If you're new to the game, then you may be looking for ways to gain a foothold in your leagues — and if that's the case, then you've come to the right place. With the launch of a new season by sometime next week, that means there's ample opportunity for you to start a new slate off on the right foot, regardless of any missteps you may have previously made. To help you out, I've channeled my inner John Ritter and compiled a list of my Simple Rules for Winning Fantasy Moguls. (Only I've got 10 instead of 8, and if this column is ever the basis for a sitcom, then you KNOW television has run out of ideas.) I'll count them down Letterman-style, leaving the most crucial/most important piece of advice for last, naturally. Onward!

10. Don't always buy into massive amounts of hype. Really, all hype does is drive up the Fantasy Moguls price tag; clever marketing alone doesn't mean you'll get good results. It helps grosses, sure, but ALL marketing does that. More often than not, a movie with strong media and Internet hype fails to deliver; it suffers because of seemingly unreachable, excitement-fueled expectations that have been laid out for it. A prime example is Cloverfield, which opened strongly in January with $40 million, but limped to a disappointing $80 million finish. Information about the film was kept largely secret, all the advertising was extra-mysterious, and the shaky-cam action only added another dimension of interest — but again, interest alone doesn't sell tickets. Cloverfield cost over $40 in most leagues at the time of its release, and it definitely wasn't worth spending that much money. I'm not saying that hype is completely worthless, but rather, that you should take it with a grain of salt when you're putting together your slates. Remember, we're in the company of others who follow movies as closely as we do — so our collective tastes and anticipation may not be indicative of the marketplace as a whole.

9. Your own personal taste in movies shouldn't limit what you put on your slate. Don't pass on a good pick simply because you don't like the genre (as I did this March with Shutter), or are turned off by unfunny or uncompelling trailers (or by the presence of certain actors or directors), or think a sequel is just one too many (like with The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor). Just because you won't see a movie doesn't mean there aren't plenty of others out there who will. There's certainly room for a lot of your own opinion — I wouldn't blame anyone who passed on Meet Dave for ... any reason at all, really — but remember that the aim is to create the studio with the best real-world performance, not simply the lineup of movies you're looking forward to most. You may think, "Another Disney family comedy with a ridiculous, terrible-looking premise? After The Game Plan, The Pacifier, The Shaggy Dog, Wild Hogs, and even College Road Trip, haven't we had enough already?" But don't let that make you decide that Beverly Hills Chihuahua, say, will be a massive failure. (And after all, your own anticipation of certain movies may cause you to overestimate their potential — see the blurb about hype above.) If it's best for your studio, don't hesitate to pull the trigger and pick up, say, a chick flick that'll score big with the female demographic, even if it means swallowing your own personal distaste for overly sappy endings.

8. Watch for cutoff bargains. These are the films that come out just before the end of the season, and since they don't have time to flex all their muscles before the season draws to a close, they may be priced on the cheap. Still, the numbers they rack up in one or two weekends may be well worth it. The Dark Knight, for example, may give its owners in May-July Box Office Moguls leagues nearly $300 million in just 10 days — it picked up another $24 million on Monday alone. And that's for the mere pittance of $19! While most cutoff bargains are released in the last two weeks of the season, some extend as far as three weekends or a whole month out. With those, there's absolutely nothing in the way of truncated performance to be worried about. By a movie's third or fourth weekend, it won't be earning PTA points anymore, and it'll often be out of, or on its way out of, the Top 5 by then. You may miss out on some box-office revenue, but it'll probably be fairly negligible. One example of a great cutoff bargain in current leagues is Eagle Eye, at just $3 (Box Office) and $9 (Ultimate Movie Moguls) in July-September leagues. True, it only has one weekend to perform, but that one weekend will provide plenty for the price you pay.

