NRL Fantasy 2024 Part 3 - Half the height we want

rhinoceroo wrote:

I've also found it gets close to my team when I bump my players' predicted scores up a few digits

I actually downgraded a fair few of the players I own and upgraded quite a few I don’t own

I’m not going to keep Liam Knight at 42 average

easytiger wrote:
I saw somewhere talk of Josh King moving to prop and Loiero starting Lock.

Or maybe that's what you meant? rather than Loiero moving to edge to free up Blore for edge?
I'm sure second week trials will reveal some intention there either way

yes, Loiero to lock.

Moving him from edge to edge obviously doesn't make sense. Silly typo there

mattnz wrote:

Picking Haas as a single decision isn't going to screw you up.

I agree very much with this, which is where the Haas/No Haas started off (from the suggestion that Fantasy Amateurs were foolish for saying Haas doesn't present value...). I haven't heard the Podcast? but assume they were suggesting there are other options...

Someone also suggested that not starting with Haas could cause you to slip behind the pack and not catch up.
I don't really see that as a likely outcome either...

As a simple example;

Haas 2023: Priced at 56. A 10-point upside was a 66 average (highly possible), a 10-point downside was a 46 average (extremely unlikely)
Clear upside here.

Haas 2024: Priced at 64. A 10-point upside was is a 74 average (highly unlikely), a 10-point downside is a 54 average (somewhat unlikely, but '22 and '21 seasons produced 56-59 season averages albeit some mitigating factors)
Unlikely to have value upside, but low risk cumulative points upside.

There is also a history of Haas starting strong over the opening 6 rounds, but that also seems fairly irrelevant unless you plan to only hold him until round 6 (whereas I assume most would hold through to his first bye in Round 13 and any early season pricing gain probably regresses back to a normal seasonal average).

So maybe there is better value for an elite player somewhere (Murray etc), but that comes with greater risk/uncertainty, and any potential monetary benefit may be offset by that alternative elite player having a bye where Haas does not.

Starting with Haas seems a pretty low-risk, positive-benefit decision, but pivoting elsewhere shouldn't be season-defining in either direction.
If you opt for an alternative "underpriced" elite gun and have good fortune, it could give you a small ($50-100k? benefit with the trade-off being potentially less net overall points).

Of course the other aspect is in the unlikely event that your low ownership alternative elite gun got an early HIA you suffer where most don't, whereas if that happened to Haas it's mitigated by high ownership - I guess this is the game theory component.

Haas to Hynes after Hynes's bye then...

A tough question for some of these high priced picks is "what does failure look like"

If Haas averages 60 for the first 3 rounds, do you trade him out? Partly depends on other MIDs and if any of them are firing with something that looks sustainable. But he'll still be one of the top scorers so likely you'll just take the loss of $30-40k and carry on.


Seems popular here that most people will start with Cleary ahead of Hynes.
What if, after a couple of weeks, Cleary is averaging 65 and Hynes is 80 - what do you do? Trust it will balance itself out?
Sharks have bye right before Panthers so a round 6 swap might be on the cards anyway if they are scoring similarly

Milchcow wrote:
A tough question for some of these high priced picks is "what does failure look like"

If Haas averages 60 for the first 3 rounds, do you trade him out? Partly depends on other MIDs and if any of them are firing with something that  looks sustainable. But he'll still be one of the top scorers so likely you'll just take the loss of $30-40k and carry on.


Seems popular here that most people will start with Cleary ahead of Hynes.
What if, after a couple of weeks, Cleary is averaging 65 and Hynes is 80 - what do you do? Trust it will balance itself out?
Sharks have bye right before Panthers so a round 6 swap might be on the cards anyway if they are scoring similarly

Those two can banner at any time, that's the risk of trying to switch between them, unless you can confidently predict their big games haha.

I'd probably try trade Haas to Hynes if Hynes was looking like maintaining that kind of scoring. probably unrealistic to be able to find the funds to do it in round 6 though.

mattnz wrote:
If teams are relying on Burbo (currently 20% ownership, which will likely double if named as starting EDG in R1) and Strange (35%) / Cotric (10%) as their CTR pairing, by round 2 when Kris and Schuster may be available and starting in their place, they can be boxed into a corner.

Teams need to be allowing for at least 1 mid priced CTR, if not 2, as options could be really limited in that low price bracket, if the cheap guys with no job certainty don't work out.

Iro is currently in 32% of teams, which tells you all you need to know about how many teams are relying on really cheap CTR options to make their current team structure work.

Teams arent relying on anyone. Trials havent even started. Looking at ownership percentages is a bit daft.

I've still got an autopick team, and I'm clearly not the only one. Tonnes of the cheap players that the autopick algorithm favours are sitting on high ownership

Mavrik Geyer 16%
Jayden Berrell 10%
Zach Docker Clay 8%
Viliami Fifita 6%

They'll all drop out of active teams by round 1.

