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Luck vs. Skill (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter ShaHBucks
- Start date
Run It Up
Footballguy
Unquantifiable.To pull numbers out of my ### (the best any of us can do) id say in a 10 team league of similar skill owners (bad or good) it will 100% depend on where you draft.Whereas in a league of variable skilled owners id say the skilled owners have an 80% of making the playoffs before draft day.Moral of the story, dont play in all shark leagues, gotta have fish if you wanna make money. But if you want bragging rights then enjoy drawing the 1-4 seat or just losing.
KCitons
Footballguy
I started a similar thread a couple of years ago about this same topic. Here is a LINK to that discussion (it includes a poll) The league I was in at the time had an owner that believed that luck had very little to do with success in ff. So, I asked the opinion of the shark pool.
Basically, most players know there is some luck involved. There are a few players that think they can overcome bad luck (injuries, hold outs, suspensions, Shanahans) by drafting correct depth. I am of the belief that the smaller the league and the smaller the roster, the more luck plays a part. Especially if a league uses first come, first served waivers.
If an owner is so smart, then they should be never have to use the waiver system to replace a starter. If they do, then it was probably an unfortunate act of bad luck that caused the need to add a player.
Basically, most players know there is some luck involved. There are a few players that think they can overcome bad luck (injuries, hold outs, suspensions, Shanahans) by drafting correct depth. I am of the belief that the smaller the league and the smaller the roster, the more luck plays a part. Especially if a league uses first come, first served waivers.
If an owner is so smart, then they should be never have to use the waiver system to replace a starter. If they do, then it was probably an unfortunate act of bad luck that caused the need to add a player.
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ShaHBucks
Footballguy
The size of the league doesn't matter for the discussion.
KCitons
Footballguy
Actually, it does matter. The smaller the size of the league, the more stud players are available per team. Let's say you and I are going to play in a 2 team league. How are either of us going to get an advantage? (I know this is an extreme example) Roster size would also make a difference.
Run It Up
Footballguy
I think in a 14 team league the advantage of drafting early is negated. Whereas in 10-12 teams its still there, so if you actually care about the luck portion of it should probably start at the beginning.
ShaHBucks
Footballguy
Good points. I won a league with the worse roster imo but of course I made the decisions. Three week playoffs: week one matchup was the lowest two scoring teams, week two janikowski missed a 65 YARD KICK, which is -2, to give me a one point win, The Championship if Brees throws a TD to anyone but Jimmy Graham I lose by 1. I'd admitt my opponents may have done things that I wouldn't have but it was all luck.I say if you've had success for 4-5 years than its skill. One or two year it's still debatable.
ShaHBucks
Footballguy
I think I've reached this point.
KCitons
Footballguy
I really think you can compare fantasy football to betting on the NFL. A good professional sports handicapper only wins about 60% of his bets. If those guys are making a living and betting millions of dollars a year based on odds that are a little better than a coin toss, what makes an average Joe sitting in his Mom's basement eating pizza think he is skilled enough to pick the best 20 players from a pool of hundreds?
Underachievers
Footballguy
Da Guru
Fair & Balanced
Used to be skill but now so much info is out there and so many sites that help you draft that it is hard to get an edge. I have been playing over 20 years..I have won titles with some of my worst teams and lost with my best teams.
The teams that seem to win always get a guy late in the draft that has a career year. Or a backup RB that goes off when the starter goes down.
The teams that seem to win always get a guy late in the draft that has a career year. Or a backup RB that goes off when the starter goes down.
Donsmith753
Footballguy
I haven't heard much about Skill but Luck was the first overall pick so probably him.
KCitons
Footballguy
Not really. If we went head to head for 14 weeks with a roster of 1QB, 2RB, 3WR, 1TE, 1Def. There would be so many players available that it would not be difficult to find studs at each position. Just do a mock draft of two teams, and you can see for yourself.
I compare this to IDP leagues that only start 1 or 2 players at each position. Especially when the positions are DL, LB, and DB. (without breaking down the DE/DT and the CB/S positions) Ask any expert and they will tell you that an IDP league that runs this way is kinda pointless, because IDP's won't carry much weight (too many good players available)
CalBear
Footballguy
There are about 100 threads on this subject already.Fantasy football requires a high degree of skill. If you randomly chose players from the NFL pool you'd have a ####ty team. But most people can get by using someone else's skill--a cheatsheet.
Instinctive
Footballguy
Uh, yeah it does. Smaller leagues = more luck.
Cunk
Footballguy
These days there is no skill to putting together a good team. Perseverance? Perhaps. Constantly doing one's research and making the right waiver wire moves can certainly help a team. "Skill" can actually be a detriment sometimes. How many times have we done our research, drafted what we think is a great team, only see the person who drafted a bunch of 
succeed because they wound up with homer or illogical picks who somehow panned out?
