2018 NRL.com Fantasy Thread Part 55

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..

I respectfully disagree

I'd say its 20% luck at most. For an individual it may seem more, but when you take into account that everyone is affected the luck thing balances out quite a bit IMO.

Also from my perspective I certainly keep my ear to the ground during the week, but being in NZ with 2 kids <3, and 2+ jobs, I would say on average I watch about 2 halves of footy per week at most. I basically don't know the players outside of their stats - hence the questions I ask on here at times.

So IMO strategy and good quantitative analysis are the keys.

I currently sit 28th in NRLF and 10th in VSDT

EDIT: not me that down voted you BTW

Rippin and Tearin wrote:

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

I'm seeing strong correlation for those in the top 200. Lower trades trending towards higher rank.

Some outliers in a 'strong' position:

• Fraser with 10 trades and rank 52. Typical trades for this rank 6-8.
  MTB with 11 trades and rank 86. Typical trades for this rank 8-10
  BL with 12 trades and rank 90. Typical trades for this rank 8-10
  

Potentially 'weak' positions to maintain/gain rank:

• pm88 with 6 trades and rank 60
  Bullbender with 7 trades and rank 113
  

Between rank 200 and 500 there is one 'strong' outlier:

• Wolfking with 13 trades and rank 439
  

Pinch of salt obviously. No variable of bank/value and unknown how close to a final 17/18 these teams are

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.

Yup good post. What I should have added above is how much this forum helps me. Without it I wouldnt have any where near the rankings Ive got.

It helps with up to date info, ideas around players, and from a few posters some good analysis on players and strategies.

Verbal Kint wrote:

I'm seeing strong correlation for those in the top 200. Lower trades trending towards higher rank.

Some outliers in a 'strong' position:

• Fraser with 10 trades and rank 52. Typical trades for this rank 6-8.
  MTB with 11 trades and rank 86. Typical trades for this rank 8-10
  BL with 12 trades and rank 90. Typical trades for this rank 8-10
  

Potentially 'weak' positions to maintain/gain rank:

• pm88 with 6 trades and rank 60
  Bullbender with 7 trades and rank 113
  

Between rank 200 and 500 there is one 'strong' outlier:

• Wolfking with 13 trades and rank 439
  

Pinch of salt obviously. No variable of bank/value and unknown how close to a final 17/18 these teams are

For the sake of analysis I was actually pretty keen to know how many trades you and zora have left (given you ranking) but perhaps you don't want to share that publicly? I actually ran the numbers with some assumptions for you guys

Yeah, I think there is actually something there. Someone else posted the fact that everyone started from different positions which is a really good point.... Cause if people really f'd up early, their rank would be crappy and they would have had to trade hard to fix their mess, hence blowing out the numbers a bit. The point about looking at data for the autofill league is a sensible one.

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

Yeah, I agree. Id say its 20% luck.

If it were 90% luck. The top 200 of the entire comp wouldn't have 20players from this community alone.

Being part of this community gives you a great platform to 'get lucky' off. I.e ensuring you don't miss the obvious picks. It seems that some people have just made some horrible picks (20/20 hindsight). Some weren't that obvious at the time. I mean Maloney, who the F would have thought he would be a decent pick up.

my tv broke wrote: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.

Simply put, you'll know in the first three-five rounds whether you're a chance for the overall prize.

I tend to be more conservative than most which is why my worst ranking is usually mid-season or right before origin in the past when bye planning was more relevant.

I tend to make up lot of ground in the last few rounds where injuries/suspensions/rests happen and people are out of trades/back-up to cover.
Will be slightly different this year with the EMG set-up but I should still make ground if I have the trades available.

Would be interesting to see trades average or a spread split by ranks with a few rounds to go

ie; rank 1-100 - 20% 3+ trades 20% 2 trades, 10% 1 trade, 50% 0 trades
101-400
401-1000
1001-2000
2000-5000

ranking buckets split by a points value, ie; new split every 200 points down the ladder to keep it consistent.

