Play-money game · Fantasy
Rules
The short version: it's a free game with play money. Nothing you win is worth anything, and nothing here is advice.
Play money
Real money involvedNone
How it works
The game
- Pick 5 billionaires with salaries adding up to 100 cap points or less. One is your captain and scores 1.5×.
- A week is Monday to Friday, US market days. Your lineup locks Monday at 9:30 AM New York time. Saving after the lock sets your team for the next week.
- Starting mid-week? Your first save also enters you in the current week, scoring from the next trading day (late entry).
- Salaries follow Forbes rank among draftable people: ranks 1–5 cost 30, 6–10 cost 26, 11–20 cost 22, 21–35 cost 18, 36–50 cost 14, 51–75 cost 10, 76–100 cost 7. They are frozen when the week opens. After four weeks of results, salaries move up to ±4 by recent form.
Scoring, per person, per trading day
| Event | Points |
|---|---|
| Portfolio return that day | return % × 100, rounded (+1.23% = +123; a down day is negative) |
| Form 4 open-market purchase (code P) filed that day | +25 |
| Each story about them in that day's Digest | +10 |
| Captain | × 1.5 |
Benchmarks
- S&P 500 (SPY): SPY's daily return × 100, times 5 so it compares with a five-pick team (no captain).
- Top 5 richest: the five highest-ranked draftable people, with the richest as captain. It ignores the cap.
- Perfect team: the best possible five under the cap with the best captain, worked out after the week ends.
Method notes
- A portfolio is the person's current controlling stakes and holdings on their profile that trade on a US exchange, including US lines of foreign companies (ADRs) used for daily moves only.
- When every holding has an exact disclosed share count, holdings are weighted by value (value-weighted). Otherwise the companies a person controls together count for 75% and their other stakes for 25%, with each group split by value when every holding in it has a share count and equally when not (controls-weighted, 75/25). Someone with only one group puts 100% in it. Each player card shows the method and the weights.
- A quote that did not trade that day counts as 0%. Days with no market (weekends and holidays) do not score.
- Private companies, funds and family holdings have no daily price, so people whose wealth is mostly private cannot be drafted.
- Lineup projections and the matchup win chance are simple estimates from recent points. They are not forecasts.
Game only. No real money, no prizes, not financial advice. Scores use public prices and disclosed holdings and are approximate. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any security.
Play money only
- Coins have no cash value. They can't be bought, sold, cashed out, traded or sent to another player.
- There are no prizes. Leaderboards are for bragging rights.
- We may reset balances, scores, leagues or markets at any time, for example to fix a bug or start a new season.
Not investment advice
The fantasy league and markets are games built on public information about the world's richest people. Scores, prices and results are not predictions or recommendations to buy or sell anything.
Your account
Pressing Play online creates a guest account stored in this browser. We don't ask for your name, email or password. If you clear your browser's site data or switch devices, you lose that account. We keep only what the game needs: your nickname, coins, picks, league memberships and trades.
Nicknames and league names
- 3 to 20 characters: letters, numbers, _ and - only.
- Nicknames are unique, ignoring upper and lower case.
- No slurs, insults, sexual words, or names that pretend to be us or our staff. Some words are blocked automatically, and we may rename or remove anything else that breaks this rule.
- There is no chat. Nicknames and league names are the only text players can write.
Fantasy league
- Each week, pick 5 different people whose salaries add up to 100 or less, and choose one as captain. The captain scores 1.5 times.
- Picks lock Monday at 9:30 AM New York time, when US markets open. After that nobody can change them, and everyone's picks become visible.
- Joined late? You can still enter a team until Friday. It scores from the next trading day after you save it.
- Points come from each person's daily market moves in our data. Scores update once a day.
- Leagues hold up to 50 players. You can be in up to 10 leagues.
How markets are settled
- Markets have moved to The Book: no new markets open. Markets that were already open close and settle as described here.
- New markets open on Monday mornings and close Friday at 4:00 PM New York time. We settle them on Saturday once the week's data is in.
- Head-to-head questions compare two people's fantasy points for the week. A tie makes the market void.
- Sector questions compare the average fantasy points of the draftable people in each sector. A tie for first makes the market void.
- Insider-buy questions resolve YES if the person files a Form 4 on SEC EDGAR showing an open-market purchase (transaction code P) between Monday and Friday of that week. If we can't read a filing well enough to tell, the market is void.
- Only our own data files are used, and each result links to its source. If the data never arrives, the market is void.
- Void markets give back what each player put in. Winning shares pay 1 coin each, rounded down to a whole coin.
The Book
- The Book takes play-money bets on the fantasy week at fixed odds: head-to-head matchups (moneyline and spread), a person's weekly points over or under a line, the week's top scorer, whether someone files an insider buy by Friday, and the top sector.
- Odds come from a simple model of our own data (recent news, insider buys and how much each person's holdings usually move) plus a house margin. They are not forecasts or advice.
- A bet is a single pick or a parlay of 2 to 4 picks from different events. Stakes are 1 to 500 coins, you can place up to 50 bets a day, and no bet pays back more than 10,000 coins.
- You get the odds shown when you place the bet. If they changed in the meantime, the bet is refused and your slip shows the new odds to review. Once someone bets on a price it no longer changes.
- Betting locks Monday at 9:30 AM New York time, when the week's fantasy picks lock. Bets settle after Friday's scores are in, usually on Saturday, from the fantasy league's week totals and SEC EDGAR filings.
- Lines end in .5, so over/unders and spreads can't tie. A tie in a head-to-head moneyline, a tie for top scorer or top sector, missing data, or a Form 4 we can't read makes that pick void: a single is refunded, and a parlay is paid on its other picks. A parlay with a losing pick loses.
- Coins won are play money like any other coins: no cash value, no prizes.
Fair play
One account per person, please. We may remove accounts, nicknames or leagues that abuse the game, try to break it, or use more than one account to move markets or leaderboards.