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Roster settings and attributes of skill vs luck (1 Viewer)

Doesn't matter what you do, it is all luck...
It is like poker. Everything is an odds gams. The better the player, the better they can put the odds in their favor. Still, even 4 of a kind can lose and sometimes AK doesn't hit, but 2/7 off does. I
 
There are some good questions, points made.

I like to look at #of teams in the league.

10 12 etc.

Build roster settings around that.

Start 2QBs this means you're starting 20-24 of the 32 starting QBs. Consider superflex if settings wont let you to require 2 starters.

there are ways to overcome setbacks if player goes down. Kick return yardage.

Bonud tiers for 100 150 200 yd games rush, rec.

300-400, 500 yd bonus tiers.

I try to make the points mean something. My commish wouldn't listen to me until it cost him a game. idp points were tooo low. His guy had a career day. 3 sacks, int for TD, fmbl rec. 10 tackles, but only scored 22 pts. Meanwhile his qb had avg day and scored 25.

,point is figure what some really good benchmarks are and reward the skilled and lucky for hitting them. Commish changed it the next year.

Its easy to draft the big name players

But the gurus always draft and find a way that alliws them to compete withi. The settings.

2010, Danny amendola was #2 wr in the league bc of kr yardage. Not what you'd expect. Not a guy to build a team around but he gets you points.

 
And when I say someone "dropped the ball" when drafting a position, I don't mean they didn't end up with the preseason RB1, RB13, WR5, WR14, WR27, QB4, TE6 in their lineup. I mean maybe they did end up with that, but they drafted on a cheatsheet thinking they were well rounded, but the cheatsheet was wrong. In PPR they could just throw someone like Jaquizz in for their bust RB13 and move along. But not in standard scoring. You pay for a lack of depth, thus less luck.
I'm sorry Mr. Ninja but a lot of your arguments for why PPR takes less skill than SS have no factual basis and are filled with personal biased. I'd like to see some data that backs up your opinions.I'm confused by what you are saying in the bolded part. Are you trying to say that because of PPR if you lost your RB2 who was the 13 highest scoring RB( or supposed to be) that you could replace him with any RB who was in the 55-65 highest scoring range and not suffer for it? I can tell you this is not the case. Every situation is different but for a perfect example last year in my PPR league that gives .5 PPR to RB's I lost Ahmad Bradshaw who ended up finnishing as RB13 halfway through the season. Beleive me my team was not the same and I did suffer for lack of depth when I had to use Jakie Battle RB56/Lance Ball RB60(who both finnished with the same pts as Jaquizz RB58 BTW). My team didn't start to pick up steam again until I added Toby Gerhart RB37. I knew I would be in this situation at some point in the season though since it was part of my strategy to load up on blue chip RB's late in the draft ( only hit on one Sproles) and work the WW all year hoping to hit on a big injury fill in which I did with Gerhart. This is a valid strategy for todays NFL, I'm sure it works well enough no matter the scoring system and does not require any more skill in one than another.
No, I'm saying if the guy screwed up with his RB13 draft pick, he could just throw a guy (likely a FA) into his lineup that gets maybe 5 carries a game and a chance at 2-5 catches. Because in this silly system, 1 rec for 1 yard is worth more than 2 rushes for 10 yards. So if 2012 Rodgers gets put into a lineup, it may not work every week, but if you are playing against a guy that had to put him in because his preseason RB13 is a bust and Rodgers happens to have 4 rushes for 13 yards and 5 catches for 27 yards then he just put up 9 points on you with a total scrub effort. In non-PPR, that guy got what he deserved for drafting poorly. In PPR, he just squeaked by at RB2 because there are a ton of guys with potential to put up decent numbers every week. It may or may not happen, but at least everyone has a chance and that's why PPR is so popular.I'm sorry, but I don't think discussing your team last year is pertinent to this discussion so I'm going to move on. You might be a fan of anecdotal evidence, but I don't think it proves a point.

Seriously join a PPR league with semi competant owners and try to run with production like Jaquizz's numbers from last year(RB60 ish) at your RB2 spot and see how that works out for you. Your logic is severly flawed, you need every bit of depth in PPR that you would need in SS to stay competetive. You can't just replace 2'nd/3'rd teir production with teir 7/8 production and expect to be competetive in any scoring format. Maybe you just picked a bad example without doing any research.

