Many people boast how good they are in fantasy baseball. They consistently win their home league and finish near the top. They want more of a challenge. They want to take their knowledge and win more money.

Fortunately, there's a way to do that with high-stakes fantasy baseball leagues. The National Fantasy Baseball Championships (NFBC), rtsports.com, and fantrax.com offer these leagues. There are different price points to play in and the payouts can be big.

It's going to be a challenge. This isn't like your home league where there are a few people without knowledge and others that don't invest the time. It's possible the league has great owners throughout, but you won't know most of the competition in the high stakes leagues. There will be things you haven’t seen before. Just because someone spends a lot of money in a league doesn't mean they are a great player, but most are very savvy.

In home leagues, there will always be weak players. There will be owners who fall out of it early and check out. That rarely happens in the high stakes leagues where people are spending significant money.

Forget about the mainstream Average Draft Position (ADP) that you see on the popular sites. The sleeper you get in your home league in round 15 might go in round 10 in a high stakes league. People will push players they want up the board and ignore ADP.

Another aspect that's different from most home leagues is there are no trades in the high stakes format. If you have had success fleecing your league mates in home leagues, that won't happen here. Since there's big money on the line, trades can't happen since there could be collusion. 

The NFBC has drafts in Las Vegas, Chicago, and New York in addition to online drafts. The entry fees vary from $150-$15,000. The Main Event has an overall grand prize of $150,000. The NFBC had over 13,000 teams and almost 1,000 leagues in 2019. They awarded over $3.6 million in prizes. RT Sports has  all online drafts with entry fees ranging from $125 to $2,000.

Most of the leagues use rotisserie scoring with blind bidding waivers, which I will detail in an upcoming article. The scoring is usually 5x5 with average, runs, home runs, RBIs and stolen bases on offense with wins, saves, strikeouts, ERA and WHIP on the pitching side. One of the differences between a lot of home leagues is lineup moves are made weekly. There are no daily formats. The NFBC allows you to make offensive changes on Friday for the weekend, but pitchers are locked in to start the week.

Many people are accustomed to head-to-head leagues or daily formats where you can stream players in and out and pile up at-bats and innings. This can't be done in the high stakes format. Each decision becomes more critical. Looking at matchups and ballparks become crucial. Every decision matters.

There's also an overall component to the high stakes format. If you play in the NFBC main event, not only can you win the league, you go against every team in the main for an overall grand prize. In this format, it's difficult to punt a category and win the overall.

You need to be on top of everything and work real hard. Read everything in the Fantasy Alarm draft kit. Absorb as much information as possible. Expect everyone to be on top of their game and be savvy. If you have had a lot of success in home leagues, step up and enter the high stakes arena.