Guys like Iro/Hughes have high ownership because of the double whammy of being cheap for autopick but also getting talked up in fantasy circles. They'll either jump even higher in ownership or drop off by the time round 1 starts

If you want to game theory ownership percentages, you have to at least wait until enough active teams have picked a squad before you start making your decisions.

robelgordo wrote:Pick Haas for some. Don’t pick Haas for others. Miniature NRL foam footballs for all. And always twirling, twirling, twirling for tackle busts

Yeah this, nothing is really certain anyway that's what's good about this game.

Lots of people (Amateurs, who I quite like, included) were on Cameron Murray as not only a gun but a Cleary/Hynes alternative at the start of last season and I'm sure they have an alternative plan this season, that's fine.

But...I do think it's hysteria to imply that picking two premium guns who don't represent value is somehow going to sabotage your season.

You can give yourself a job to do by picking the wrong starting team but the only time I can remember doing that is when I started looking too early and obsessed about finding value and being too clever.

If you start with the wrong team then you make the changes necessary to get it right. If Hynes is out scoring Haas by round 6 you find a way to get Hynes in as soon as you can but, assuming Haas is still a premium in his position, you probably don't trade him. You just suck it up that you paid too much. We will all do this for someone at some point in the season.

It's pretty curious that we sometimes obsess about $100k for what is a premium scorer in a premium scoring position yet we don't bat an eyelid when talking about spending $100k more on a 'pot luck' selection in a pretty shitty position like CTR.

I know there is the argument about picking up an underpriced gun from the start but how underpriced do we think they are? A lot of pre season speculation seems pretty fanciful. You're just as likely to pick up the $100k on a random outside back.

Aardvark wrote:But...I do think it's hysteria to imply that picking two premium guns who don't represent value is somehow going to sabotage your season.

Last year I had Cook and Tedesco for far too long (maybe all season, cant remember) scoring well under their starting price and still managed to finish 60th. I had much worse picks in my squad to start the year. The guns are rarely that bad unless they get HIA's or injuries, in which case, there is safety in numbers early season.

Its mostly luck as to whether you get those 50/50 calls right, no point sweating it.

my tv broke wrote:

Last year I had Cook and Tedesco for far too long (maybe all season, cant remember) scoring well under their starting price and still managed to finish 60th. I had much worse picks in my squad to start the year.

Its mostly luck as to whether you get those 50/50 calls right, no point sweating it.

Exactly, I choose Tedesco instead of Drinkwater (underpriced gun who represented value) and refused to pick JDB and still managed to squeak into the top 100

Camo123 wrote:

I actually downgraded a fair few of the players I own and upgraded quite a few I don’t own

I’m not going to keep Liam Knight at 42 average

I might knock that one down a bit.

I've added in a feature after all this discussion of having a keeper vs more value picks, that allows you to boost keepers (defined as top n for the position e.g top 3 WFB, top 2 HLF, top HOK or within 3 points of the minimum score to be in the top n or a top 20 projected scorer) by an artificial amount of points - just to increase those players value with the idea you won't need to trade those players out. You won't see those points in the optimised team, but it will try to fit in more keepers this way.

Milchcow wrote:
A tough question for some of these high priced picks is "what does failure look like"

If Haas averages 60 for the first 3 rounds, do you trade him out? Partly depends on other MIDs and if any of them are firing with something that  looks sustainable. But he'll still be one of the top scorers so likely you'll just take the loss of $30-40k and carry on.


Seems popular here that most people will start with Cleary ahead of Hynes.
What if, after a couple of weeks, Cleary is averaging 65 and Hynes is 80 - what do you do? Trust it will balance itself out?
Sharks have bye right before Panthers so a round 6 swap might be on the cards anyway if they are scoring similarly

I would've loved it if the Sharks and Panthers byes were reversed.

I would've closely considered starting with Hynes for 5 games then pivoting to Cleary to run through to Origin (7+ games) - wasting a trade to have a $1mil player on the field each week.
Now analytically, you'd expect approximately the same scores from both, so going the other way round and having Cleary 5 games to Hynes (7+) should be fairly equivalent, but it feels all sorts of wrong and is probably off the menu for me.

mattnz wrote:

Not sure if possible, but you could use the values that people are changing to as the new expected scoring

That's an awesome idea, I might start saving them.

just my take on haas you're paying the premium for him because he consistently scores around 55+ eack week so to me you're paying for consistency...ofc you want him to make money who wouldn't but to me consistency trumps value

I guess the question is how confident you are in your Haas replacement.

Cam Murray has very good pedigree, almost $100k cheaper, he outscored Haas in 2022, and in 2021 they scored about the same. Not out of the question at all for Murray to be the better pick this year.
Depends if you think 2023 was a blip or the start of a downward trend.


JDB is priced similar to Murray and if you exclude injury games got pretty close to Haas's scoring last year. Close enough to be worth saving the money? Haas is a less risky bet but JDB is another of the guys who has potential to be better value.

Probably a couple of other options around but they are the 2 that come immediately to mind.