Armchair Pools Blog

If you are running a box pool, our boxes are ready to go. We may make minor changes to the boxes depending on injuries or signings that happen over the next month. We will announce any changes on the blog.

The 2010/11 season is approaching fast. If you're a keener and looking to setup your pool early, jump right in and get started. Armchair Pools never closes down so you can create a new pool at any time. Getting started is easy, but if you do have any issues, feel free to email us at support@armchairpools.com with any questions

If you are an pool administrator and a fan of www.dobberhockey.com, definitely check out his 2010/11 Fantasy Pool Guide. Not only does it contain useful tips and advice, but there is a coupon that will give you $5 off your regular season pool at Armchair Pools. The code can be used on our payment page in October.

And if you've been waiting for Armchair Hockey Pools to support trading and add/drops, your wait is over! Sometime in September, pool admin's and poolies will see new menu items for these features. You will be able to choose between admin or poolie controlled trades and the interface is simple and easy to use.



We will be implementing a keeper pool feature that will allow pool administrators to roll their previous season's pools (ie poolies, teams, settings, etc ..) into the current season. It might not be ready for October so if you want your 2009 pool copied into a pool for the 2010 season, just send us an email and we'd be happy to do it manually for you.

Login to our Facebook application and send some special smack emotes. Some examples below.

Kevin Weeks calls it "joy and jubilation". I call it an awkward hug. Best seen at the 1:45 mark in this clip of Devin Setoguci's OT winner against Colorado last night.

We will be getting more active on our Facebook page, so if you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them there. You can check out our page here.

Also - we have a Facebook plugin that allows you to view your pools and trash talk right from your Facebook account. You can get it here and check out a sample below.

Now that the playoffs are underway and your pool has been created, the fun part begins. Watching the pool and hoping that Colorado can make you look like a genius.

So how can you and your poolies track your pool?

There are 2 ways to view a pool you have created at the Armchair Pools website.

1. Log in.
If your poolie has an account at Armchair Hockey Pools, they can login and view the Pool Standings. For those poolies obsessed with stats, there is a detailed standings page in addition to our main standings page. We also update stats throught the night and you can track your pool's progress throught the night on our Nightly Standings page.

2. View your pool's public page.
If your poolies don't have an account, don't want an account, or just can't be bothered with emails and passwords, that's ok. Just make your pool public and send out the URL to all your poolies. The pool's public standings page can be accessed by anyone. No login is required and poolies can bookmark it so it's easy to find again.

The public page can be setup by the administrator under the Pool Settings -> Basic Settings as fast as it takes to type a unique pool name and hit save.

If you have setup your pool to allow poolies the ability to change their picks, make sure you remove this ability pretty darn soon. Otherwise your poolies will be able to log in and change their picks at any time!

And if you are not an admin, but notice you can change your picks, you may want to send a friendly reminder to your admin. Unless , of course, you need to "freshen up" your roster first.

To lock your standard draft pool, go to [Pool Settings] -> [Basic Settings] and set 'Pool Lock' to 'On'

To lock your box pool, go to [Pool Settings] and set 'Pool Lock' to 'On'



If you have any questions about this, leave a question on this post, or email support@armchairpools.com.

And we're off!

We received all of our game files for the opening night of the playoffs. Looks like it will only be a 20 minute delay between when the game ends and when we can update the nightly standings. If you're not familiar with our new nightly standings screen, click the link on the Pool Standings page and check it out.

Your draft has just finished and you are now in charge of transferring your poolie's picks from a few barely legible crumpled pieces of paper into Armchair Hockey Pools.

How do you do it?

1. Enter teams
Add teams on the 'Add Teams' screen by entering your team names in the supplied text box. You can attach an email to the team, but this is optional. Adding an email allows the team to login and use the site's full functionality. However, teams that cannot login to the site can still view pool standings.

If you've used the site before, checkout the new 'Import Poolies' feature. It lets you import old poolies from previous pools with a single click.

2. Pick players
Once you've entered teams, you can assign players to the teams. Go to the 'Pick Players' screen and enter the players for each team. Note that you can also allow your users to enter their own teams initially and then you can just doublecheck them. This can be a huge time saver for the administrator.

If you have any problems, send us an email at support@armchairpools.com

Good luck in your pool!

The regular season ended with some excitement. I don't know if it's foreshadowing of things to come during the Stanley Cup run, but the leagues most exciting player was left out of headlines - and the hardware.

Sidney Crosby had a five point night and beat Alexander Ovechkin for the goal scoring title with 51 mesh ripplers to Ovi's 50. Henrik Sedin recorded a 4 point night and blew past Ovechkin to win the overall points title by 3 points. So unless he's a finalist for the Lady Bing (unlikely) he has only Lord Stanley's mug to chase

And according to everyone at my draft, he has a decent chance. 4/15 of the first rounders were Capitals, and despite his disappointing finish, Alex the Great went 1st overall.

And speaking of first overall, Redlight Rosie won our first ever Owner's Challenge and will be receiving a $100 gift certificate from shop.nhl.com. The owner's challenge was a hockey pool consisting of administrators of our regular season pools. We won't be running an owners challenge for the playoffs but look for one next regular season. We are hoping to have more sponsors and more prizes.

Good luck in your playoff pools!