Game Theory and Fantasy Sports

Let's assume there's 1000 teams in tourny. 800 have Parker who out scores Gillett, who is owned by 50 teams, 4 out of 5 games.

If Parker outscores Gillett you chances are now 0.00125
If Gillett outscores Parker your chances are now 0.02


Parker = .80 x .00125 = .001
Gillett = .20 x .02 = .004

Therefore Gillett is the better match day play based on this ownership %

Shanbon wrote:Let's assume there's 1000 teams in tourny. 800 have Parker who out scores Gillett, who is owned by 50 teams, 4 out of 5 games.

If Parker outscores Gillett you chances are now 0.00125
If Gillett outscores Parker your chances are now 0.02


Parker = .80 x .00125 = .001
Gillett = .20 x .02 = .004

Therefore Gillett is the better match day play based on this ownership %

Shit. Can't argue with the math there

Beast play around with the ownership, as Gillette goes up or Parker goes down it obviously affects the result.

I think it's a good exercise as these 2 are on the same time and will be an option everytime they have a Thursday match day

Beast From The Big East wrote:

Exactly. But in some cases like Parker and Smith will be the same, there are just some games where it isn't worth going for the alternative because their high score is not that much greater than the high ownership's low, but their low is much lower than the high ownership's high.

I like the Milford choice as an alternative to Hunt. I agree Milford could be a common choice but I think seeing Hunt there will make many pick him.

The low doesn't matter if you aren't going to win by having CP or CS anyway. Your putting to much stock into scoring the most points and not enough into winning, they are 2 very different things.

Beast From The Big East wrote:. Why sacrifice logical points just to give you more chances of difference. Even if Semi goes big you would still have to make up all the points you lost by gambling on someone like Moeroa.

The whole theory here is that too many people choose the 'logical' points. So even if Parker scores his solid 65, it hasn't helped you because you are still equal with half the com

There still has to be some sort of value pick. You aren't going to get very far waiting for Kodi Nikorima to outscore Andrew McCullough. It's all about maximising scoring potential while minimising ownership.
Easier said than done.

The more I read the more fascinating this gets. I would not be at all surprised to see someone from this thread win at least one of the thursday games

Milchcow wrote:

The whole theory here is that too many people choose the 'logical' points. So even if Parker scores his solid 65, it hasn't helped you because you are still equal with half the com

There still has to be some sort of value pick. You aren't going to get very far waiting for Kodi Nikorima to outscore Andrew McCullough. It's all about maximising scoring potential while minimising ownership.
Easier said than done.

Depends how many teams you have

On the Parker v Gillett if ownership changes to 50% Parker 15% Gillette then Parker becomes the better play. Boils down to Gillette needs to be owned by less the 1/4 of the amount of Parker owners.

Milchy can you throw out the number of games Norman out scores Hunt and the number of games he outscores Milf please

Krump wrote:
The low doesn't matter if you aren't going to win by having CP or CS anyway. Your putting to much stock into scoring the most points and not enough into winning, they are 2 very different things.

It doesn't but surely simple logic would dictate that if someone scores a 55 and someone else scores a 55 then it shouldn't matter who you have as they are equal. You don't get rewarded more points because you happen to have a low ownership team. You should still need to factor in the scoring potential both high end and low end when comparing your POD choice with the more obvious option for the rest of the comp.

The difference to me comparing say a Broncos side with a Roosters is that some teams and in some games there are clear obvious picks who are far and away better scorers. The Roosters for example would be a good team for this type of exercise because they have a multitude of options both starting and on the bench who can all score highly, yet none are consistenly dominant. The general public will probably look at guys like JWH, Cordner and Guerra, yet Moa, Napa, Tauk, Liu are all options who can go big on their day while the big names can struggle.

Shanbon wrote:On the Parker v Gillett if ownership changes to 50% Parker 15% Gillette then Parker becomes the better play. Boils down to Gillette needs to be owned by less the 1/4 of the amount of Parker owners.

Milchy can you throw out the number of games Norman out scores Hunt and the number of games he outscores Milf please

Yea the ownership number is key for the maths.

Does anyone know if ownership percentage showed up when looking at players in the past during the Origin and ANZAC test special events?

Krump wrote:The more I read the more fascinating this gets. I would not be at all surprised to see someone from this thread win at least one of the thursday games

Agreed. So many different takes and opinions on this. After a few rounds we may get a clearer idea of what ways to go in order to give the best chance of winning it all. Would love if someone from on here was able to nab a win somewhere along the line

Beast From The Big East wrote:

It doesn't but surely simple logic would dictate that if someone scores a 55 and someone else scores a 55 then it shouldn't matter who you have as they are equal. You don't get rewarded more points because you happen to have a low ownership team. You should still need to factor in the scoring potential both high end and low end when comparing your POD choice with the more obvious option for the rest of the comp.

The difference to me comparing say a Broncos side with a Roosters is that some teams and in some games there are clear obvious picks who are far and away better scorers. The Roosters for example would be a good team for this type of exercise because they have a multitude of options both starting and on the bench who can all score highly, yet none are consistenly dominant. The general public will probably look at guys like JWH, Cordner and Guerra, yet Moa, Napa, Tauk, Liu are all options who can go big on their day while the big names can struggle.

Shanbon or Milchy as their more qualified than me but my thinking is the Broncos would be better because of the standout option in Parker. Any game that he's involved in he'll be captained by huge numbers of people giving you an instant advantage over most players in that game? Of course that's assuming you find the week he gets outscored and the player who outscores him.

Krump wrote:
Shanbon or Milchy as their more qualified than me but my thinking is the Broncos would be better because of the standout option in Parker. Any game that he's involved in he'll be captained by huge numbers of people giving you an instant advantage over most players in that game? Of course that's assuming you find the week he gets outscored and the player who outscores him.

