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Daily Challenge: rules & data

New to the game? Read the step-by-step Daily Challenge guide →

Three hidden choices at every position. Reveal one, then keep it or switch once. A switch immediately locks the new card. Finish your lineup to see a projected season. Everyone gets the same board, refreshed at midnight in America/Toronto.

The three cards

Each position draws three cards from its own eligible pool, ranked by the performance value used by that sport’s simulation. These are percentile ranks within the pool, not player ratings or Hall of Fame categories.

NBA and NFL ranges occasionally widen a little and overlap, so the options can be close in quality. Their display order is shuffled. Teams and eras are not balanced equally. MLB uses a broader pool of stars, everyday players and ordinary regulars, with separated ranges so switching carries a real tradeoff. Its draw reduces the weight of anyone in the previous seven published boards, including hidden cards. Yesterday’s appearance gets 12% of an otherwise equal unseen card’s weight; older appearances have a smaller penalty. This reduces repeats without guaranteeing exclusion. NBA and NFL have no recent-days penalty. If a range cannot supply a unique eligible player, the draw can use another card from that position’s pool.

This mix applies to newly generated daily boards. Previously saved dates keep their original cards and results so everyone plays the same challenge.

The lineups

No salary cap. No Premier League daily challenge. A person appears only once on a board, including the hidden choices.

Season projections

These are deterministic projections, not a random season lottery. The same lineup always earns the same record within its saved scoring version. No difficulty bonus changes the record. Daily challenges have no additional playoff lottery.

NBA: the existing historical peak evaluations and 82-game projection engine are used. The five starters account for 90% of strength; the sixth man accounts for 10%. Peak ability uses sustained historical impact, Win Shares rate, documented All-NBA/defensive recognition and shooting support. Small samples regress toward a replacement player; a limited-minute role is not treated as a full starter workload. The season benchmark is fixed from historical teams. Career totals are display information, not the rating formula. New NBA deals also consider how the starting five’s shooting, creation and defensive roles fit together. This is a small, bounded estimate; it does not add defensive impact twice or change an existing daily board. Eligibility comes from the player’s traditional position, measured by career minutes in recorded season roles. A second position needs at least 20% of those minutes, 150 appearances and two substantial seasons. Brief or late-career experiments do not unlock every position. Players need at least 300 career appearances and a historical rating of at least 74 out of 99. Sixth-man cards need an established bench role: at least three substantial bench seasons and either a majority of documented career appearances off the bench or two Sixth Man award wins. A brief rookie or late-career bench stint does not qualify a career starter. The evaluated season must itself have Sixth Man of the Year votes, at least 40 games, 18 minutes per game and more bench appearances than starts. Starts must be known for at least 90% of career appearances. Career totals remain display information; the card uses its qualifying bench-season ability.

NFL: the existing historical peak evaluations feed the 17-game drive model for point difference. New boards translate team strength into a percentile of the curated Daily reference pool, then map that percentile to official regular-season wins and point differences from 1978–2025 (1,457 team-seasons; source data). Historical win percentages, counting a tie as half a win, are scaled to 17 games. Projected wins are capped at the real regular-season record of 16. This game calibration makes record-level results rare; it is not a betting forecast or an exact combination rank. Previously published boards retain their saved scoring version. New deals use a sustained peak within a three-year window when enough seasons are available. Corners and safeties, interior linemen and edge rushers are compared against their own roles. Historical defensive box scores still cannot fully measure shutdown coverage or pressure without a recorded play. One WR card represents the three-receiver group; DL, LB and DB each represent their group. Offensive linemen use the app’s current blocking assessment (60% pass blocking, 40% run blocking), with a contribution limited to ±3 expected points per game. Special teams and unpicked support stay neutral. Historical player cards require 50 career appearances. Eligible cards must have a nonnegative contribution for their position. NFL uses its own performance units, not a 1–99 scale. Offensive linemen are the current-season exception to the historical card pool; we do not yet have equivalent historical blocking evidence.

Coaches use verified career wins, losses and ties including playoffs. The win rate is regressed toward .500 with 80 neutral games, then translated into a small model effect, capped at ±2.5 points per game. This is an explicit game simplification: wins are not a causal measurement of coaching skill. Coaches are compared by this estimate, not by invented player statistics.

MLB: new deals use an adjacent two- or three-season peak through 2025. The expanded pool requires at least two qualifying seasons within a three-year window, rather than relying on one surprise season. On-base percentage and slugging are compared with each season’s league environment. Pitching combines ERA and fielding-independent pitching, with small samples pulled toward that season’s average. Hitters need 350 plate appearances; starters need 100 innings and 15 starts; closers need 35 innings and 15 saves in a qualifying season. Hitters also need 500 career games, starters 100 career starts, and closers 50 career saves. Career totals remain display information.

Positions follow established career roles. A second fielding position needs 500 appearances and at least 70% as many as the main role. DH must be the main role, or have 400 appearances and at least 25% as many as the main role. MLB has no above-average ability floor: a verified ordinary starter belongs in the pool too. Era-relative comparisons select the three choices; they are not raw career OPS or ERA rankings.

Nine hitters set run production. The starter represents six innings, the closer one, and neutral relievers two. New deals use a wider run distribution calibrated against historical team seasons. MLB’s measured Fielding Run Value contributes where it covers the player’s peak. Older cards can receive a small Gold Glove recognition prior; that is an estimate, not measured defensive runs. DH receives no fielding credit. Ballpark effects and complete historical fielding measures remain limitations. Saved older boards keep their original scoring.

Leaderboard & saves

Record ranks first, then projected point/run difference, then fewer switches. Exact ties share a rank. The displayed score is 100 per win in NBA/MLB; NFL gives 200 per win and 100 per tie. Scores are never compared across sports. Daily and Monday–Sunday weekly boards use Eastern calendar dates.

Each browser profile gets one attempt per sport per challenge date. Progress and results are saved on the server. Shared links preserve the lineup; “Play this daily” opens the same dated board. Archived boards remain playable and count against their original date, not today’s leaderboard. Clearing your browser identity creates a different anonymous profile.

Sources & snapshot

Expanded MLB Daily pool: identities, positions, peak evidence and exclusions

Football and baseball ratings audit · MLB Fielding Run Value

NBA/NFL career-stat snapshot: September 19, 2026. MLB career and position evidence collected September 25, 2026. Ratings audit: September 23, 2026. Career totals are display information; completed-season peak evidence drives the historical evaluations. Active players’ displayed career totals can include 2026 games.

MLB draw policy updated September 25, 2026. All counts above are eligible unique cards after the sport-specific evidence requirements. The NBA pool includes 68 verified bench-season cards. Current NBA season cards and special-mode cards do not enter these historical pools.

Completed boards retain their data and scoring snapshots through future updates. Card details link to their individual evidence in saved results.

Completion tracking

Server records track starts, the last locked position and completion time. Optional analytics track reveals and locks without names or player IDs. Baseball’s eleven-card funnel is reported separately so we can see whether the longer game is worth keeping.