Also whats wrong with Danny Amendola? The guy went 85/689/3 in 2010 good for WR29 in my league. Sure his yards per reception was pretty bad but he was a valuable contributer to his team that year. Explain to me why a guy who catches everything thrown his way and is grinding his heart and soul out for his team helping them move the chains should not be startable in fantasy football.
I've played PPR leagues with competitive owners. A 12-team PPR league with good owners reminds me of my 10-team work league with just 2RB and 2WR and no flex. Just too much talent available unless you have huge rosters. I think PPR would be better for 16-team leagues.I don't doubt that Amendola is a gutty player, but 689/3 is worthless. This isn't peewee basketball where everybody gets to play and award for "most effort" are handed out at the end of the season. 689/3 may have been accomplished by lots of effort and grit, but it isn't much of an accomplishment. He finished WR46 in normal leagues, yet was WR29 in PPR. This highlights how marginal producers are brought into relevance with PPR. That's why I say PPR widens the talent pool. It really can't be disputed. Bigger talent pools = more luck. See my previous reply to az_prof.

What about all the goal-line backs throughout the years that vultured TD's? Would you say it's criminal that players like John Kuhn/Mark Ingram become startable or add depth simply because they have a pretty good chance of scoring a TD every week? Take away TD's and players like these two become worthless, as they should be but nobody is going to remove TD scoring from their league are they...where's the line here?

I don't believe PPR has the effect you describe. It does not swing the curve to the tail, it just streaches out the middle a little bit. PPR does not suddenly make crappy players startable as you're trying to imply. The top is the top, the middle is the middle and the bottom is the bottom just like any other scoring format.
Stretching the middle expands the tail. You just agreed with me without knowing it.Kuhn is not ever startable in a 12-team non-PPR. Even when he gets his TD, he usually has almost no yardage to go with it. But even then, I think rushing for a 3 yard TD is more valuable than catching 6 passes for 1 yard each.

I honestly don't think any one scoring system require's more skill than another. I think understanding your leagues scoring and rosters and devloping strategies on how to get the most out of the rules is what takes skill. Like others have said the best way to increase skill and weed out the luck are minimal Flex positions increasing the sample of games and having a larger pool of teams.
Any time scoring is changed in a major way, the strategy/skill required to succeed is either increased or decreased, so I have to completely disagree. That would be like saying, I honestly don't think changing the number of teams affects the skill needed to win.I've played in PPR and non-PPR and it is substantially easier to fill holes in your lineup in PPR than non-PPR. Thus, I think it is easy to discern which setting favors skill and which setting favors parity.

Good debate though and I have never played in a true SS league so maybe I should try it sometime to compare. Although my main league has been around for awhile and evolved quite a bit over the years. A while back we were very similar to standard scoring before switching to PPR. The interesting thing about this though is that a hanfull of owners have remained sucessfull throughout the years by adopting new strategies and prcatices while a handfull of guys who were pretty good back in the standard scoring days have not faired so well since PPR was added. Another funny thing is these owners who've had trouble adapting to PPR are also the ones that make arguments like FF Ninja every year to try and get it removed.
Please do try it. I think you'll find it frustrating at first, but if you are better than your peers then you'll find it easier to distance yourself. If you aren't as good as you think then you'll hate it and blame it for being a bad system.And I'll reiterate one more time that I have no trouble adapting to a PPR system. It is just funny playing both PPR and non-PPR, when you see guys that are borderline unrosterable in non-PPR in people's starting lineups in PPR. It is times like that when I know that PPR is a joke and it is only popular because everyone feels like they are in it every week. Same reason why people hate total points leagues. People always say they want to see the best team win, but if that were the case then we wouldn't even be playing H2H with playoffs. We'd either do all play (I think Greg mentioned this, it is where your weekly record vs. all the other teams is added up, so you could go 7-4 one week and 11-0 the next and your record after two weeks would be 18-4 instead of 1-1, it is pretty awesome) or straight up total points.
First off I must be confused because when 1 reception for 1 yard equals 1 pt and 2 rushes for 10 yards equals 1 pt then I thought they are worth the same amount.Amendola put up 85 receptions that year and that does not happen by accident. Any scoring system that ignores such a vital part of the game is severely flawed. I fail to see how ignoring this stat increases the skill/luck ratio. Yes I agree PPR increases scoring and stretches out the talent pool somewhat but I feel like this also presents a skilled owner with more opportunities to create an advantage for themselves. Often times there's a lot more going on in the low end tiers than just bit players putting up mediocre stats. So maybe I'm leaning the other way now.