For instance, go a few years back. I started a league (in the Boston area). We had a chick in the draft who liked football but didn't know anything about fantasy football. We go through the first round. At her pick, of course, she picks Brady. At the time Brady was mostly a solid field manager. No experienced fantasy player would have touched him in the first few rounds. Her ignorance paid off in spades and has kept her one of the top teams for years.
succeed because they wound up with homer or illogical picks who somehow panned out?For instance, go a few years back. I started a league (in the Boston area). We had a chick in the draft who liked football but didn't know anything about fantasy football. We go through the first round. At her pick, of course, she picks Brady. At the time Brady was mostly a solid field manager. No experienced fantasy player would have touched him in the first few rounds. Her ignorance paid off in spades and has kept her one of the top teams for years.
Shutout
Footballguy
Skill does not = luck in this case. And random selection does not = either.So, its not really talking about the same thing. ANyone who plays with any real level of seriousness (taking it serious) is going to make picks, whether on a cheat sheet or their gut or whatever.The luck is injuries (to your team or opponents), running into guys on career days, players getting caught up in league issues and being ineligible, personal issues in a player's life that affects their play, etc, etc. SO MUCH luck in fantasy that if the "serious" player really stops to think about it, they would probably quit.
Cunk
Footballguy
This is true. That's why I don't worry about my draft position or get pissed if the guy I wanted was taken before I could get him. Chances are that guy gets hurt or something and the guy I'm forced to "settle" with is more valuable.
chickensoup
Footballguy
I'd say 90% luck, 10% skill/paying attention.
Luck is so heavily involved in all fantasy sports, especially ones that are Head to Head that sometimes i think the whole thing is a tiny bit silly. Here's the best way to put it: take a 12 team league with a setup of 1QB/2RB/3WR/1TE/1FLEX/1K and draft them purely off ADP for starters then give each team 5 RB/6WR total covering bye weeks and compair them honestly. All of them will be at least somewhat competitive. Where competition starts to change is when people don't follow ADP and pick who they think is correct for that position in the draft and thats really the part that is skill based.
Other than that it's picking matchups, and making waiver pickups and dealing with injuries.
The winner of my home league last year didnt do anything special with his draft. he won with Big ben at QB. But what made him win was no season ending injuries and happening to hit on his backups (Michael Bush and Jordy Nelson)
Luck is so heavily involved in all fantasy sports, especially ones that are Head to Head that sometimes i think the whole thing is a tiny bit silly. Here's the best way to put it: take a 12 team league with a setup of 1QB/2RB/3WR/1TE/1FLEX/1K and draft them purely off ADP for starters then give each team 5 RB/6WR total covering bye weeks and compair them honestly. All of them will be at least somewhat competitive. Where competition starts to change is when people don't follow ADP and pick who they think is correct for that position in the draft and thats really the part that is skill based.
Other than that it's picking matchups, and making waiver pickups and dealing with injuries.
The winner of my home league last year didnt do anything special with his draft. he won with Big ben at QB. But what made him win was no season ending injuries and happening to hit on his backups (Michael Bush and Jordy Nelson)
Shutout
Footballguy
This.I have had great teams flop inthe playoffs and "MEH" teams get hot and vice versa. There is SO much luck in FF that it makes me often question what the point is.
In most of my "competitive" leagues (the non-casual ones that aren't just tossed together like a salad), I would say 3 out of every 4 titles go to the guy that has the incredible good luck of avoiding injuries, the career year from random guys, or the guys that just happen to fall into the right place. Last year, I was in a league where a guy had Brees, Foster, Forte, Finley, Calvin, Jennings, etc. Basically had a team that wasn't even challenged all year. Broke league records..No losses, etc.
Goes up against a guy that had the worst qualifying record in the history of the league in Week 14, and had the worst record in the league through 5 weeks. But then he goes out and picks up Laurent Robinson and Kevin Smith just because he needs a body. Gets hot and starts winning. Then Kevin Smith is out for the matchup so the dude plugs in his only available RB, Marion Barber (who of course gets about 20 points that day) and his guys like of Flacco, Marion barber, Ryan Grant, etc go into the game looking like an easy out.
Across the board, the undefeated team turned in the worst week they had played pretty much all year. I think Finley was actually held to zero. Got CRUSHED by the guy that just barely made it in. The entire season for the guy that won was a series of nothing but situaitonal luck. He literally played guys because he had to and would never had if the other guys just didn't happen to get hurt the previous week. He had every guy he had play their best game of the year the same week that the pther team pretty much played their worst. Just uncanny stuff.
There is no skill in that. You can't control it.
ShaHBucks
Footballguy
Do you guys think our edge would shift by changing the rules to something non-standard like IDP and Dynasty? Cant even watch a preseason game without them giving fantasy advise. I've changed the rules in my League a few times and the bad players get more frustrated and don't know how to factor in some of the changes.