7. By the same token, beware of movies with cutoffs that will bite back. Just as there are bargains, there are also some films with limited "run" that are plenty overpriced. Current examples include Choke, at $13 in July-September Ultimate leagues (with just one weekend in play, there's no way it can earn more than 5 PTA points) and Blindness at $18 for the same time frame. With its recent date change, Blindness also only has one weekend in play, AND it goes head-to-head with Choke for PTA ($18 for a good IMDb score is SO not worth it). You can find some great cheap picks in the final weeks of a season, but you can also get burned. Tropic Thunder is priced at $38 in June-August Ultimate leagues. If you've got that amount of cash still left, then I'd recommend spending it on The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor or The Pineapple Express instead. Even with the Wednesday release date giving it two extra days, as well as the boost it'll get from Robert Downey Jr.'s performance in Iron Man, that amount of money is way too much to spend for three weeks of production. Sure, a movie does most of its damage in the first three weeks, but if you can finagle four or even five weeks out of a movie opening in the final month, you've got far better odds of success. Above all, if something is only eligible for one weekend, don't even THINK about it if its price tag is in double digits.

6. Use all eight slots. It may be tempting to pick a few high-priced blockbusters and leave it at that, but doing so probably won't work out very well. In Ultimate leagues, this will surely kill you, as the IMDb score category is based on a full slate. (The cumulative total of your films determines your placement in the league, so even if all three or four of your movies are 10s, you're at a disadvantage because someone who picked 8 movies with identical [and barely helpful] 5.1 ratings would still beat you. Of course, neither one of those scenarios would likely happen precisely like that, but you get the picture.) Big movies earn PTA points, but they often can't earn as much as some of the smaller releases (like The Wackness, which has earned 10 PTA points so far this July, or Encounters at the End of the World, which nabbed 11, and has a more rockin' IMDb score to boot.) In order to find those, you can't be overloaded with high priced Moguls Monsters or even all wide-release films (and you've got to read Indie Jones's columns, of course.) In Box Office leagues, finding the hits that are underpriced (like Journey to the Center of the Earth in June-August leagues, which cost just $2 and has netted over $40 million thus far) will give your studio a big boost, but you'll only have the money for it if you don't exclusively pick blockbusters. And besides, isn't the strategy (and perhaps research) involved in picking that perfect lineup part of the fun?

5. In Ultimate leagues, don't go crazy with PTA babies. Sometimes the PTA babies can be just as expensive as the blockbusters. Take for example Young@Heart, which cost $20 in April-June leagues and delivered nowhere near enough PTA points to justify spending that much. It was also projected at $11 million box office gross, and to date has brought home just under $4 million. In cases like this, the projected PTA kings aren't worth it — it's much better to go with mid-priced films, like The Flight of the Red Balloon, which managed eight PTA points for just $5 in April-June leagues. Two or three good PTA movies at $10 or less (most often less) will surely suffice; the rest of your PTA points can come from your wide-release films. If you pick too many films chiefly for PTA, your totals in that category (and in IMDb score, most likely) will sparkle, but your box office totals and Top 5 points will lag behind, and to win, you want to be strong in every category.

4. In Box Office leagues, don't confine yourself to strictly wide releases. A film that opens on a limited number of screens at first may eventually expand and make more money than some of the films that open big and have smaller screen counts in each successive week. What's great is that movies that open small often have small price tags to match, so this could be a great way to spend those last few dollars. If the film opens on just a few screens in one of the season's first weekends, it'll almost certainly expand wide enough to earn some decent dough in the 10 or 11 weekends that follow (especially if the filmmakers, producers and distributors are angling for awards consideration), and it may even be a better option than some of the other cheap movies that get wide releases. This goes for all Moguls seasons, but can be especially helpful in the winter leagues. Take last year as an example: Juno, released on the first weekend in December, made just over $400,000 in that first weekend, but ended up with $100 million by the end of January, more than wide releases P.S. I Love You ($51 million), Charlie Wilson's War ($64 million) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem ($41 million), to name just three. And yet, in November-January Box Office leagues, Juno only cost $7, whereas the other three examples each had higher price tags. Opponents may question your reasoning for picking a smaller movie in a league based on box office revenue, but they won't be laughing quite so hard when that little film provides your margin of victory, will they?

