I want to start out this post by saying how awesome it is that people are making pre-season moves. It shows that IDL is active and that people are trying to be as competitive as they can be. I&#039;m here to support that!<br /><br />Okay, so let&#039;s say that you&#039;ve been in IDL less than 3 seasons. You&#039;ve no doubt seen very few trades, most involving yours truly. &quot;Why,&quot; you might ask, &quot;would someone trade a top player preseason?&quot; The simple answer is because trading is a great way to improve your team. Now you might say, &quot;But nostar! Most of the trades in the IDL are extremely one-sided and that hurts competition and the league as a whole.&quot; [u]Not so![/u] Many trades in IDL have been beneficial for both teams while some have not.<br /><br />I lack the energy to do the diligent research but let me give you an a cursory overview of some of the major trades in IDL history:<br /><br />[u][i]Season 1 - Tai trades for Brahm[/i][/u]<br />I don&#039;t know what happened. I hear about it to this day in IRC. It must have been awesome.<br /><br />[u][i]Season 2 - potentpotables trade for Fastidious.[/i][/u]<br />In hindsight this looks lopsided. However, when Fastidious joined Roak (mid season acquisition) that team flourished and became a serious contender. I was told that Fast&#039;s connection bugged but before that both teams had a serious chance at winning, and one managed to get just that.<br /><br />[u][i]Season 3 - Bones/Albatross for Potent/Nostar[/i][/u]<br />Ah, the beginning of the end for IDL. This trade actually spawned a masterbowl contender that I wasn&#039;t on. VGR getting Bones was huge and set up probably the greatest upset in IDL history before leading to a classic Bones v Ralph Masterbowl. In addition to that it gave a winless team enough firepower to make a push to conference finals.<br /><br />[u][i]Season 4 - Whiteboy for Middd[/i][/u]<br />Okay, very dumb, maybe the least interesting season of IDL to date. This was one of those, &quot;taking advantage trades&quot; that people fear will result and thus people don&#039;t make trades. Please don&#039;t let this instance sour your view of trading, it&#039;s awesome and can vastly improve your team. This was just an instance of an idiot captain doing an idiot thing.<br /><br />[u][i]Season 5 - JKist3 for Nautilus[/i][/u]<br />Also pretty dumb, but who was I to say no. Blair kind of checked out as captain after than and people say that I rigged IDL. You should consider this though, since Blair and I never traded picks officially, in making the decision to trade post draft I ran the liability of getting stuck with Nautilus on my team for an entire season. It was a gamble, and it paid off. In addition to that, Kist was highly undervalued coming into IDL and in my opinion he still is. Oh and not to hype Nautilus, but two seasons before this one, he helped a team get to and perform well in a title game. Food for thought.<br /><br />[u][i]Season 6 - JKist for Mortalogy[/i][/u]<br />At first, a bad looking trade. A lot of people said that this was a gimme and that Nero just quit, but from my perspective that isn&#039;t want happened. SPE started out as Nero, Fastidious, JKist and dewww. They played 3-4 games before it was evident that their team wasn&#039;t doing very well. Fast was unhappy and blamed JKist for not playing to his potential or practicing enough. Nero decided to trade JKist to probably the only team that was interested in him at the time, for Mortal. I don&#039;t mean to talk up some euro dude but in the current IDL, Mortal is a top 6 pick, and for those of you who don&#039;t believe me look up who drafted the most successful IDL euros ever in Nero, Gyrossman, Mortal, Turska and of course mikehail, most of them playing on my team for their first full seasons in IDL. That trade wasn&#039;t lopsided, and statistically it made neither team better. SPE was winless with JKist playing and after the trade it remained winless. SUC was undefeated with Potent, mortal and gyross playing and it remained undefeated. Really that trade was a wash and mostly served to piss Fastidious off and make him leave like a little girl. I think we can all rally around that cause.<br /><br />[u][i]Season 7 - Rosebird traded for Fastidious[/i][/u]<br />I regret this trade so much. Fastidious was a whiny little faggot and I hated being on his team more than I hated being on Naut&#039;s. Also we would have won with Rose or dewww. You win some you lose some, this was a loss.<br /><br />[u][i]Season 8 - Hatred for Nero[/i][/u]<br />This was actually just stupid. It&#039;s the only trade in IDL history that I think the board should have stepped in and stopped. There should be some legislation to prevent captains from unloading their top plays at the trade deadline and lop-siding IDL. I suppose that any two colluding captains could do that but it&#039;s kind of hilarious that captain that decided to do that also heads up the legislative body for IDL. If you&#039;re a new captain, don&#039;t make this trade. It&#039;s bad for you and it&#039;s bad for IDL. I want to be clear with this example, trading good and great players is NOT a bad thing. Trading them and getting little to nothing in return is just lame.<br /><br />[u][i]Season 9 - Nostar/Dr.Noob for Middd/Saber[/i][/u]<br />This was pretty straight forwardly fair, and an archetype for what new, less talented captains should do with their picks in the draft. Had Goatface not had his connection shit on him he would have made playoffs. He stayed playoff eligible until the last game of the season, and people still think he make a huge mistake. In addition to that the team he traded with was the team he was in contention with to make playoffs. You can&#039;t get much closer to parity in a trade than that.<br /><br />[u][i]Season 10 - Nostar/Collision for Mikehail/Dr.Noob[/i][/u]<br />I guess we&#039;ll see!<br /><br /><br />The point I am making is that people need to not be afraid of trades. Don&#039;t let another captain or player bully you into anything. Talk to other IDL players and captains to gather opinions and form your own. Then try to make the best team you can with the resources you have. Last season if Tai had traded Whiteboy to...Stall, Jenova, Rus, Strangle, I would venture a guess that he could have gotten enough in return to win another title. It&#039;s possible to make good trades, people have done it, even with big name players, and succeeded. I can look at the teams this season and see 4-5 possible trades that would improve both teams, and many teams need improvement. <br /><br />There are some players who get by without trading, they&#039;re the exceptions. Do the math. 6/9 Championship teams have made trades to get their final playing roster. There have only been 2 seasons where both teams in the Masterbowl had no trades affecting the active rosters, those seasons being 1 and 9. It&#039;s not too hard to figure out that teams can improve by trading. Just look at the history.