And then we have fantasy football

[Don Draper]

Now go back to baseball scouting and let your one or two football teams roll on their own. You did right to stay out of fantasy football this year, but returning here to antagonize others who paid good money to play seems almost reptile-like and I thought you were against having message boards with one antagonizor.

I'm pretty sure I wrote the nffc a check for a couple grand this year, so i'm not sure how i "did right to stay out of fantasy football this year"?

One auction team under Mark's name and several others under an "anonymous" alias, as we all covet and dream to have the strategy of the great and mighty Gekko.

Bottom line is, Mark started this thread to cause some vibes and continues it, because he knows no other way but to cause an uproar. Since I am one of the only ones who has said anything against him, it appears he needs to continue, to get others involved..

Next thread, at the beginning of the NFBC season will be, "Look at me, I am going to be in the NFBC... here are MY plans"... who cares Mark, you are a has been, and you have diminished yourself to minimizing winning in these football contests, because you don't know how to anymore.

Greenberg - If you don't have anything to say about the topic at hand, please stop fanning the flames. If you want to make it personal, try a PM or just don't post. This thread contains some good posts by a number of owners. If they agree with me...great. if they don't agree...that's great too. Thanks

[thelunger]

charles spellman wrote an interesting article on the subject of skill vs luck in relation to fantasy football in 2009.using an equation created by 3 economic professors from the netherlands and using 3 types of players with varying skill levels he concluded that in the long term (2 regular seasons) that fantasy football is 60% skill and 40% luck yet in the short term(playoffs) 10% skill and 90% luck.he suggested rewarding players the biggest payouts at the end of the regular season as opposed to winning the playoffs where they have less control.my ego was a little bruised when i saw the 10% because i think its higher than that personally.thoughts?

[Noose]

Okay I skipped a few pages, but in the pages I read I saw no one talking about probabilities & variance. That's all it is.

We have a subjective evaluation of what a player x is going to score, and what player z will score. X might have different floor/ceiling than z, who might be more solid. According to these evaluations, we make a judgment call based on our subjective probabilites. Good players have a better touch to subjective probablities (-> evaluates better who's got the best expected value) and thus make better decisions, That doesn't mean they're always right resultwise. Jimmy Graham might score more points than Martellus Bennett on 75% times, but there's that 25% underdog which hits 1/4 of the time. It's just probabilities.

I think it's brilliant the championship round is for three weeks, which reduces the luck factor quite a bit. In so many leagues, the playoffs are only played head to head in one week fashion, which leads to plenty of variance. Anything can happen in one week, as can happen in the NFL playoffs. Giants can win the Pats in Super Bowl despite being a 14 point underdog. The NFL playoffs are as much of a crapshoot as fantasy football when one week shit goes down. It doesn't mean the Giants were a better team in 2007 than the Patriots. They just won the Super Bowl. And that's all that counts.

Fantasy football has a lot in common with poker and probabilites & variance are essential part of both. Understanding them and not being too result oriented is one of the many traits poker and fantasy football players alike have to avoid. For example this week I started Leonard Hankerson over Titus Young. It was a close call, but I figured Hank had a better matchup and couldn't see Stafford get going yet in a tough matchup, so figured Hankerson would be around 55% favourite to outscore Titus (and have more solid production). So Titus went on to explode and Hankerson had a drop-filled afternoon. Who would've known? Not me. This time the 45% underdog came through and I'm still happy with my decision. I trust my reads.

[Coltsfan]

Great post Noose!


Wayne

[KenGill]

Greenberg - If you don't have anything to say about the topic at hand, please stop fanning the flames.
-------------------------------------
Fantasy football has a lot in common with poker and probabilites & variance are essential part of both
--------------------------------------
Agree with both statements.

[JETS SB]

Greenberg - If you don't have anything to say about the topic at hand, please stop fanning the flames.
-------------------------------------
Fantasy football has a lot in common with poker and probabilites & variance are essential part of both
--------------------------------------
Agree with both statements.

