Prior to August 2011, I always thought I was too much of a pragmatic realist to play fantasy sports. I enjoyed watching most sports on TV, reading about them in the newspaper/online or conjecturing with friends but that was the extent of my involvement. Like most fans, I followed certain teams and players due to geographic or experiential connections. Any additional time investment into analyzing stats or drafting/managing teams seemed a bit obsessive.

Last August, I received an invitation from a CardRunners member to join their Fantasy Premier League mini-league. Soccer, or football as they call it, was my sport growing up. For the last decade or so I've followed the English Premier League, generally considered the best all-around league in the world. Although the games come on early in the morning Pacific time, I watched many Fox Soccer channel games over the years pulling for teams like Manchester United and Tottenham or any of the American players (e.g. Brian McBride, Clint Dempsey, Brad Friedel, and Tim Howard). With all that in mind and despite no money being involved, I accepted the invitation and jumped into what became an engrossing and rewarding season filled with tremendous education about how fantasy football works.

Sunday, the 2011/2012 English Premier League season (38 game weeks over nine months) came to a dramatic conclusion with Manchester City scoring two goals in stoppage time to claim the league title over Manchester United. Here are 12 things I learned from my first season of playing.

1. Starting Point - The Fantasy Premier league starts all players with the same drafting budget. I decided to draft a team that was made up of high relative value players based off the prior season's stats performance instead of drafting any expensive superstars that would require me to field a team with lots of unproven budget players. I learned that unlike other sports, soccer player's stats have great variance and vary greatly from season to season. Many of the players I selected started off the current season nowhere near the prior season's form.

2. Wild Cards - Players are given two wildcard weeks where they can change out any number of players without penalty. Due to my very poor start to the season where I sat at about 1.3 millionth place, I used my first wildcard after week 3 of a 38 gameweek season. I learned that although my results improved greatly after week 3, in the future it would be much wiser to keep my flexible wildcard to be used much later in the season for double gameweek opportunities or a rash of injuries.

3. Weekly Transfers - The FPL allows one player to be replaced on your team each week free of charge. Any additional transfers each week, outside of your two wildcard weeks, costs you -4 fantasy points from your total. I learned that researching and managing your single player each week over multiple weeks is essential to reshape your team in reaction to injuries, form and fixtures. The occasional additional points hit can work if they are well researched upgrades, but it's not recommended to take too many deductions.

4. Collective Effort - Much like the poker world where players visiting poker communities and forums of like minded motivated players, there are several football fantasy support sites that I discovered during the season. Most of the serious players congregate, discuss and share their opinions about optimal play. I learned to regularly visit the handful of resource/stats sites and communities to read their collective wisdom on players, teams and moves.

5. "O Captain, My Captain!" - The biggest determining factor on your score each week is who you select as your team's captain, as they are the only player to have their individual points total doubled. My team suffered from my reticence to pick the runaway points leader, Robin Van Persie, due to his high expense and a personal dislike for him. I learned that to be a successful fantasy sports player, you need to disassociate from pre-conceived notions, rather basing your decisions purely on their stats. The captain's point doubling is one of the flaws I see with the game, as it gives too much emphasis on one decision while reducing the importance of your decisions on the other ten players. It creates large swings in performance (i.e. variance) from week to week.

6. Managing Value - Although all players begin with the same team drafting value, there are provisions to increase the value of your team by buying and selling players who are moving up or down in value as the season progresses. I learned several months into the season of the importance of selecting players that have lots of purchasing momentum behind them so that your team value will increase allowing you to afford a higher overall value than others as the season progresses. If managed properly, by mid-season you can afford a team of much stronger players than others who don't focus on this player/team value creation aspect.

7. Form and Fixture - The season is one of the longest in sports running from mid-August to mid-May. Players rarely maintain their performance levels consistently through the course of the nine month season. Following individual players momentum is key. I learned that it is smart to select players who have good matchups or who are running hot over players who may be superior players long term.

8. Injuries and Rotation - Two of the most frustrating and challenging aspects of playing FPL is the frequency of injuries and coach decisions to rotate players due to other competition considerations. These uncertainties introduce a fairly large variance aspect to the game beyond all your other careful research and team management. I learned it's important to follow the latest Twitter and fantasy site news regarding injury and coach starting preferences. Over a season, it will even out with your competitors, but at times it feels that you are running well over or under the average luck out there.

9. There's no place like home - Unlike some sports where player's statistics don't vary greatly from venue to venue, I learned that many EPL players perform better when playing at home than on the road. It is often a good choice to substitute the better overall player when they are playing on the road, if you have a lesser player that is playing at home.

10. Personal Bias Has No Place - Of the fifteen players I drafted to start the season, I only held one player the entire year - Gareth Bale. Despite having a slow start, he went on to become one of the top points scoring players this season. All other players came and went from my team, sometimes multiple times as fantasy situations dictated. I learned you can't afford to be too loyal or hold personal biases against players. If you are to succeed, you need to pick the right players that are most likely to score at the right times whether they are pillars of the community or not.

11. Respectability - During the season I read that the goal for respectability would be 2,000 points. That is 52.6 points per week from your 11 players; coming to 4.78 per player. I finished with 2,034 points, breaking the 2,000 point barrier on the last week of the season. The top player in the world finished with 2,414 points. I learned that your captains decision is so important to your weekly results that you will always suffer if you don't select the top scoring player no matter how expensive he is.

12. It's not where you start, it's where you finish - Considering my slow start and lack of experience the first few months, I consider my finish quite positive. I finished in 109,691st out of over 2.78 million worldwide players this season. Of the roughly 80,000 U.S. based players, I finished in 3,120th place. Although as many as half of fantasy players stop actively managing their teams as the season progresses, those players can continue to score decently if they picked solid players. I learned that it's a long season and you can't avoid poor weeks where your players don't perform. Making regular researched small tweaks to your team gives you an edge over less actively managed teams.

I started the CardRunners mini-league in 9th place and through my continued efforts I slowly climbed throughout the season until I took the lead in the last few weeks - finishing in first! My last big move to cement my position came in the crucial double gameweek 36, where I had my highest scoring week of the season - 129 points. In the season long league, it's very much of a marathon perspective where you need to keep making good consistent stats/performance based decisions, rather than a few quick big gambling sprints.

You can now consider me a fantasy football convert. I'll definitely be back for next season, hoping to build off the experience from my first season. Without the learning curve that was the first half of this season, I should fare much better in the worldwide comparative rankings. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the time evaluating stats and making personnel moves, although it would take less time in my second season.

I think fantasy sports can be a great outlet only if you have a passion for the game, as I wouldn't want to invest that much time for a sport in which I didn't have the same interest. Overall, It deepened my understanding of the game, its players and teams. My experience as a Premier League fan evolved, including rooting for certain positive or negative player outcomes and following teams I never would have before. A final thanks to crashoutcassius for inviting me to play, although I'm sure he rues that decision as I crushed him mercilessly (yes, I'm being results oriented but I want him to bring his A game next year).