games — a games-weighted average. More games = more trust in that number.

Why Dominance looks bigger than the per-sport Power Rating

A team's Dominance (say 1.55) can look much higher than its best per-sport v2.1 Power Rating (which rarely tops ~1.15). That's not a bug — the two share the center 1.00 but not the scale. v2.1 is a squished z-composite, so everything packs into roughly 0.85–1.15. Dominance is a win-probability that runs the full 0–2, so a strong team spreads out past 1.5. Comparing 1.13 to 1.55 is like comparing °C to °F — same idea, different ruler.

Worked example — Benfica A.S.C.
Per-league Dominance: NFL 1.18 · NBA 1.90 · NHL 1.35 · MLB 0.98. Games-weighted (NBA's 23 games count most), those average to a Federation Dominance of ~1.49 — higher than any single league's v2.1 number. Note the federation number is the average of the per-league Dominances, not of the v2.1 ratings.
In one sentence
One 1.00-centered number for "how likely are you to beat an average team, across everything you play."
← See the formal rule (v3 Tier 1)

Cup Projection (v3)

This answers a simple question: if the season played out from here, what are your odds of winning the Federation Cup?

We let the computer play the rest of the season 10,000 times (a "Monte Carlo" simulation). In each playthrough:

  1. Every remaining game gets a realistic, randomly-rolled score from the skill model (already-played games keep their real results).
  2. That finishes each league's standings and seeds the playoffs.
  3. Federation points get handed out (12 for 1st … 1 for 12th) in all four sports and added up.

Do that 10,000 times and count how often you come out on top — that percentage is your chance of winning the Cup. We also report your expected point total and how much it could swing.

In one sentence
We simulate the rest of the season 10,000 times and count how often you win — that's your Cup chance.
← See the formal rule (v3 Tier 2)

Dynasty & Decade race (v3)

ySFDynasty Rating

Same idea as Dominance, but stretched across every season you've ever played — an all-time skill number on the same 1.00 scale. In Year 1 it looks almost identical to this season's Dominance; with each new season it sharpens and starts to tell your long-term story.

Decade Award Race

Add up your Federation points over a rolling 10 seasons (Decade 1 runs 2025–26 through 2034–35). Whoever has the most cumulative points at the end is the ySF Decade Champion. The leaderboard shows:

  • Locked points — already banked from finished seasons.
  • Projected total — locked points plus this season's Cup Projection, with a ± range for uncertainty.
In one sentence
Dynasty = your all-time skill number; the Decade race = a 10-season Federation-points marathon for the Decade title.
← See the formal rule (v3 Tier 3)