I had this discussion with ozo earlier and it is indeed challenging. I've completed two legal chains, but it is really hard work

In essence, when you twist a player forward, you have to twist him to a team that the current player isn't on. For example, you draft Player A. You decide to use Player B and twist him ahead. The team you select for Player B cannot have Player A on it. Otherwise you'd be drafting from a team that has Players A, B and C on it, which is against the rules.

You need to get creative. Some things I found helpful:

1. Draft guys near the end of their career if you can. That way, even if the teammate you select is twisted forward to the same franchise, it's likely that the previous player will be retired by then.

2. Select teammates that played for multiple franchises. Then it's pretty easy to get them away from the previous player.

3. Use scrubs as the link when necessary to get yourself away from the franchise of the previous player.

Posted by rbow923 on 12/2/2017 10:02:00 AM (view original):

Posted by buddhagamer on 10/13/2017 10:12:00 PM (view original):
I think this is a better way to describe the $80M theme restrictions:

1. Pick Player A. Select a team/season this player appears on.
2. Pick a teammate of A (let's call him Player B) from that season. This teammate may not appear on any prior selected team/season.
3. Twist B to a subsequent season. No previously other selected player may appear on that team/season roster.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you finally get to Player Y.

This is in contradiction to the rules on adjacent players. So now i need another clarificiation.
I have player C. I twist his teammate player D to a future year. Can player C also be on the team I chose for player D because they are adjacent, as stated in the rules? or must it be a team that doesn't include player C, as stated above? If it's the latter, this draft is nearly impossible.

This is why I said the above was a better way to explain the restriction. In the end you'll have 25 teams selected. You would go to baseball-reference and exactly *TWO* (no more, no less) of your selected players has to appear on each roster *and* there has to be a unbroken chain from the first player to the last when twisting.

Posted by rbow923 on 12/2/2017 10:02:00 AM (view original):

Posted by buddhagamer on 10/13/2017 10:12:00 PM (view original):
I think this is a better way to describe the $80M theme restrictions:

1. Pick Player A. Select a team/season this player appears on.
2. Pick a teammate of A (let's call him Player B) from that season. This teammate may not appear on any prior selected team/season.
3. Twist B to a subsequent season. No previously other selected player may appear on that team/season roster.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you finally get to Player Y.

This is in contradiction to the rules on adjacent players. So now i need another clarificiation.
I have player C. I twist his teammate player D to a future year. Can player C also be on the team I chose for player D because they are adjacent, as stated in the rules? or must it be a team that doesn't include player C, as stated above? If it's the latter, this draft is nearly impossible.

These are not contradictory.

You take Player 1 from Team A. Team A also has Player 2 on it, who you twist to Team B. Team B also has Player 3 on it, who you twist to Team C. Repeat. Player 1 cannot be on Team B, Player 2 cannot be on Team C, etc. Player 3 cannot be on Team A, etc.

Yes, it is hard. Yes, it takes a while. No, it is not nearly impossible.

All rosters that were submitted before this morning have been checked, except for the 120M theme. If you did NOT receive a sitemail from me, then your teams are valid.

I finally finished my $80M team. What's really hard is trying to add a specific player at the end of the chain. Probably spent 25% of my research time just trying to add one specific player.

I am trying like hell to get an 80m team done. I honestly have no idea if it's legal. I am going to submit it soon. If it isn't legal, I am not 100% sure I will be able to make it so. I was very close to passing on round 2 because of this theme. Then some of the posts made it seem like it wasn't as scary as I thought, so I decided to try.

But now reading through these last few posts, I think I may have made the wrong call.

I think the chain league will be interesting in that it's really hard to implement any kind of strategy. Finishing a decent chain is a victory in itself. I don't think any owner will feel great about the final product.

Right... it's all about how many players on your roster are you just "settling" for. My cheapest starting batter has a .319 OBP# (but plays good def) and my cheapest SP has a 1.22 whip and a relatively high HR/9 rate (but provides good innings for a decent price). But at $80M, I needed to save some salary so I could roster players I do like.

I would have loved to see what kind of 80M team WaitNSee would have built.

The flip side of that coin is that there have to be some "perfect" chains out there that allow you to maximize every dollar and put a strong complimentary team together. So perhaps this league will reward those who are willing to put in the most research time.

It is interesting to me to see the commentary on The Chain. rbow923 & Jtpsops's quips that the strategy either is simplistic or does not exist were particularly interesting to me.

The theme is meant to act as a continuance to Round 1's 70M theme, where there are simply too many choices for someone to know for sure and have the confidence that they've found the optimal solution (the low salary cap increases this further). If anyone has ever spent time learning the Chinese game Go, and/or reading about how it is mathematically impossible for even the most powerful computers in the world to "solve" the game (today, at least) despite it's simplistic premise, you may better understand my perspective for this theme. Even though it is impossible to "solve" there are still ways to exhibit more skill (as displayed by the fact that the same players consistently win, and further shown by the fact that a computer now rises above even the top human players).

We don't have machine learning algorithms to spit out the best rosters (at least I don't), so it is definitely meant to put people outside of their comfort zone and treat the question of "what is skill?" differently than a normal theme. The difference between Round 1's 70M theme and The Chain is that, with The Chain, there are even fewer guardrails and more uncertainty (which is why I felt it is appropriate for Round 2 while Expansion Ball was more appropriate for Round 1).

Personally, it's the theme that I'm most excited about, by a long shot, but I do hear the complaints and will need to consider whether themes with the same approach are appropriate in future years.

Don't mistake my comments for complaints. I've had a lot of fun (and some aggravation) reworking chains to find what works. And maybe I'm wrong, but I just feel like this is a theme where people will be lucky to complete 3+ legal chains, so implementing a strategy in terms of a team identity becomes extremely difficult. I feel like it'll be more about who completes the best chain rather than who comes up with the best strategy. But you're right - perhaps there is a strategy for completing a chain in and of itself that I haven't discovered yet.

Point taken. Since I won't be building multiple chains for comparison the skill is in picking appropriate players as I go, no turning back. In that way it's similar to a draft league, building as you go. I prefer the strategy of melding a whole team together simultaneously.
I welcome themes with infinite possibilities if each one possibility is not so tedious and time consuming.

If some teams have an illegal player it won't be a simple fix. there could be long delays getting started.

My strategy is simply to get a legal roster as quickly as possbible...I couldn't care less if the $80m team does well or not, as this will most likely be the first and last chain team I ever build, as it really doesn't interest me whatsoever. Not complaining, just my personal philosophy.