Due to the pandemic, I am lacking the fix of my yearly fantasy hockey league where I can ponder over the underperformance of my favorite players as they disappoint me once more. For the uniformed, fantasy sports is where a group of individuals select players from any team in a specific sport league and compete against each other in a battle of meaningless statistics. IT IS SO MUCH FUN. But much like my last post, there is one thing more enjoyable than experiencing it, and that is winning it. From a variety of articles, multiple aspects of social decision making pop up in a way to help better your own drafting abilities and understand your opponents behavior.
Let’s start from the beginning, the draft. This is the start of any fantasy league where the participants select there players in some round based fashion, usually snake draft where if you picked last in one round, you pick first in the next round. This all being said, there are two things to keep an eye on when drafting players: opponents’ needs and pre-determined rankings.
The first concept is covered in 4for4 article understanding the basic concept in game theory revolving around a best strategy as a response to another. Filling a single position early will result in others competing for the other top players there or wait for late round value. Additionally, since fantasy is structured as a Zero Sum Game, it may be beneficial to hoard players of a certain position and high value to essentially give your opponents minus points.
The second concept discussed in the FantasyPros article is the idea that Herd Behavior is all over draft day. The presence of “expert” rankings and average draft position skew players into picking players earlier than expected. As discussed in lecture, herd behavior stems from earlier drafts, but the main problem in fantasy is skewed data as many people forget to draft live and let a computer just draft based on rankings or “experts” are not taking into account other factors such as team roster changes or age. The article discusses the idea that picking players out of the given draft order can lead to much better results as not only does it avoid competition for a position, but also based on your own knowledge, have huge upside. Personal example, in 2017-18, I selected an unknown forward to the league named Brayden Point with my third last pick; he would end up top 50 in scoring that year.
Post draft, it is all about roster management. Starting specific hot players or players up against weak teams, as suggested in the FSPortal article, is just a simple 2×2 Payoff Matrix away to determine which of these provides the highest upside for the team. This can also just be applied to picking up and dropping players for their performance.
Last thing to talk about is trades. Much like real managers, sometimes you need to improve some part of your team to optimize the chance of winning. Teams may lack scoring or have inadequate defensive stats or poor goalkeeping. RideorDynasty article on the idea of trades being Cooperative Games is spot on as no one wants to come out behind in a trade. The idea is that the two teams participating are trying to achieve a Nash Equilibrium, where the payoff is a mish-mash of stat increases and decreases. Understanding this allows one manager or the other to adjust the trade until they reach said equilibrium.
Overall, the idea of fantasy is one giant zero sum game, but there exists many small aspects that spread all across the social decision making concepts discussed in class. Whether from understanding rational decisions to knowing when to deviate from them is all important in maximizing your end of season standing. And unlike real managers, all you lose for screwing up is a bit of dignity.
Sources:
https://www.4for4.com/2014/preseason/game-theory-draft-strategy-equilibrium-and-4for4-advantage