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Synesthesia
Footballguy
You know, unless you play best ball, you still have to pick who to start each week. That's a skill, too. That league would emphasize different skills, but skills nonetheless. Actually, I think looking at the number of teams involved is the wrong way to go. Look at the number of players started. Imagine a 16-team league with a 1-man roster and no waivers. That'd be the least skillful league ever- the winner would literally be whoever's guy didn't get hurt. On the other hand, imagine a 2-person league with huge starting lineups- a dozen QBs, two dozen RBs, three dozen WRs each. I'd imagine that league would be far and away the best way to establish drafting skill. Injuries would have a minimal impact on performance, as would lucky picks. To win, you'd need to demonstrate an ability to consistently outperform the other guy in terms of identifying talent on the board. If that's the skill you want to identify, that'd probably be the best way to do it.
CalBear
Footballguy
If the game is luck, no skill is involved; random selection will win just as often as the world's best player. Flipping a coin is 100% luck. Baccarat is 100% luck. No input from the player is required at all to achieve optimal results.Fantasy football isn't that way at all. All the trivial algorithms for player selection are terrible; the worst player in your league is immeasurably better than someone who knew nothing about football or fantasy football would be without a cheatsheet.It is certainly true that the availability of large amounts of information from skilled sources has allowed relatively unskilled players to play well. But that doesn't mean the game is luck; it means that the difference in skill between the best player in your league and the worst player in your league isn't very large, because both have access to information from highly skilled sources.
Mr. Know-It-All
Footballguy
Not sure of the percentages, but in our 20 year old league I have lost with some of my best rosters and won the title with a mediocre team (or so I thought). Luck is a huge factor, but scheduling may be the biggest factor. One year I had the highest scoring team in the league and wound up 6-7 and it was the only year I ever missed the playoffs. My problem was when I scored great someone wouod beat me that one week, and when I scored poorly I never caught a break. I almost quit after that season.
BigSteelThrill
Footballguy
Absolutely it matters.
The Jerk
Footballguy
Completely agree, and the other dimension to this answer is that increasing the time period increases the amount of skill vs. luck, whatever you believe the actual ratio is.As has been stated in this and countless other threads, nearly any reasonable team can beat an undefeated team in a one game Week 16 head to head championship. However, a comparison of two owners over a decade of competition will almost certainly reveal the more skilled fantasy player.Any one week, it's mostly luck.Any one season, it's still a lot of luck, but less.Multiple seasons, it's becoming a lot less luck.I don't know what numbers to put in, as there's no way that I know to even get close. But I do know that in leagues I have been in for 5+ seasons, it's no surprise to find a group of the same owners usually in the playoffs, and a different group of owners usually out of the playoffs, and that suggests skill is definitely in the picture.By the way, threads like these usually evolve -- or spin off -- to how to decrease luck in FF leagues. Usually, that involves a combination of total points and all-play formats being added to, or completely replacing, head-to-head format. My personal preference is to have a head-to-head competition along with a total points format, so that potentially two champions are crowned. If you win both the head-to-head and total points, you are arguably both lucky AND good.There is more skill than those who do poorly want to admit and more luck than winners care to acknowledge.It's the same answer EVERY TIME THIS COMES UP (which has been several times per year since I registered....give or take...)
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CalBear
Footballguy
"Nearly any reasonable team" requires an enormous amount of skill to put together. It may not be the skill of the guy in your league, but by reading someone else's cheatsheet he's borrowing their skill.
The Jerk
Footballguy
I'm ok with that. It's an insightful nugget to suggest that anyone downloading a cheatsheet off the internet 15 minutes before their draft is using skill, albeit someone else's, to help select their team.There is no doubt that gaining a significant informational advantage prior to a league draft as was possible 15 years ago is flat out impossible. So the question becomes, what other form of "skill" can be a differentiator, other than which league owner chooses the best paid projections source and/or draft software to use in a given league in a given year?At least in part, the answer to that question, WHEN APPLICABLE, is to know your league inside and out. Scoring system (obviously), individual owner tendencies, and collective league draft histories all can be used in place of mock drafting. In freshly_shorn's MDB thread elsewhere currently on the top page of the Shark Pool, I described my approach to best predict when I need to select a player at a given position based on past drafts projected forward to the current draft. While not always working out perfectly, I at least give myself the best shot at not waiting too long to get a desired player, and also not taking a player too early who might have lasted another round or two.It may very well be that in many leagues, the greatest achievable skill deferential may well be in predraft preparation and draft execution, not about players and projections, but actually about league and individual owner tendencies, and how that should impact your draft selections in the critical mid-rounds, say from 4th-7th or 5th-8th, or some other window depending on the size of the league and roster composition variables.
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