Welp! What a time to be alive.
It's like we've all become the crying piccolo girl.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, you CAN still enjoy a fantasy league — just one about the new season of Top Chef All Stars, premiering This Thursday, March 19th!
Top Chef, it turns out, is a surprisingly great show to create a Fantasy League around. My friends and I created a league for Season 16 and I can attest to it being an incredible addition to the normal Top Chef viewing experience.
So here's how it works:
Everyone participating in your league watches the first episode to get to know the 15 cheftestants. Yes, that's right — while athletes are on the sidelines we're focused on CHEFTESTANTS now. They will compete in a series of challenges over the course of the season for a cash prize and the COVETED TITLE of Top Chef.
Season 17, premiering Thursday, happens to be an All-Star season so it is filled with returning chefs in case you want to watch the previous 16 seasons for extra research.
After the first episode (but before the second one), you pick names out of a hat (or use a list order randomizer like this one) to determine your league draft order.
I’d recommend following a snake draft order — that means that after the last person picks a chef they go again and pick a second chef and you reverse the order from there. Each person gets to pick TWO cheftestants. Given the number of cheftestants, there is a limit of seven people per league.
OK! Now that we've established how the draft works, let's go through the scoring system.
Each episode is made up of a few consistent challenges: namely a Quickfire Challenge and an Elimination Challenge.
You get points when your cheftestants win challenges and/or advance to the next show. The Elimination Challenge, unsurprisingly, results in cheftestants getting eliminated from the show so it's critical to pick chefs that you think will get furthest in the competition. Later in the season there are Last Chance Kitchen Challenges (eliminated chefs compete to get a chance to come back on the show) that are also point eligible wins. Getting to the final episode and winning are also disproportionately weighted.
Here are the full rules and point system break down:
If you want to copy a scoring spreadsheet with the rules I have made one here that you can duplicate.
So is creating a Top Chef Fantasy League ridiculous? Yes. Is it still incredibly entertaining and responsible behavior during this crazy time? Absolutely.
So get your first look at the cheftestants in the trailer below and I hope you’ll join me in kickstarting league play after the premiere this Thursday night on Bravo!
View this video on YouTube
And as you're enjoying the action of each quickfire or elimination challenge, maybe consider donating to a local food bank or somewhere else in need to help out those in need during this crazy time.
*Disclosure for my legal team friends: follow your state betting laws.
**And a special shoutout to my friend Margaret for introducing me to this wonderful game last year.