my favorite computer sports games are diamond-mind baseball, strato-matic-baseball, and strat-o-matic football.
All 3 are extremely accurate statistical based games. The stratomatic games are based on a long running board/card game that has existed at least 40-50 years I would guess and which puts out yearly statistical based cards for each player based on that years season for baseball, basketball, hockey, and NFL football. I think they all have computer based that are derivatives of the card games, I know basketball football and baseball do... the computer game has league drafting, creation, manager creation etc..but it does not have RPG type stuff, nor does it have an AI outside of the games themselves that will manage teams injuries, make trades etc..so it only works to play the teams and games against the computer AI (which is excellent), or you can dump all the players into a pot and draft new teams (the computer can draft for other teams) and play that way....Diamondmind baseball is very similar to stratomatic but was never a boardgame.
Some people think Diamondmind is more 'statistically accurate'; if it is, it is by some very small amount. Both games are extremely accurate, meaning if you left all the teams the same and played all the games in a season a player who hit .280 with 14 homeruns and 36 doubles is likely to hit between .277-284 with 11-18 HR and 30-44 doubles or something. Perhaps in strato the variation might be 1-2% wider on a few of the statistics..but anyway....
These are basically sports nerds games who don't care about the RPG fantasy part like selling concessions, making ticket prices...it would be cool if they could make the AI in one of the games be able to make trades, and run a league from year to year..who knows, maybe someday. Both also allow netplay etc, and have huge number of real life leagues people play in...both (or maybe only Strat-o-matic now) also have day by day play along leagues where you join at start of season and play your computer game each day and the stats on your players change as the days stats come in...I don't know exactly how it works, never done it...the stats at start of season are not exactly the same as the players stats, because that would make for crazy outcomes. They are some sort of mix of a projection of the players stats for the year based on previous years performance, and the current year statistical outcome.
Back in the day, like 1994 I think I actually entered a nation wide Start-o-matic baseball tournament (the retro board/card based one) that lasted 3 days. Depending on how many people entered you were divided into equal league sizes...so like if 26 people showed up, then we would have 1 league of 26. But if 42 showed up we would have 2 leagues of 21. If it was an odd number one of the tournament managers would play in one league I think. Anyway, I forget how many people showed up, I think it was around 60, so something like 3 leagues of 20 or something.
Then all the MLB players from the prior year were made available to draft (which everyone had studied a ton, especially their stratomatic cards). After the draft we just started playing each other, round robin style for 3 days until somebody finally was declared the champion. It was a regional tournament, the western regionals. Anyway I actually came in 3ed place, which was enough to qualify for free entrance into the world championship tournament that year in Chicago.... if I wanted to have participate. The winnings for 1st place was between 5-10k I think, but it depended on how many people entered, also I think the boardgame company threw in some money. I did not go..... the smaller tournament I was in was a grind and you would play from like 10am until 11pm or something, I did not want to pay to fly to Chicago to likely end up getting nothing and being totally exhausted and feel like shit.
Anyway, sort of glad I did not go to Chicago for another reason, turns out the main event organizer who usually played in the tournaments (at least enough to qualify to enter the championship) had been cheating for years. A couple years after I played in that tournament people realized he always drafted players who had really good results on their card if they rolled a '2' on their indicator die. You don't always know if the results will be read from your card or the other players card, but you do have rows of results you can see on your card, and he always drafted players who had strong '2' rows. That would not be an issue in itself (maybe he 2 was his lucky number), but to top it off he had some special weighted dice he always used as the tournament dice, which he could do since he was the organizer. Another tournament organizer figured this all out and in the middle of a tournament in front of everybody (so there would be witnesses) called him out and made the claim and grabbed the dice...they then tested the dice in question and looked at his cards and he was busted.
Also, they looked at his previous years wins (he had won a lot) and he had been using the same strategy for many years, all his wins were expunged...lol..very glad I did not waste my time.
Anyway, TLDR......if you are into very accurate statistical recreations, with ability to draft and create leagues, and customize managers of other teams playstyle even (based on real life tendencies etc)..these games are the best and most accurate statistical games on the market. You can also join leagues online in multiple ways, and play along with the season.
Links:
https://diamond-mind.com/
https://www.strat-o-matic.com/baseball-digital-games/