Not a fan of anecdotal evidence....really? Then why does just about every one of your counter points use it then?

I'm sorry but your whole thesis on why SS requires more skill than PPR is based on logical fallacies and not all that convincing. All of your examples are just cherry picked appeals to probability that do not occur often enough to have the impact you suggest.

I honestly wish I could convince my leagues to go all play. I actualy suggested we do double headers every week last year and got a lot of weird looks...oh well.

 
Doesn't matter what you do, it is all luck...
It is like poker. Everything is an odds gams. The better the player, the better they can put the odds in their favor. Still, even 4 of a kind can lose and sometimes AK doesn't hit, but 2/7 off does.
This is a bad analogy. In poker if you have A4 and I have AKs, half way through the hand my king can't pull a hammy and be out the rest of the hand. Also, going into the hand no one is going to tell me "Jacks are unplayable for you for the first fourth of the hands becuase they got suspended for violating the deck's substance abuse policy."FF has more luck than winners like to admit and more skill than losers do.
 
First off I must be confused because when 1 reception for 1 yard equals 1 pt and 2 rushes for 10 yards equals 1 pt then I thought they are worth the same amount.

Amendola put up 85 receptions that year and that does not happen by accident. Any scoring system that ignores such a vital part of the game is severely flawed. I fail to see how ignoring this stat increases the skill/luck ratio. Yes I agree PPR increases scoring and stretches out the talent pool somewhat but I feel like this also presents a skilled owner with more opportunities to create an advantage for themselves. Often times there's a lot more going on in the low end tiers than just bit players putting up mediocre stats. So maybe I'm leaning the other way now.

Not a fan of anecdotal evidence....really? Then why does just about every one of your counter points use it then?

I'm sorry but your whole thesis on why SS requires more skill than PPR is based on logical fallacies and not all that convincing. All of your examples are just cherry picked appeals to probability that do not occur often enough to have the impact you suggest.

I honestly wish I could convince my leagues to go all play. I actualy suggested we do double headers every week last year and got a lot of weird looks...oh well.
1 rec for 1 yd = 1.1 pts, 2 rushes for 10 yds = 1.0PPR alters the strategy and the best players will take advantage of any system as best they can, but anytime you stretch out the talent pool parity is increased. When parity is increased, by definition the best players are hurt. Altering strategy alone does not mean it presents good owners more opportunities to create advantages. Good owners benefit in systems that weed out the riff raff, not systems that turn marginal players into fantasy starters. Amendola caught a lot of short passes in a struggling offense. Unless these were converting to first downs, I don't see how this is any better than Bradford checking down to his RB.

There is a big difference between citing anecdotal evidence and simply using an example to illustrate a point.

If you agree that the talent pool is stretched then there isn't much room to say that I don't have a point. Did you not like the comparison of a 12-team PPR to 10-team SS? It isn't perfectly apples to apples, but you get the point: More fantasy worthy players per team = more parity.

 
First off I must be confused because when 1 reception for 1 yard equals 1 pt and 2 rushes for 10 yards equals 1 pt then I thought they are worth the same amount.

Amendola put up 85 receptions that year and that does not happen by accident. Any scoring system that ignores such a vital part of the game is severely flawed. I fail to see how ignoring this stat increases the skill/luck ratio. Yes I agree PPR increases scoring and stretches out the talent pool somewhat but I feel like this also presents a skilled owner with more opportunities to create an advantage for themselves. Often times there's a lot more going on in the low end tiers than just bit players putting up mediocre stats. So maybe I'm leaning the other way now.

