I’m a poker player, and have been playing the game for something like four or five years at this point. There is one tell-tale giveaway at every poker game as to who “knows what they are doing” and that is people’s response to your decision making. Let’s say I lose the hand, actually let’s say I knew I was going to lose the hand but I called anyway. A fellow player at the table remarks, “Bad call buddy, he obviously had you.”
However, he was betting a low percentage of the pot and I had high equity! Let’s also say that maybe 70% of the hands in his range lose to my current hand. You almost have to call, which is maybe why he bet what he did. The point is, over the long term it is positive EV (expected value) meaning I will make money over the long term. The chirper at the table only understands the game at the basic level.
What am I talking about?
Now you may be saying; “Enough with the yap fest, we get it you have a moderate understanding of poker game theory but what does this have to do with Fantasy Football?” Well it has to do with decision making specifically, and how we evaluate our picks and trades. Fantasy season is back (football hasn’t arrived, but any self respecting fantasy player is already doing mocks two weeks ago) and of course I’ve restarted my yearly tradition of putting aside every non football song, podcast and radio station in exchange for constant fantasy talk and information. One through line I am so sick of hearing through all of them;
What if he gets injured?
I despise this sentence with every fiber of my being, we are talking about Football, the most violent game in the world. A game that, not maybe, will send its players to an early grave. This sport is brutal, unforgiving and relentless. Players will get hurt, hell almost everyone on your draft board will get injured at some point in their career it is just a matter of when.
You can’t always make the ‘right’ decision
So why the poker yap to begin this? Well, my approach to fantasy is sort of a poker mentality, especially when making decisions. An example; You have the first pick in the draft, CMC is staring you right in the face and you click draft. Genius, you’ve done it. The first step in your path to victory.
He gets hurt week 2.
Tell me, was it a bad pick? Did you choke? No absolutely not, we have seen CMC’s production, we have seen what he does for fantasy teams. You got the maximum value for your number 1 pick. There were fantasy football owners faded CMC last year because of his injury history and simply put, missed out on a championship. It doesn’t matter if he got hurt, in theory your expected value long term will make you money, or in the case of fantasy, win you games.
It may be funny to think about something like expected value from a fantasy perspective, because players get old or sometimes just get bad, but if you look at CMC’s production when healthy, it’s almost a guarantee that as long as you draft middle of the road the rest of the way you are making the playoffs.
So until CMC shows a lack of production, you disregard injury concerns. You have to consider the short term future to some degree, but don’t let fear scare you away from making the winning decision.
Maybe this seems obvious to a lot of you and well I hope it is, but injury concerns are rampant in the fantasy community. I do not care that James Conner gets hurt every season, his ADP is the seventh, even eighth round.
This is a guy who averaged his highest YPC in his career last year and rushed for 1000 yards in 13 games on a horrible offense! A lot of these mid round picks are underwhelming as well, he feels like a steal at that value. I also don’t need my 7th round pick to survive all year, I’ll trust myself on waivers and with my earlier picks. If Conner can get me 12-13 solid games, that’s value!
Don’t worry, I learned from experience
One more similar story for you, and I will tell this without a shred of shame. I benched Amari Cooper in the playoffs last year. Yes, that week. I had a tough decision between him and Kenneth Walker, and while neither were particularly exciting to me, Amari was dreadful. Here is Amari’s fantasy production the 5 weeks leading up to that game (standard scoring); 9.8, 3.4, 1.6, 3.4, 5.7, 16.9. Fairly pathetic outside that last week, a week in which Ken Walker also had a nice output, and higher at that than Amari’s. I went with what I felt like was the hotter player, that would get more touches, and that would get more red zone opportunities.
I was called an idiot, I was mocked and for that night I definitely felt like one. However, I am not. Perhaps you are someone who foresaw 50 ppr points that week, in which case please reach out with tomorrow’s lottery numbers. Much like in poker, where you rarely consider the opponent having quads because it is so rare, you cannot foresee a 50 point performance.
In fantasy, sometimes you bench a 50 point player, or your star gets hurt. That doesn’t mean you turn into a p—- who lets the past dictate their present decisions. Make the smart decision, the data driven decision, the high EV decision and I assure you, it will pan out at some point. This is gambling, a lot of luck and circumstance is involved. Take control of the little bit of control we have, do not get scared into a reckless decision. This game we play is so difficult already, don’t make it any more so.
About us
My name is Brandon I go by Bluesy online and in our discord (https://discord.gg/VWBwWB98) and we are The Sports Mattress, a website built by my brother Jason where we are trying to foster a Fantasy Football community and supply in depth data and statistics that you would normally have to pay for anywhere else. The website is pretty bare bones as we just want to give you what you need without the fluff, as of now you can find stats like Target Share % and snap count that normally is hidden behind paywalls.
This is the first post for our blog section where both me and Jason will share thoughts, strategies and opinions for the upcoming fantasy year. Please consider joining the discord, it is brand new and we are hoping by the time the season starts we can have a thriving server of fellow fantasy heads discussing sit/starts, trades and all the other fun fantasy stuff we all love. Also please consider donating if you find the site helpful, it is completely optional and you have full access whether you do or not.
Good luck with those mocks, talk soon!
