2018 NRL.com Fantasy Thread Part 55

sajjos wrote:Rank 157
Trade left 10

So far I can't see any pattern.

Haha no neither can I - at least Im proving myself wrong though

Bump:

Hey guys, collecting some data and hope to do a bit of analysis come the end of the year. I'm after your current rank and number of trades left prior to trading for round 16. Cheers to those who've already contributed.

Name - rank - trades remaining (prior to round 16)
Loomer: 540, 12
R&T: 28, 4
wolfking: 439, 13
filth: 2093, 11
Liverpool Bulldog: 117, 9
Awana Mafia: 161, 12
Rhino: 242, 6
WL: 40, 9
SI: 1048, 8
StormTrooper: 612, 11
Welshy: 547, 7
MTB: 86, 11
Chapper: 1542, 7
Chucky: 644, 12
Fraser: 52, 10
Fortitude: 62, 8
Chewie: 2633, 4
pm88: 60, 6
No Worries: 5909, 7
StuDogg: 475, 8
EGF: 1570, 10
Lukeaye: 554, 6
Hamstar: 962, 9
ClackBock: 1787, 10
Soylent: 213, 10
Blain: 701, 10
Stuffness: 247, 10
Frol: 1102, 11
Danseels: 249, 9
WT2K: 138, 10
Babou: 913, 11
Neillo: 316, 7
Chitmunkey: 253, 6
Pain: 526, 12
Trajan: 95, 9
Bullbender: 113, 7
Rev: 1878, 7
Sajjos: 157, 10
KiwiOil: 7358, 11
Code delta: 3587, 6
lucky8: 412, 8
Mighty fishes: 998, 7
Goodnight Kiwi: 104, 10
BL: 90, 12

Haha, so currently a negative correlation of small magnitude and no statistical significance!!

Certainly not what I was expecting

Can this experiment now. Thanks to everyone for sharing your details

Rippin and Tearin wrote:Haha, so currently a negative correlation of small magnitude and no statistical significance!!

Certainly not what I was expecting

Can this experiment now. Thanks to everyone for sharing your details

I should've let you know earlier, I did the same thing last year later in the season and there were no trends whatsoever.

rhinoceroo wrote:Would be interesting to use the data to track the finishing positions of those with 10/11 trades left now as compared to those with 6/7.

Yeah that was my original plan. Could be done without bugging people for their ranks etc too as that data could get grabbed off the NRL site.

You wanna do it? not sure I can be bothered now that my initial hypothesis seems to have been so far off the mark

Out of interest, there is a positive correlation in these data if you restrict to a subset of the "top performers". Its a bit sketchy (data mining), but the logic here is that the people who have poor rankings (in this case > 650) have either had really bad luck, are for want of a better word, are just a bit shit at NRLF regardless of their trading strategy. Correlation is still not significant though.....

filthridden wrote:

I should've let you know earlier, I did the same thing last year later in the season and there were no trends whatsoever.

Oh well, at least there is some consistency

Does the lack of trends show that luck is a much bigger factor in this game than we give it credit for perhaps?

wolfking wrote:Does the lack of trends show that luck is a much bigger factor in this game than we give it credit for perhaps?

I've only been playing for 2 years, so probably not the best person to try and answer this.

Im not sure actually. Luck for sure is a big factor, but it does seem like people who are good at fantasy tend to be consistently good over the years (anecdotally).

What it says to me is that aggressiveness of trading and therefore that part of fantasy strategy might not be as important as I initially thought and that other aspects of the fantasy game are more key. That being said, what I did above in terms of "analysis" is just a handful of people, in one fantasy year, and a year where there have been some pretty big changes from the proviso year.

I still believe that aggressiveness of trading plays a big part in this game, although clearly the numbers don't back me up. I am also quite surprised to see that there are a number of people on the list with really good rankings top 100/150 that still have heaps of trades left. That for sure goes against what I had thought would be the case.

It would be really interesting to see peoples overall ranks year by year - that would start to get at that luck element.

wolfking wrote:Does the lack of trends show that luck is a much bigger factor in this game than we give it credit for perhaps?

I would agree. Timing of trades i.e. when you decide to buy a player has an element of both skill & luck. For example if you purchased R. James 2 rounds ago you would of netted 170-180 points. Now you could argue that a high degree of luck is involved &/or you could argue it was a result of being a skilled fantasy player. Picking the right captain is also important & this is more skill than luck except if you go for a left field captain which is more luck if it comes off.

Rippin and Tearin wrote:


Name - rank - trades remaining (prior to round 16)
Loomer: 540, 12
R&T: 28, 4
wolfking: 439, 13
filth: 2093, 11
Liverpool Bulldog: 117, 9
Awana Mafia: 161, 12
Rhino: 242, 6
WL: 40, 9
SI: 1048, 8
StormTrooper: 612, 11
Welshy: 547, 7
MTB: 86, 11
Chapper: 1542, 7
Chucky: 644, 12
Fraser: 52, 10
Fortitude: 62, 8
Chewie: 2633, 4
pm88: 60, 6
No Worries: 5909, 7
StuDogg: 475, 8
EGF: 1570, 10
Lukeaye: 554, 6
Hamstar: 962, 9
ClackBock: 1787, 10
Soylent: 213, 10
Blain: 701, 10
Stuffness: 247, 10
Frol: 1102, 11
Danseels: 249, 9
WT2K: 138, 10
Babou: 913, 11
Neillo: 316, 7
Chitmunkey: 253, 6
Pain: 526, 12
Trajan: 95, 9
Bullbender: 113, 7
Rev: 1878, 7
Sajjos: 157, 10
KiwiOil: 7358, 11
Code delta: 3587, 6
lucky8: 412, 8
Mighty fishes: 998, 7
Goodnight Kiwi: 104, 10
BL: 90, 12
Krump: 1670, 9