Not a fan of anecdotal evidence....really? Then why does just about every one of your counter points use it then?

I'm sorry but your whole thesis on why SS requires more skill than PPR is based on logical fallacies and not all that convincing. All of your examples are just cherry picked appeals to probability that do not occur often enough to have the impact you suggest.

I honestly wish I could convince my leagues to go all play. I actualy suggested we do double headers every week last year and got a lot of weird looks...oh well.
1 rec for 1 yd = 1.1 pts, 2 rushes for 10 yds = 1.0PPR alters the strategy and the best players will take advantage of any system as best they can, but anytime you stretch out the talent pool parity is increased. When parity is increased, by definition the best players are hurt. Altering strategy alone does not mean it presents good owners more opportunities to create advantages. Good owners benefit in systems that weed out the riff raff, not systems that turn marginal players into fantasy starters. Amendola caught a lot of short passes in a struggling offense. Unless these were converting to first downs, I don't see how this is any better than Bradford checking down to his RB.

There is a big difference between citing anecdotal evidence and simply using an example to illustrate a point.

If you agree that the talent pool is stretched then there isn't much room to say that I don't have a point. Did you not like the comparison of a 12-team PPR to 10-team SS? It isn't perfectly apples to apples, but you get the point: More fantasy worthy players per team = more parity.
Parity is a part of the NFL and thus will also be a part of Fantasy Football regardless of scoring settings. Besides that there are many other factors that can increase parity far far more than increasing scoring. While PPR increases scoring for the low end it also increases scoring for the high end players just the same. Your theory that it somehow benefits the low end players more is irrational. IMO PPR just makes a different talent pool more viable. SS favors RB's who get more carries and PPR favors RB's who catch passes.

Your examples are anecdotal because they are cherry picked to support your argument which is basically that because something can happen you assume it will happen.

I think 12 is a decent amount of teams and 10 is just way to up in the air in any format. The definition of fantasy worthy players is relative to the scoring system. So 9 pt's in SS is pretty decent and will help you out but 9 pts in PPR is not going to cut it. Milling around with guys that only average 5-6 pts per week is going to kill you in PPR just as much as trying to do the same thing with guys that average 2-4 pts per week in SS. Just because there may be more of these players in PPR is pretty much irrelevant imo. I will have to look at SS vs PPR results sometime and see if things really breakdown the way I think they do.

Anyway I think I'm done, I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I think we've beaten this horse long enough and neither of us are going to budge.

 
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Parity is a part of the NFL and thus will also be a part of Fantasy Football regardless of scoring settings. Besides that there are many other factors that can increase parity far far more than increasing scoring. While PPR increases scoring for the low end it also increases scoring for the high end players just the same. Your theory that it somehow benefits the low end players more is irrational.
No no no no no. The bolded is absolutely incorrect. How you can draw that conclusion... I'm sure it sounded good when you thought of it, but no. Not true at all. The NFL and fantasy football actually have very little in common as far as the form of competition. People who know what they are doing can and should have a large advantage over other managers. However, using parity mechanisms like PPR and small rosters can narrow the gap immensely. You can be done w/this discussion and refuse to budge but I can't allow your flawed logic to pass as fact for the public.

And you've missed my point. I know PPR raises the scoring for ALL players and I didn't say it benefits the low end player more. I said it benefits more low end players. Guys who aren't rosterable in SS are suddenly viable bye week starters or injury fill ins. So if you are a bad manager and you don't have proper depth, no problem in PPR, just pick up a scrub who has a chance at 5 rec for 40 yards.

I started to make a spreadsheet to help you understand, but I don't want to spend the time. You've already acknowledged the talent pool is stretched. That's really all you need to know to conclude that parity is increased with PPR. And by definition parity helps bad teams catch up to good teams, so there really is no debate here. PPR reduces the advantage of being a good FF player.