3. Check your opponents' lineups to see what everyone else thinks will be big. Sometimes, you'll find one film that's common to nearly everyone's lineup (and if that one looks to be a pretty big force to be reckoned with at the box office, you may almost be forced to pick it too just to keep pace). You might also find that you're the only one with a certain movie, and thus, anything that movie does benefits you and only you. If nearly everyone picks the same film as their biggie of the season, you can alter your strategy and pick a different cornerstone for your slate. (As a personal example, I'm currently playing in a June-August league where I'm the only one with Death Race, and another league where I'm the only one who's chosen Disaster Movie. Don't worry, it's a Box Office league — what, you think I'd be foolish enough to pick that in Ultimate?) Checking your opponents' lineups also makes it more likely that you'll notice changes they make, which leads me right into ...

2. Be open to changing your slate. If you're falling behind in, say, box office revenue and Top 5 points, but are doing just fine in the PTA category, then by all means, reshuffle your lineup to get some bigger earners onto it. You may have to sacrifice a bit in the IMDb score category, but perhaps you can spare that bit to get the box office boost — it's all about balance. If you notice nobody else in your league has one certain movie in their lineups, and that movie looks like a solid option, you could make sure you've got it just so that you (and only you) get the benefit. Watch the early tracking numbers for a read on how your films might do, and if one is tracking poorly, drop it and pick up something else; you definitely don't want to be stuck with the next Meet Dave ($16 cost in July-September Box Office leagues, and it's earned just $9 million thus far, with little chance to make too much more than that). On that same line, if the tracking is much hotter than anticipated for an upcoming release, maybe you want to think about making room for it on your slate. I like to reevaluate each of my slates each week after totals are updated on Tuesday; I identify which categories I need the most help in and see if I can find a way to boost those categories, whether it's adding something new, "upgrading" one of my movies to another with some of the $100 I may not have used, or just waiting 'til one of the films I'd already chosen hits theaters. When choosing your slate, your first impulses are a good way to start, but with research, tracking data, and a willingness to change, you just might find that gem that could make all the difference.

And lastly, here it is; the statement I consider to be the most important ingredient in a recipe for Moguls victory. Drum roll, please:

1. Split up your budget; don't spend most of your funds on one Moguls Monster. No matter how big it's going to be — even if it's record-breaking — you can ALWAYS find cheaper options that will perform almost as well for in some cases half the cost. Case in point: In July-September Box Office leagues, Tropic Thunder carries a price tag of $41. Even if it makes the $150 million that Fantasy Moguls projects, I have no doubt that The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor plus Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys Together will earn that much together, if not more — AND, those two picks will cost $39, still less than Tropic Thunder. That leaves much more room to pick another mid-priced film or three for some more solid revenue, and I'd be willing to bet that once September draws to a close, the winners of those leagues will more often than not be the ones who avoided the Moguls Monsters. I mean, yes, The Dark Knight will break $300 million, but gobbled up $61 if you took it — and not every cheap pick is as sure as Eagle Eye. Look at it this way: If you pick two movies that each do two-thirds the business of the Monster, but each only costs half as much, then you've got four-thirds, more than the production of the Monster, for the same price. That's just smart business. Instead of having one or two expensive biggies on your slate and relying on iffy cheap fillers for the rest, splitting up your budget allows you to have a strong slate from start to finish, and that's just what you need to become a Moguls champion.

That's all for this week! Next time I'll cover the studs, duds and wild cards of August. Even though I thought I had it made the last time these rules were published, I'm still waiting on one of the networks to hit me with a sitcom offer. Hey, if reality dreck and spinoffs of successful shows (Grey's Anatomy, Family Guy) are all we're dealing with now, why not do something original with a sitcom starring an Internet movie columnist, eh? I'll be waiting by the phone.

Mister Informative doesn't want you dating his teenage daughter OR winning Fantasy Moguls ... if you're in one of his leagues, that is. Tell him your own simple rules for winning Fantasy Moguls at misterinformative@gmail.com.