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Standard-format fantasy football is great like vanilla ice cream is great. It's reliable, it tastes just fine, and you know exactly what to expect every single time you indulge.

But geez, every so often don't you get a hankering for some Cookies 'N Cream?

Of all the variations on standard fantasy football formats, my favorite is point-per-reception, aka "PPR." Two deceptively simple changes to standard rules help PPR leagues stand fantasy on its head and inject a new challenge, causing experienced players to question their assumptions. A first-rounder in standard leagues isn't necessarily a first-rounder in PPR leagues, and an average player in standard leagues can find himself well above average in PPR. The two rules changes (in ESPN.com's version of PPR) are simple:

• You draft one extra wide receiver, giving you a total of two running backs, one flex and three wide receivers in your starting lineup.

• Players receive one fantasy point for every catch they make.

And oh, that one devious, diabolical little point… Suddenly you start asking yourself questions like: "Should I think about taking Reggie Bush before I take Larry Johnson?" and "Is Andre Johnson the best receiver available?" and "Why do I suddenly feel the impulse to do whatever's necessary to get my hands on Kellen Winslow?" And that, friends, is what's great about PPR. Because of that solitary point, you can no longer put on your blindfold and take the same old players you've always taken in your fantasy football drafts.

Here, then, are my keys to good drafting in a PPR league:

Under PPR's scoring rules, there's a new hierarchy at what's traditionally been fantasy football's most important position. In traditional leagues, the top 15 performers among RBs in 2007 were:

1. LaDainian Tomlinson, 293 fantasy points
2. Brian Westbrook, 269
3. (tie) Joseph Addai, 222
Adrian Peterson, 222
5. Clinton Portis, 210
6. Jamal Lewis, 207
7. Marion Barber, 187
8. Willis McGahee, 174
9. Edgerrin James, 172
10. Frank Gore, 170
11 (tie). Earnest Graham, 167
Marshawn Lynch, 167
13. Maurice Jones-Drew, 161
14. Steven Jackson, 154
15. Fred Taylor, 146

But under ESPN.com's PPR scoring format, 2007's top 15 RBs would've been:

1. Brian Westbrook, 359 fantasy points
2. LaDainian Tomlinson, 353
3. Joseph Addai, 263
4. Clinton Portis, 257
5. Adrian Peterson, 241
6. Jamal Lewis, 237
7. Marion Barber, 231
8. Frank Gore, 223
9. Willis McGahee, 217
10. Earnest Graham, 216
11. Maurice Jones-Drew, 201
12. Reggie Bush, 198
13. Edgerrin James, 196
14. Kenny Watson, 194
15. Steven Jackson, 192

The biggest winners as we move from standard to PPR with last year's stats are Reggie Bush (24th in standard, 12th in PPR), the other Adrian Peterson (Chicago's flavor: 35th in standard, 24th in PPR), Kenny Watson (18th in standard, 14th in PPR) and Ronnie Brown (24th in standard, 20th in PPR). The biggest losers are Fred Taylor (15th in standard, 24th in PPR), Laurence Maroney (24th in standard, 32nd in PPR), Marshawn Lynch (11th in standard, 16th in PPR) and Edgerrin James (ninth in standard, 13th in PPR).

It's easy to understand why this is true; guys who catch the ball see their point totals hike skyward, while others are left behind. Bush might have averaged a paltry 3.7 yards per carry last year, but he grabbed 73 passes (a season after catching 88). The Vikings' Adrian Peterson suffers because of Chester Taylor's presence; he only caught 19 passes in '07. Fred Taylor caught nine. So figure catches into your computation when you're deciding on your fantasy RBs.

In ESPN.com's PPR mock draft, held in June, I had the fifth overall pick. I took Randy Moss. Why? Because getting 2007's top player in fantasy with the No. 5 selection is smart. That's right, I said Moss was last year's top player in fantasy. But actually, that's a lie; he tied for the top spot, with his quarterback. Here were the numbers:

1. (tie) Randy Moss, 378 fantasy points
Tom Brady, 378
3. Brian Westbrook, 359
4. LaDainian Tomlinson, 353
5. Reggie Wayne, 302
6. Terrell Owens, 299
7. Braylon Edwards, 292
8. T.J. Houshmandzadeh, 291
9. Larry Fitzgerald, 288
10. Tony Romo, 283

Yes indeed, six of the top 10 players -- and 11 of the top 20 -- in PPR last season were wideouts. If you crunch the numbers for the past several years, you'll see the same trend: Wide receiver is the most plentiful position at the top of the charts. That makes sense, right? After all, the best receivers are likely to get you around 100 catches per season, which adds 100 points to your bottom line. That's a heck of a lot of touchdowns and/or yards for a running back or quarterback to accrue to make up for the missing 100. Now, I'm not saying you're mandated to take a stud WR in the first round (more on that in a minute). But in a league in which you'll definitely have three wide receivers starting for you every week, with the option of adding a fourth in your flex position, you should try to get as many clear No. 1 receivers as you can. Week-to-week catches among top receivers tend to be among the least-varying stats in the NFL. In other words, you'll lay down a mighty fine baseline, before touchdowns or yardage, just from the many catches your stud receivers will accrue.