IMO PPR just makes a different talent pool more viable. SS favors RB's who get more carries and PPR favors RB's who catch passes.
Even though you've agreed to facts that strengthen my case, you are still going to believe whatever you want to believe. Just don't misinform others. PPR does change the talent pool, but that doesn't mean it doesn't increase its size, too.
Your examples are anecdotal because they are cherry picked to support your argument which is basically that because something can happen you assume it will happen.
You can state it as a fact, but that doesn't make it true. I've given some examples in order to help illustrate my points, so yes, they are custom selected for the situation, but that's how you illustrate a point. I'm not trying to pass it off as evidence of a truth.Anecdotal evidence is when you say, this is true because, look, this happened! Conversely, I've made a point, stated reasoning and logic behind it, and then said, here's an example.

I think 12 is a decent amount of teams and 10 is just way to up in the air in any format. The definition of fantasy worthy players is relative to the scoring system. So 9 pt's in SS is pretty decent and will help you out but 9 pts in PPR is not going to cut it. Milling around with guys that only average 5-6 pts per week is going to kill you in PPR just as much as trying to do the same thing with guys that average 2-4 pts per week in SS. Just because there may be more of these players in PPR is pretty much irrelevant imo. I will have to look at SS vs PPR results sometime and see if things really breakdown the way I think they do.

Anyway I think I'm done, I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I think we've beaten this horse long enough and neither of us are going to budge.
In the end, I think 14-team PPR is probably about right. I've played 12-team and it reminds me a lot of 10-team SS. If all PPR leagues were 14, I probably wouldn't hate that scoring system as much. I do like mixing up the scoring dynamic, but seeing bad SS fantasy players in starting lineups and actually putting up points is frustrating. I urge you to join a SS league this year and you'll probably get it. This discussion would've been much easier if you'd ever played SS before. I'm not sure how you can speak so definitively about the two systems when you haven't even played one before.
 
...

And you've missed my point. I know PPR raises the scoring for ALL players and I didn't say it benefits the low end player more. I said it benefits more low end players. Guys who aren't rosterable in SS are suddenly viable bye week starters or injury fill ins. So if you are a bad manager and you don't have proper depth, no problem in PPR, just pick up a scrub who has a chance at 5 rec for 40 yards.

...
Let's stop and ask first if the statement about PPR benefiting more low end players and making more such players rosterable makes intuitive sense. After which we'll put it to the actual test.

Intuitively...

Any WR with receptions gains more fantasy points in PPR scoring than he does in standard. And a WR with more receptions has a bigger gain than does a WR with fewer receptions. Because of this, each WR will gain separation (i.e. value) relative to a WR that has fewer receptions.

Higher ranked WRs tend to have more receptions than lower ranked WRs even in standard scoring. It's not a universal truth, but it is a very widespread trend. And a trend that approaches a universal truth as the distance in the rankings separating the two particular players increases. That is, WR1 doesn't always have more receptions than WR2, but he probably always has more than WR30.

So applying what makes intuitive sense... the higher ranked WRs will tend to pick up more extra points from PPR than will lower ranked WRs since they tend to have more receptions. Starters will pick up more extra points from PPR than will the low end WRs that are the target of our statement. This would mean that in PPR, low end WRs would become worse replacements for starters since they are even further behind due to reception points. So intuition says the effect of PPR on low end WRs should be the opposite of the statement we're testing.

But there are some other factors, like that a lower ranked player can have more receptions than a higher, and just maybe there are enough such players actually moving up or down the rankings that the effect could drive our result. So, let's put it to the hard test then.

Checking actual results

I took the top 100 WRs in two scoring systems. Both are 1 per 10 decimal scoring for rush/rec, and -1 fumbles. The PPR league also has 1 pt PPR. I then sorted them by average fantasy points per game. Not perfect as you can have a guy like Kenny Britt who only played a few games, but easily good enough for our purposes. Then I used a VBD baseline of the 36th WR who would be the last starter in a normal league. Negative VBD for backups is fine, it's still able to express how far off the starters the player is, with more negative being a worse replacement.

VBD-S is the VBD versus WR 36 in standard scoring. VBD-PPR is the same for PPR scoring.

