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Welcome to Diamond Mind Online®, the historical fantasy baseball game powered by a customized version of Diamond-Mind, rated an “Editor’s Choice” by PC Magazine as the most realistic baseball simulation software. Diamond Mind Online® is the most realistic online baseball simulation game that provides a multitude of options for play – you’ll never run out of new challenges and fun!

SETTING UP AN ACCOUNT

Simply provide your real name and contact information, select a Username and a password, and away you go. To purchase teams, click on “Buy team credits” and select from the various purchase options. You can buy one team or get discounts for buying more teams at once.

GAME BASICS

In Diamond Mind Online®, you will select a team of 25 players for your active roster and 3 players for your Inactive Reserve (your “IR”). The IR is a place for you to send an injured player and to keep some reserves. At least 8 players on your active roster must be pitchers, at least 4 of whom must have a Starting Pitcher (SP) designation. Other than that, you can do pretty much whatever you want, if you’re willing to live with the consequences.

Once you pay for your team(s), you can choose to enter it into what we call a Standard League, or you can form or join a Custom League. All leagues (except Accelerated and Turbo Leagues) are 162 games and take 9 weeks, with 3 games played by your team against an opponent’s team every day except Sunday, which is an off-day. Games are played one at a time, three times a day (except for Turbo leagues, which have three additional sim runs daily). The first game is at roughly 3 am Eastern US Time, the second around noon ET, and the third game at about 6 pm ET. 

With Accelerated Leagues, the regular season is played in just 3 weeks, with a 3-game series played 3 times each day, instead of a single game.  The playoffs in Accelerated Leagues are played at the same pace as other leagues.

With Turbo Leagues, the regular season is played in just 1-1/2 weeks, with a 3-game series played 6 times each day.  In addition to our regular sim times, there are 3 additional sims at 2 pm, 4 pm and 8 pm ET.  The LCS will begin with the noon ET sim immediately following the end of the regular season. The World Series will begin with the 8 p.m. ET sim the following day. (Virtual days off between series remain the same.)

Players in the Classic version of the game are rated based on their career stats, taking into account both career and peak value. We also normalize each player’s ratings for effects of the era and the home park(s) in which he played, and we do so for each aspect of a player. For example, a guy who hit 30 home runs while playing half his games in, say, the Astrodome, is likely to be stronger than a guy who hit 30 in Coors Field. Likewise, a guy who hit .300 in 1967 is likely to hit for a better average than a guy who hit .300 in 1930 … ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL. Bear in mind that your players are going up against different competition and playing in different parks and maybe even in a different era with a different type of play than what they faced in real life, and may perform differently. To learn more about how we do this, go to Normalization.  In the Single-Season ("SSG") version of the game, each player season is separately rated.

STANDARD LEAGUES

"Classic" standard leagues have a salary cap of $100 million, consist of 12 teams, and are divided into 3 divisions. If you choose the "classic" standard league option, you must first choose whether you want to be in a league with or without the designated hitter. Give your team a name and choose the ballpark in which your team will play its home games. Which park you choose will affect the play there, and you should consider this when drafting your teams. For information on each park and its effects, go to Ballparks. We also recommend reading our essay How Park Factors Work.

"SSG" standard leagues have a salary cap of $130 million, with an 8 team/2 division format, and are played at a faster pace than "classic" standard leagues.  SSG standard leagues are set in the most recently completed season (currently 2023).  All "SSG" standard leagues utilize the DH.  For a limited time, SSG standard league teams are free to play!

Once you’ve selected your park, you will go to your Draft Page to draft your team. Fill out your roster and submit it and as soon as 11 other owners submit a team draft, we will put you all together in a league. Divisions and draft order are assigned randomly. Standard Leagues have weather effects, and each player’s injury propensity reflects their real-life injuries (go to Player Injuries for more information). The era of play for "classic" standard leagues is “Standard” -- the type of play on average in the National League during the period of 1920-1992. We chose that because it represents a fairly neutral or average time span of what we now know as the modern game without the skewing effects of the DH (thus only the NL). The "era of play" for SSG standard leagues is the season in which they are set, reflecting the current characteristics of play.

If you want different characteristics in your league, you can form or join a Custom League. To learn more about the different eras of play and how they affect game play, go to Eras Of Play.

YOUR BANK ACCOUNT

During the season, in "classic" standard leagues the “Bank of Imagine Sports” will credit your team’s account with $2 million at the end of each of the first 6 weeks and an extra kicker of $4 million at the end of week 7 to make those late-season moves to put your team over the top! You can use your income to improve your roster by signing free agents. You can also make trades. Unspent cash earns interest daily at the rate of 5% per week.

To add an extra element of strategy, we allow you to obtain advances against that income, but those don’t come cheap. Bank of Imagine Sports charges you 15% interest … PER WEEK! And we charge the interest in advance! It’s deducted from your future income stream when you take out the advance.

In SSG standard leagues, you receive payments every two days (during which the same number of games are played as are played during a week of "classic" standard league play) in the following amounts (millions): $2, $3, $4, $8, $4, $3, $2.  There are no loans or interest paid in SSG standard leagues. 

You can set whatever income schedule you like for custom leagues. However, there are no loans or daily interest payments in turbo leagues, and no dailly interest in accelerated leagues (loans are an optional feature for accelerated leagues).  

CUSTOM LEAGUES

Custom Leagues are those formed by owners themselves and allow a number of different variables. After you purchase a team, you’ll have the option to join a Standard League, browse a list of Custom Leagues set up by other owners, or form your own Custom League. If you click on the button to “FORM A CUSTOM LEAGUE,” you’ll be asked to specify the rules for the league, number of teams, division set-up, and so forth. The owner forming the league is the Commissioner for that league and is the person who determines the league rules and sets a password if he or she wants to restrict entry to the league. When a Custom League is formed, the draft will commence (either automated or manual) once the required number of teams has joined the league and the Commissioner has initiated the league.

SETTING UP A CUSTOM LEAGUE

Once you have established and named a Custom League (and specified the password, if any), you may choose from the following options for league play (the default choices are the same as a standard league):

Once the rules are chosen (or you leave the default in place) and you choose your team name and ballpark, click on “Create League” to finalize the set-up. At any time until the draft is final, the Commissioner may cancel the league (and all owners’ team credits are refunded). All open leagues will be listed under “BROWSE CUSTOM LEAGUES”. However, only those owners who have purchased a team and entered the password (if any) may join a league. There is a link enabling those interested in joining to send a sitemail to the league's Commissioner to request the password. Commissioners can also post about the league on the Imagine Sports message boards.

Once the league is full, the Commissioner must initiate the draft before it will begin.  A league that is finalized prior to Friday evening, midnight PT, will begin play the Monday immediately following.  If the league is finalized after that cutoff time, it will begin play a week later.

NOTE: All transactions happen in REAL TIME. Once you enter a release of a player or a trade, our system will ask you if you’re sure about that. Please be sure, because there’s no turning back once you click ‘yes’. That change goes into effect for the next game unless that game was already ready to start, in which case it’ll go into effect for the following game.

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