This is third post of my series revealing the results of the Great APBA Fan Survey. In the first post, I looked at general demographics and in the second, I focused on what games we play. Today, it’s all about “how” we play the game of APBA.
In general, do you prefer to play APBA solo or do you play it with other people?
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
| I usually play it solitaire. | 270 | 67.50% |
| When I play APBA, it’s with someone else. | 36 | 9.00% |
| It really doesn’t matter. | 67 | 16.75% |
Comments: As I noticed with the last set of results, I’m finding more people play the game solo than I previously perceived.
When was the last time you spent playing an APBA game?
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
| Over three months ago | 49 | 12.25% |
| Within the last three months | 67 | 16.75% |
| Within the last week | 109 | 27.25% |
| Within the last 24 hours | 148 | 37.00% |
Comments: The idea here was just to find out how often we play APBA. Looks like we play it a lot! Over 60% of us have played the game within the last week and 37% of us played within the last day.
When was the last time you played APBA with another person?
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
| Over three months ago | 221 | 55.25% |
| Within the past three months | 31 | 7.75% |
| Within the past month | 30 | 7.50% |
| Within the past week | 32 | 8.00% |
| Within the past 24 hours | 14 | 3.50% |
| Never | 45 | 11.25% |
Comments: See my comments above. Again, solo APBA is definitely the most popular way to play APBA. It’s so much easier to go to your desk and roll the bones or fire up BBW than to arrange a game with someone else.
Generally speaking, how do you keep stats?
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
| MS Excel or other spreadsheet program | 130 | 32.50% |
| APBA BBW or other APBA product | 54 | 13.50% |
| Ballscore/BallStat | 34 | 8.50% |
| Other third party or off the shelf program | 15 | 3.75% |
| Pencil and paper | 128 | 32.00% |
| I don’t keep stats | 10 | 2.50% |
Comments: This was a poorly worded question on my part. I was intending to ask how people recorded statistics for replays/leagues not how they kept boxscores during games. I could see how it could have been misconstrued though.
That said, we still get some meaningful data. Excel and other spreadsheet software are popular but Ballscore gets used a lot too, it seems.
What are your main sources of real-life sports statistics?
List any that you use. (examples: Baseball-Reference, newspaper boxscores, NFL.com etc)
Comments: This was a heavily commented on question and many people had different answers. Probably the most cited answer was Baseball Reference with 72 responses.
Other responses:
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MLB.com: 46
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ESPN: 41
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Retrosheet: 40
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NFL or NFL.com: 18
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Newspaper: 7
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nhl.com: 5
Other resources: mlssoccer.com, Baseball Cube, Bill James, Baseball Encyclopedia and fangraphs.com.
If you do a replay (or even when you play APBA in general), do you strive to replay it exactly like it happened in real life or do you get creative and engage in "what-if" scenarios?
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
| I set it up exactly like it was in real life. Transactions, roster changes, lineups, the whole nine yards. | 76 | 19.00% |
| I make a good effort but I’m not anal retentive about it. | 131 | 32.75% |
| I throw the teams out there and play. | 99 | 24.75% |
| I get real creative and see what would happen. What would have happened if the Cubs hadn’t traded Lou Brock? | 42 | 10.50% |
In general when you play APBA, do you strive for accuracy to the real life stats or is it realism (in other words, what might have happened) you seek?
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
| If the stats are similar to real life, I’m happy. | 183 | 45.75% |
| Accuracy be damned. Realism is fun sometimes even if a big star is injured for half the year. | 70 | 17.50% |
| Geez, Tom, I don’t know. I just play and have fun. | 111 | 27.75% |
Comments: Taking the last two questions together, I’m glad a good portion of you just put me in my place and just said “I’m just playing APBA to have fun!”.
It IS a favorite topic of mine though so I had to include the questions. Sounds like a good percentage of you do try to make an effort to be as realistic as possible (but don’t go overboard with it). A few of you even like to shake things up and try different modifications, too.
For those playing Basic and Master Game, do you use a dice cup?
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
| Are you for real? Of course I do! | 217 | 54.25% |
| No, hand rolling is for me. | 118 | 29.50% |
Comments: If I were to do this again, I would add another answer… dice tower. I’ll assume a few in the hand rolling category are you.
Next Up: The next post in the series will deal primarily with league play.
You can see all the Great APBA Fan Survey result posts I’ve posted so far here.
Fascinating.
But a couple of years ago, when I arranged a face-to-face series with a new league member in TBL, he said that was the first time he’d played face-to-face in 30 years of APBA!