This would give players a really good idea about how they should expect to move in rankings ie; if you have no trades left and the average in your bucket is 3 trades left, expect to lose a fair bit of ground... other end of the scale if most in your bucket have 0 trades left and you have 2-3 then you should be making some good ground in those last few rounds.

my tv broke wrote: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.

Rank round 3 = 3,068
Rank round 15 = 40

The early rounds I was trading in all the cash cows to build up money. I've also been very lucky injury wise. I remember last year I was getting an injury just about every week so instead of trading in the cash cows I had to replace injured players.

White Lightning wrote:

Rank round 3 = 3,068
Rank round 15 = 40

The early rounds I was trading in all the cash cows to build up money. I've also been very lucky injury wise. I remember last year I was getting an injury just about every week so instead of trading in the cash cows I had to replace injured players.

I was trying to find my round 3 rank too. How'd you get that WL?

Im thinking mine might be very similar to yours.

Krump wrote:
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.

Have been taking the week off to have a break from fantasy but have just caught up in the thread.


I agree for stats purposes the auto fill league is the perfect use to see how things went.
Everyone has exactly the same starting team to use as a starting reference and while some may have gambled more or tried different strategies it will be interesting to see how teams have changed.

Might have a look when I get home tonight in the league and see what info is useful that we can see

Rippin and Tearin wrote:

I was trying to find mine too. How'd you get that WL?

Im thinking mine might be very similar to yours.

I have an excel spreadsheet I maintain for each round.

Verbal Kint wrote:Between rank 200 and 500 there is one 'strong' outlier:

• Wolfking with 13 trades and rank 439
  

I thought I am in an okay position in correlation with my trades but actually makes the extra trades very crucial and with my cap almost maxed out it's starting to get hard to make some effective moves.  Kind of stuck but looking at some sideways trades just for extra points in round 17 to try and climb some ranks.  Im not confident in climbing much higher than what I am even with the extra trades.

White Lightning wrote:

I have an excel spreadsheet I maintain for each round.

OK, so can't get it from the NRLF site huh?

Rippin and Tearin wrote:

OK, so can't get it from the NRLF site huh?

Last year we had full on graphs that we could access, not sure why they got rid of those.....

20% luck?? I have it the other way around at 80% luck. You can have all the years of experience playing the game and skill in bye planning to make up ground throughout the weeks, but if you miss too many key cows/value mid rangers you have no chance of winning this thing!

I can count at least 6 value buys (200k+ profit) I missed like Maloney, Hiku, Tevaga, Gjennings, Hampton, Su'a. Thats 1.2 mil I couldve had instead of taking a punt on sorenson, capewell, lamb, ipapalii, gosiewski, rochow...

Furthermore was late on Matterson, coulda picked up Marsters or Ramien on the cheap. The list goes on and on.. but my point is it takes a bit of skill to pick up decent cows, but a lot more luck to pick the best ones and move them on.

Probably the most savvy fantasy player on here is MS. He is the master of saving trades because he doesn't panic. While someone like myself runs out of trades MS has plenty up his sleeve after the origin period & then mows everyone down ranking wise.

Anyone got any information around late season cows last year? I don't remember much but it would be interesting to see if there were any who could've been potentially considered "keepers" given a cheap price and excellent scoring in the later rounds.

Even anecdotally, anyone remember any stand out players?

filthridden wrote:Anyone got any information around late season cows last year? I don't remember much but it would be interesting to see if there were any who could've been potentially considered "keepers" given a cheap price and excellent scoring in the later rounds.

Even anecdotally, anyone remember any stand out players?

Cotric comes to mind.

wolfking wrote:


Cotric comes to mind.

He played all of last season, didn't he? Did he score significantly better in the last half?

filthridden wrote:

He played all of last season, didn't he? Did he score significantly better in the last half?

Cant recall but probably not since I ended up selling him and finished the year with Croker, BJ and Rapa. Was not fun.

Kaufusi, but I think his scores actually dropped off for the run home.