This is the key problem for me. I see the reasoning with the idea of going with someone other than Parker and agree that whenever he is playing there will be many that will captain him. Broncos would be a good option if you get lucky with a dud Parker game and correctly pick who outscores him. But to my mind we need to differentiate between stand out option and the best option. Week to week Parker is the standout option in that forward pack because he scores much higher than everyone else and he barely ever scores poorly and even then it is still a very good score and not many can beat it.

Compare that to a team like the Roosters. They don't have a standout option. Rather instead they have players you could call the best option. Guerra/JWH if you think it will be a tough, grind it out game, Cordner if you think Roosters will get some solid attacking chances. But the level of that player is not that much greater than the others so you have a greater likelihood of your POD outscoring them.

It doesn't matter what teams are playing the same logic applies in these one off match days. When you break it down the bare numbers i.e. Tauk out scores Cordner 60% of the time (just made up example here) the play comes down to your estimates of ownership.

I have spreadsheets set up to give me floor/ceiling/consistency ratings that I'll always use for my projections and hopefully this means for me I can work out which games Tauk is more likely to outscore Cordner. So the basic season numbers might say 60% but this week I might project that to be only 40% then I need to try work out what % ownership each player has and do my little calculation

Krump wrote:The more I read the moreShanbon makes sense. If you want a good ranking every year play it safe. To win you need to take risks and there isn't really a difference between rd1 and Rd 19 except that taking a chance in rd1 doesn't automatically cost you a trade

This is absolutely spot on. We aren't trying to finish in the top 100, we are trying to finish number 1. Best chance at that is getting solid PODs with a strong base. The likes of Fifita, Hunt, Gallen

Shanbon wrote:On the Parker v Gillett if ownership changes to 50% Parker 15% Gillette then Parker becomes the better play. Boils down to Gillette needs to be owned by less the 1/4 of the amount of Parker owners.

Milchy can you throw out the number of games Norman out scores Hunt and the number of games he outscores Milf please

Norman outscored Hunt only twice (bit unlucky, he scored 57+ (Hunt's average) three times, but didn't beat Hunt on any of them as Hunt scored 70+ in each of those weeks. Norman also didn't play round 20 when Hunt pumped out a lowly 15)

Hunt is generally quite solid though, only provided 2 crap scores. A 17 in the rain against the dragons, and a 15 when they got pumped by Manly late in the season.


Norman beat Milford 9 times (plus 1 draw) out of 20 weeks they both played.
Milford is quite erratic, a lot of sub 30 scores (although only 1 in the latter half of the season)

Sounds like you are well and truly on top of it for the season Shanbon. Hopefully we see your name up there a few times as a Thursday Night comp winner

One thing we haven't really looked at here is scoring trends against certain opponents, and effect of victory/loss on scoring.

For a season long comp, weekly opponents are only a minor factor in whetehr to get a player or not, as theoretically you'll have them for the whole year anyway.
I've heard people thinking of Slater for the start of the comp as Melbourne have an easy draw - so that sort of thinking certainly has merit, but its not the deciding factor.


For daily fantasy though, the ground condition and opponent has a large impact on scoring.
If one team is going to win by 50, you damn well want their kicker on your team, and you probably don't need their big tackler.

I don't think it makes sense looking for a POD half over Thruston in a game you expect the cowboys to win comfortably, for example.
Saying that, the ownership of every other half in such a game could be so low that it might be worth taking a punt on Thurston having an off night.

Milchcow wrote:
One thing we haven't really looked at here is scoring trends against certain opponents, and effect of victory/loss on scoring.

For a season long comp, weekly opponents are only a minor factor in whetehr to get a player or not, as theoretically you'll have them for the whole year anyway.
I've heard people thinking of Slater for the start of the comp as Melbourne have an easy draw - so that sort of thinking certainly has merit, but its not the deciding factor.


For daily fantasy though, the ground condition and opponent has a large impact on scoring.
If one team is going to win by 50, you damn well want their kicker on your team, and you probably don't need their big tackler.

I don't think it makes sense looking for a POD half over Thruston in a game you expect the cowboys to win comfortably, for example.
Saying that, the ownership of every other half in such a game could be so low that it might be worth taking a punt on Thurston having an off night.

Exactly. Going for the PODs is what will allow you to have a shot at winning a week but in my opinion it shouldn't be at the expense of a clear points beast. A comfortable cowboys game means JT will likely score highly, or at the very least have a high floor as he should get a fair amount of simple halves points if the cowboys do well.

A hard tough game between another top 4 contender meanwhile is the perfect game to bet against JT as he could only struggle through to a 35 yet many participants will pick JT and not even think about the matchup so there is a better chance of picking a half that outscores him.

Milchcow wrote:
One thing we haven't really looked at here is scoring trends against certain opponents, and effect of victory/loss on scoring.

For a season long comp, weekly opponents are only a minor factor in whetehr to get a player or not, as theoretically you'll have them for the whole year anyway.
I've heard people thinking of Slater for the start of the comp as Melbourne have an easy draw - so that sort of thinking certainly has merit, but its not the deciding factor.


For daily fantasy though, the ground condition and opponent has a large impact on scoring.
If one team is going to win by 50, you damn well want their kicker on your team, and you probably don't need their big tackler.

I don't think it makes sense looking for a POD half over Thruston in a game you expect the cowboys to win comfortably, for example.
Saying that, the ownership of every other half in such a game could be so low that it might be worth taking a punt on Thurston having an off night.

In a situation like that you would be better off taking Morgan over Thurston, although he only outscored him 3 times in the 17 games they played together.