I stated my opinion several times, in this thread, about the topic..... I find no reason to continue arguing about a subject that the SAME GUY brings up nearly every year he loses. Is there randomness in the fact that someone decides to "gamble" on Kenny Britt or other injury prone players? Sure there is a level of luck in fantasy football, much more than fantasy baseball. But, its funny how its "mostly skill" when you end up winning, as you can see below from our author and former NFFC champion..

http://nffcforums.stats.com/viewtopic.p ... 48#p102448

[Cocktails and Dreams]

Noose summed up my thoughts.

[JD CUBE]

I rarely comment, but a few thoughts:
1. There is no "skill" to preparing for a draft or managing a team during the season. Its all about time, effort and preparation.
2. Luck plays a role, but, bad luck can often be mitigated by preparation. Understanding the percentage of RB1s lost every year due to injury when you draft can soften the blow when it happens. Last season, I lost Andre Johnson, Ryan Matthews, Darren McFadden and DeMarco Murray to injury. 3 of these during the same week. I went from first to worst in my league in one game. I had not done enough work prior to the draft to help me recover.
3. This year, I drafted well-enough in the NFFC for 2 leagues to overcome injury issues in 1 league, not so much.
4. Bottomline is, of all of our gambling opportunities, I suggest that FF gives the player the best opportunity to control his destiny. Most importantly, I have a good reason to watch every game every week.

Dan

[Jack_Bauer]

I will respectfully disagree about there being no skill involved in preparing for a draft or drafting in general. I think we may be talking semantics here but the guy whos shows up at the draft with an outdated magazine and cheat sheet, to me, is less skilled then the guy who has his information together and has taken the time to really understand the players available to draft and has valued them well. Has rehearsed drafts to be comfortable with his decision making. Not unlike two WR that come to camp.. one comes out of shape, didn't take the time to know the play book and didn't work extra time getting chemistry with the QB in OTA's ends up coming off less skilled than the guy in shape, who prepared, who knows the playbook, etc. I do get your point about it being about time, efforts and preparing.

Being able to make good, sound decisions during the draft, in the heat of the moment, when unpredictable things are happening rapidly (ie, the player you target gets snagged before you, or an unexpected value slips to you but taking him requires you change pre draft strategy) to me, is a skill. In season roster management is a skill. Working the faab wire and identifying value and bidding the right amount to get them is a skill even though there is a luck component to all of these things. Some talk abotu the purity of basball. I can give countless examples of where luck impacts fantasy baseball, real baseball, the real NFL and all of sport in general. Once all the picks are made and the ball gets kicked on Sunday, I recognize some unpredictable things can happen that bring a luck component into the contest.

I still think in the grand sceme of things skill trumps luck and by a lot.

[JETS SB]

I rarely comment, but a few thoughts:
1. There is no "skill" to preparing for a draft or managing a team during the season. Its all about time, effort and preparation.

Yes, this doesnt make much sense. If you are describing luck vs skill, "time, effort, and preparation" would be under the skill column, not luck. Most of the luck involved in fantasy football is the head to head matchups week to week, the playoffs (to a point, but with 3 weeks of scoring, this diminishes the luck immensely) and injuries. The draft is the most important skill in fantasy football. If you don't have a draft strategy and don't have a clue as far as how to best balance your team and prepare yourself for unexpected circumstances, you have a bigger chance of not doing well.

To give you an example, in my classic league, I was not prepared as well as I should have been. I knew that there were several owners in the league that were WR drafters. I knew there would be 2 or 3 teams that would draft 3 or 4 WRs at the beginning of the draft, and I should have prepared, by taking advantage of this, but I didn't and left myself short at RB, by following the trend, instead of making my own. The opposite occurred in the Primetime, as I planned on what I wanted to do, the players I wanted, and this was only because I learned my lesson in the Classic and made the appropriate adjustments. I ended up with nearly the exact team I wanted to draft, and I am doing well in the Primetime, not in the Classic. This isn't just coincidence or luck, it is preparation, which, to me, is the one huge part of fantasy football that we can control.