Where do I stand in the standings?

It converts a rating gap into an expected score with E = 1 ÷ (1 + 10^((opponent − you) ÷ 400)), then moves your rating by K × (actual − expected). A 400-point gap means the stronger player is expected to score about 91%. Because the update depends on the surprise rather than the result alone, beating a much weaker opponent barely moves you and losing to one is expensive.

Twenty for established, higher-rated chess players, 32 for typical club and amateur play, and 40 for juniors, new players and FIFA-style team ratings. Higher K means faster convergence to your true strength at the cost of more volatility, which is why federations lower it as a player’s rating stabilises.

More than for beating a weaker one, in proportion to how unlikely the win was. At K = 32, beating an opponent rated 100 points above you gains about +20, beating an equal opponent gains exactly +16, and beating someone 200 below you gains only about +8. Upsets are where ratings actually move.

Because a draw counts as half a win, and against a weaker opponent half a win is less than expected. If you were a 70% favourite, a draw scores 0.5 against an expectation of 0.7 and the system takes the difference off you. The same draw against a stronger opponent gains you points, for the mirror-image reason.

As a rule of thumb, 1.8 per game is the border of the danger zone and 2.2 is comfortable safety in a league awarding four points for a win. Below 1.8 you are relying on other teams to be worse than you; above 2.2 you generally control your own fate. Check your own competition, since bonus points shift the lines meaningfully.

Take the total points that safety requires, subtract what you already have, and divide by the games remaining. The number that comes back is often brutal and clarifying: needing 3.5 points a game from four fixtures when your season average is 1.6 is a different conversation than needing 2.0.

Reserve $1 for each bench spot first, because every roster slot must be filled. Split what remains across the starting positions: a balanced plan puts about 38% each into running back and receiver, 10% into tight end, 8% into quarterback and the rest into defence and kicker. Kicker and defence should never take more than a few dollars.

Zero RB is a positional bet: it moves the running back budget into receivers, on the theory that running backs get injured and replacements appear on waivers. Stars and Scrubs is a distributional bet: it concentrates the same budget into two or three elite players at any position and fills the rest of the roster at minimum price. You can run both at once, or neither.

Because auction rules require every roster spot to be filled, and every player costs at least a dollar. If you have $2 left and four spots open, you cannot legally complete your roster and the software will start stopping you from bidding. Reserving the bench first is the one non-negotiable in auction budgeting.

Under 6 minutes is a genuinely solid intermediate time, under 4 minutes is advanced, and under 2:30 is elite. The bands only apply at Rx: 95 lb thrusters for men, 65 lb for women, with chin-over-bar pull-ups through full range. Most people who first do Fran at Rx land between 6 and 10 minutes.

Not at Rx, and not as your introduction to high-rep thrusters. Fran is short enough to be attacked at maximum effort and heavy enough to cause serious muscle damage, and it has a documented association with exertional rhabdomyolysis in undertrained athletes. Scale the load, scale the reps, and build into it over several weeks.

Every eight to twelve weeks. A benchmark is a measurement, and measuring costs you a training day plus recovery. Testing monthly generates noise rather than information, because normal week-to-week variation in sleep, fuelling and fatigue is larger than the real progress you made in four weeks.