In his NFL dotage, Derrick Mason doesn't make much of a splash in standard leagues. He averaged just 10.6 yards per reception, tying him for 88th in the league, and he scored five times (after scoring two and three touchdowns in '05 and '06). But in a PPR league, Mason is a guy worth reconsidering. He's not suddenly a stud, but while he racked up "only" 1,087 receiving yards last season (19th in the league), his 103 catches were fourth in the NFL. Possession receivers who lack blazing speed get a reprise under PPR rules, guys such as Mason, Bobby Engram, Jerricho Cotchery, Shaun McDonald and Brandon Stokley.

Heck, take away the '07 touchdowns of guys such as Wes Welker and T.J. Houshmandzadeh (and for possession receivers, touchdowns can be notoriously fleeting), and they were still the co-leaders in receptions, with a whopping 112 each. Not that you ignored those players in standard leagues, but the playing field between receiver types tends to be a bit more leveled in PPR; you don't have to focus exclusively on high-yardage, downfield flanker types to the exclusion of more sure-handed, move-the-chain-style individuals.

Finding a running back who is his team's unquestioned three-down starter and goal-line back is tough. Heading into 2008, I can think of maybe 14 such players. Yet just about every team has a star receiver, and many teams have more than one. So the question of which positions to focus on at the top of your fantasy draft becomes a simple scarcity problem: Don't go half-cocked and select four wideouts with your first four picks -- despite the fact that you will get some awesome point-gainers that way -- because you'll wind up with me starting in your fantasy backfield. And I stink.

That fact is that although receptions are something to keep squarely in the front of your mind, good ol' fantasy mainstays like touchdowns and big-yardage days count in PPR leagues just as much as they do in traditional leagues. In addition, because the top receivers do generally wind up with roughly the same number of catches over the course of a season, WR fantasy performance is far more normalized in the PPR game. To get mathematical for just a moment, in '07, the standard deviation of the fantasy points the top 20 WRs scored in standard leagues was 35.9. The standard deviation of the top 20 WRs in PPR leagues was 28.5. In layman's terms: The best WRs aren't as spread out in PPR. That means you can afford to wait a little bit to take your starting WRs because the 10th-best guy is going to be nearly as good as the fifth-best guy.

That said, I would still think seriously about getting three wideouts in the first five or six rounds. Referring again to our PPR mock draft, my selections went like this:

Round 1: Randy Moss
Round 2: Maurice Jones-Drew
Round 3: Andre Johnson
Round 4: Kevin Smith
Round 5: Brandon Marshall
Round 6: Darren McFadden

Because my draftmates stayed RB-heavy in the first couple of rounds, I was able to grab three of the guys I think will wind up among the top five or six in terms of receptions in '08 (editors note: this draft was done prior to Marshall being suspended for the first few games of the season), and I grabbed MJD, who had 40 catches last year and 46 in '06, Smith, who I think could catch 40-plus passes as the Lions' starter, and then took McFadden for his high upside (I took Justin Fargas later).

Finally, in Round 8, I drafted Bobby Engram, and he'll be my flex. In a PPR league, you should almost always be thinking about using a wideout at your flex position, simply because the kind of RB who's going to be available late probably won't offer the security and upside of a No. 1 receiver like an Engram or Chris Chambers.

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The knock against quarterbacks in standard leagues is that if you don't get one of the two studs (Tom Brady and Peyton Manning), you might as well wait to take your fantasy signal-caller because their performance tends to be so (here's that word again) normalized. In standard-scoring ESPN.com leagues last season, seven of the top 10 fantasy players were QBs, as were 14 of the top 30. There's still definitely an argument for trying to grab a crazy outlier like 2007's Tom Brady early because he finished so far ahead of the pack. And Manning is talented enough and is in the right offense to have that happen to him any season as well. After those guys, though, fantasy quarterbacks tend to be commodities. Get a solid one in the fifth or sixth (or seventh) round in standard leagues, and you'll be fine.

The same argument holds true in PPR leagues, except unlike RBs and WRs, QBs don't have anything to gain in the PPR scoring format because they won't accrue catches. Thus while everyone else's fantasy point totals are accelerating skyward, the signal-callers stay the same. So while Brady and Manning still sit far ahead of the rest of the QB field (call it a "stud QB scarcity"), the rest of the group is as bunched-together as it is in standard leagues, but now the bunch is farther away from the top of the fantasy charts. So there's really no need to reach for one of the non-stud QBs in a PPR league. By way of example, in ESPN.com's PPR mock in June, I took Jay Cutler in Round 7.

So get out there and PPR, people. It's the best way to shake up your tired old fantasy league.

Christopher Harris is a fantasy baseball, football and racing analyst for ESPN.com. He is a six-time Fantasy Sports Writers Association award winner across all three of those sports. You can e-mail him here.