Wr's are a dime a dozen (1 Viewer)

[Swampy]

How did this go from Wr being available in later rounds to FA's, to a stupid topic like Luck versus Skill????

 

[timschochet]

You're not playing a coin flipping monkey and you're not playing 1,000,000 hands.

Doesn't matter. If something were 100% luck, then any one party would have a 50% expected winning percentage against any other party, no matter what. So, as I said, unless you think a coinflipping monkey could beat you 50% of the time, then fantasy football is *NOT* 100% luck. Obviously, however, you do believe that a coinflipping monkey could beat you 50% of the time.

A coin flipping monkey can't play fantasy football.But, if you want to concede that I could get my wife to play and just sign her up for footballguys service and tell her to follow DD and the cheatsheets every week she will beat me 50% of the time without having to think herself for 5 minutes.Infinity is 100%. Sorry, that's just the way it is.But just for you to end this charade I'll give a little. It's 99% luck. Given the number of variables involved that gives you a lot of warm fuzzies.

If your wife signs up for Footballguys and follows DD, she is using skill, though not her own. Your argument would be more valid if your wife knew nothing about playing FF and used NO advise when making her choices, and still beat you 50% of the time. I seriously doubt that's going to happen.Luck is a large factor in FF, but it might not even be the decisive factor. In my league, the truth is I am winning because I am paying more attention than my opponents, and picking up waiver wire guys that they could of picked up had they followed more closely (Kenton Keith last week, for example.) Is that luck? I admit, however, in a league where all of the players are paying equal attention, luck becomes much more of a factor, but still not necessarily decisive.The point of this thread was to explore whether or not WR's are taken too early in the draft, because of their inconsistency. I think this is a reasonable theory, suggesting that skill does play a part in these decisions.

Not decisive ay.Tell me. How many people projected TO at almost zero, Kenton Keith with two TD's and 100 yards and Brandon Jacobs outscoring Travis Henry his first week back from injury.I'll answer for you. Nobody.

You're not getting it. When you draft players, it's how you project them to do over an entire season. You can measure consistency when the pattern is long enough. Of course, it's impossible to project with any clarity how one player is going to do exactly in one game, but even then you can make some educated guesses. For instance, I have been reading all year that Indy's running game was excellent less because of the talent they have at that position, and more because Peyton Manning's play prevents Defenses from sticking 8 men in the box. Given this, I believed it was reasonable to expect that Keith would be productive this weekend, while knowing nothing about him. If, on the other hand, Keith had been the backup starting in place of LT in San Diego, for instance, I would not have made the same assumption and most likely would not have started him. This was not luck, but skill, simply because I took the time to read some of this stuff, while my opponents did not.

 

[CalBear]

Yes, but you didn't know that Kenton Keith would do what he would do. Heck, if he had had a regular top 10 running back performance a lot of people who started him would have lost anyway this week.

You're confusing the presence of chance with the prevalence of luck. Chance is present in nearly all aspects of our lives, and in virtually all interesting games (excepting chess and Go, and even in those one could argue that chance is still happening at the cellular or quantum level in our brains). But the presence of chance does not mean that the game is wholly based on luck; it means that the skill involved is in choosing the strategies with the highest chance of success. Skill gives a player an advantage; it does not guarantee success.Let's think about a trivial algorithm for choosing a fantasy roster without using skill. You rank all the players by last year's points scored, and draft them in that order, and you start whoever scored the most points in the previous week (or the most points YTD). How often do you think a good fantasy football player will have more success than the trivial algorithm? The answer to that question is the degree to which skill is a factor in fantasy football. I would suggest that a good fantasy football player will beat the trivial algorithm at least 80% of the time.

 

[timschochet]

Yes, but you didn't know that Kenton Keith would do what he would do. Heck, if he had had a regular top 10 running back performance a lot of people who started him would have lost anyway this week.

You're confusing the presence of chance with the prevalence of luck. Chance is present in nearly all aspects of our lives, and in virtually all interesting games (excepting chess and Go, and even in those one could argue that chance is still happening at the cellular or quantum level in our brains). But the presence of chance does not mean that the game is wholly based on luck; it means that the skill involved is in choosing the strategies with the highest chance of success. Skill gives a player an advantage; it does not guarantee success.Let's think about a trivial algorithm for choosing a fantasy roster without using skill. You rank all the players by last year's points scored, and draft them in that order, and you start whoever scored the most points in the previous week (or the most points YTD). How often do you think a good fantasy football player will have more success than the trivial algorithm? The answer to that question is the degree to which skill is a factor in fantasy football. I would suggest that a good fantasy football player will beat the trivial algorithm at least 80% of the time.

EXcellent post! My sentiments exactly.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Yes, but you didn't know that Kenton Keith would do what he would do. Heck, if he had had a regular top 10 running back performance a lot of people who started him would have lost anyway this week.

You're confusing the presence of chance with the prevalence of luck. Chance is present in nearly all aspects of our lives, and in virtually all interesting games (excepting chess and Go, and even in those one could argue that chance is still happening at the cellular or quantum level in our brains). But the presence of chance does not mean that the game is wholly based on luck; it means that the skill involved is in choosing the strategies with the highest chance of success. Skill gives a player an advantage; it does not guarantee success.Let's think about a trivial algorithm for choosing a fantasy roster without using skill. You rank all the players by last year's points scored, and draft them in that order, and you start whoever scored the most points in the previous week (or the most points YTD). How often do you think a good fantasy football player will have more success than the trivial algorithm? The answer to that question is the degree to which skill is a factor in fantasy football. I would suggest that a good fantasy football player will beat the trivial algorithm at least 80% of the time.

Fair enough. I'll skip out then. I'd rather lose with a legitimate excuse then waste all my time and lose to people who walk in with the Fanball draft issue and are lucky enough to pluck the right players in a serpentine draft. At least I won't be pulling my hair out. I'm done with this subject.