Rank VBD-S VBD-PPR1 8.9 10.92 8.0 9.43 5.8 9.34 5.8 6.45 5.2 6.16 4.2 5.77 4.1 5.68 3.9 5.29 3.9 5.010 3.8 4.911 3.7 4.912 3.4 4.013 3.2 4.014 3.2 3.615 3.2 3.416 2.9 3.117 2.7 2.918 2.3 2.719 2.2 2.720 2.2 2.621 2.2 2.422 1.7 2.323 1.6 2.124 1.3 2.025 1.3 2.026 1.1 1.627 0.7 1.528 0.6 1.029 0.5 0.730 0.5 0.731 0.4 0.632 0.4 0.633 0.4 0.534 0.1 0.435 0.1 0.136 0.0 0.037 -0.1 -0.438 -0.1 -0.739 -0.3 -0.940 -0.6 -1.041 -0.6 -1.142 -0.7 -1.243 -0.8 -1.544 -0.9 -1.545 -1.0 -1.746 -1.1 -1.847 -1.3 -2.048 -1.4 -2.049 -1.4 -2.050 -1.5 -2.051 -1.5 -2.152 -1.6 -2.153 -1.6 -2.554 -1.7 -2.555 -1.7 -2.556 -1.7 -2.557 -1.8 -2.758 -1.9 -2.759 -1.9 -2.960 -2.1 -3.061 -2.2 -3.562 -2.5 -3.763 -2.5 -3.964 -2.8 -3.965 -2.9 -4.066 -3.0 -4.267 -3.0 -4.368 -3.1 -4.469 -3.2 -4.770 -3.2 -4.771 -3.3 -4.772 -3.3 -4.873 -3.4 -5.074 -3.5 -5.075 -3.6 -5.176 -3.7 -5.177 -3.7 -5.378 -3.8 -5.479 -3.9 -5.480 -3.9 -5.581 -3.9 -5.682 -3.9 -5.683 -4.1 -5.784 -4.1 -5.785 -4.1 -5.786 -4.2 -5.887 -4.2 -5.888 -4.3 -5.889 -4.3 -5.890 -4.4 -5.891 -4.4 -6.692 -4.4 -6.693 -4.4 -6.794 -4.6 -6.795 -4.6 -7.196 -4.8 -7.197 -4.8 -7.298 -5.1 -7.399 -5.1 -7.4100 -5.3 -7.5The results match up with our intuition. The low end WRs suffer a bigger drop off in value in PPR leagues than in standard leagues. So the reality is the opposite of the statement, in PPR leagues a less skilled owner who didn't pay attention to receiver depth is going to be hurt worse by going to PPR than he was in standard scoring. If he has to go to waivers looking for a player to fill in on a bye or injury, the Expected Value of the points that player will score for him are a bigger drop off from his starter if the league is PPR.

What about RBs?

Now how does this apply to other positions? I'm not going to take the time to do the spreadsheet for RB, but intuitively, the trend that higher ranked RBs have more receptions than lower ranked RBs is probably weaker than for receivers. You have 3rd down backs who catch a lot of passes and you have starters who get pulled on passing downs who don't have many catches. I imagine there is still a trend there, but not as strong of one. I imagine PPR probably still favors higher ranked RBs generally, but there might be an area of the positional curve where it doesn't for awhile.

How does that affect us in the whole skill vs luck thing? We want to have a league setup where we want being able to determine value to win out over blindly following rules of thumb like the Stud RB Theory, we definitely want PPR if we want to favor luck. However we possibly don't want to give PPR to RBs, or if we do give them less than WRs get. Because our biggest goal is to make there be more draft picks in early rounds where someone has to value all positions to correctly decide his correct pick, rather than just knowing one position is more valuable than the others the vast amount of time. Which in the case of standard scoring, that position is RB.

You can also accomplish much the same thing by adding more starting WR slots to your league. I do both. We actually start 4 WRs and 2 TEs, plus have a flex WR/TE, and we have staggered PPR of 1.0 for TE, .5 for WR and only .25 for RB. RBs are still valuable. But owners have to evaluate every position at every pick, and also judge what pockets of value are likely to be there in later rounds. I have leagues that I have gradually migrated away from standard setups, and I see the same thing every time... addition of a rule like PPR makes it obvious which owners were only being successful because they'd learned their concept of value from a rule of thumb or just from repeated exposure to a system. As soon as the system changed, they weren't able to correctly adjust their concept of value and it was obvious from results who the more skilled owners were.

 
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