Added

Rank: 666
Trades 12

Here's my team for anyone that wants to evaluate it:

Cash: $98k
Trades: 11

Cook
Fifita, Taupau
Lolo, Surgess, Harris
DCE, Johnson
Inglis, Mitchell
Ponga, Tedesco, CThompson

CSmith, Arrow, Murray, Martin

Brimson, Cogger, Gosieski, Olive

Expected trades:

Murray ---> Farah
CThompson ---> Holland (will then bring in a keeper WFB the following round, leaving Holland and Olive as my CTR/WFB backups).

Rippin and Tearin wrote:

Oh well, at least there is some consistency

I reckon doing this with the autofill league guys would give a much better baseline. I think you were on the money with your thoughts on aggressive trading but you can't take into account that all of us started from different points.

Fantasy is 90% luck, as long as you have your ear to the ground and watch NRL enough to know the players. Let's be honest - no one can accurately predict someones points going one week to the next.

Head knocks and injuries often occur and can easily rule out your captain early on. Guys get dropped despite being fantasy beasts. Team performances are a massive factor to scores, it's hard enough to pick a round of results in the NRL let alone how many tackle breaks someone makes..

Yep, lets look at some of the things that no one would've predicted at the start of the year:

Rhyse Martin - would anyone have figured he'd be starting second row, play very well and then seemingly dropped to obscurity?

Shaun Johnson missing a number of games in the first half of the season.

Mybe and Robbie Farah transferring to the Tigers mid-season.

Cowboys coming near last.
Warriors in the top four.

Mitchell Pearce injured for about half of the season.

Nathan Brown injured and then return date seeming to change each week

A number of injuries in the sharks and no clear pecking order for the back ups.

Both Mansour and Edwards gone for the season.

Lolohea and Thompson rotating at fullback.

This is just off the top of my head and we're only halfway through the season.

David Fusitua top try scorer.

Cleary getting injured and Maloney almost becoming a must-have in fantasy for a month+.

Liverpool_Bulldog wrote:

Should have known better bringing in a 30-40 point player without tries.

What you reckon you'll do?

Probably looking at Farah or Luke for my interchange. Free up some cash

It's also about playing the percentages, going on gut feelings and intuition from past experience and following whatever strategy you decide on with regards to trading/player preference etc. We all have to pick a couple of rookies based on preseason/NYC and so on, but what I enjoy about this forum is the extra insight I/we get from people who know a bit more about them from lower grades. Helps with predictions/expectations prior to round 1.

I'll never pick Aubbs no matter how much love he gets around here. Or Dugan. To me, that's limiting the chance for being let down. I was burned by I Papalii once before so never considered him... turns out he went much better this year. Picking SJ has been risky this season, but when he's on he's the #1 half without question. I don't think anyone expected Thurston to be a 'gun' in the true sense of the word anymore but I don't think anyone expected quite such a fall from grace. It's swings and roundabouts for sure.

StuDogg101 wrote:It's also about playing the percentages, going on gut feelings and intuition from past experience and following whatever strategy you decide on with regards to trading/player preference etc. We all have to pick a couple of rookies based on preseason/NYC and so on, but what I enjoy about this forum is the extra insight I/we get from people who know a bit more about them from lower grades. Helps with predictions/expectations prior to round 1.

I'll never pick Aubbs no matter how much love he gets around here. Or Dugan. To me, that's limiting the chance for being let down. I was burned by I Papalii once before so never considered him... turns out he went much better this year. Picking SJ has been risky this season, but when he's on he's the #1 half without question. I don't think anyone expected Thurston to be a 'gun' in the true sense of the word anymore but I don't think anyone expected quite such a fall from grace. It's swings and roundabouts for sure.

I also refuse to pick handsome Aubbs or Dugan. Although, I also have Reynolds on my list. This has stung me so far this season - unless he goes down in round 18 (death riding....). I just have an inflated injury-proneness view of him. He's missed 20 games from 150 (rounding) so not that bad.

Blain wrote:Fantasy is 90% luck, as long as you have your ear to the ground and watch NRL enough to know the players. Let's be honest - no one can accurately predict someones points going one week to the next.

Head knocks and injuries often occur and can easily rule out your captain early on.  Guys get dropped despite being fantasy beasts. Team performances are a massive factor to scores, it's hard enough to pick a round of results in the NRL let alone how many tackle breaks someone makes..

It's nowhere near 90% luck or good players wouldn't be able to have consistently high ranks year after year.

I would be interested in how your overall rank after, say, round 3, corresponds to overall rank now.

It seems to me as though the way you come out of the gates in the first three rounds shapes your season.


Also might be interesting to see who the top 3 or top 5 cash cows were in the first 5 rounds, who started with them and who didn't, and where you're ranked now. Might be tricky to collate that info.