Expert's Corner

The Machine – Fantasy Football 2011

*** Leonard LaPadula: October 18, 2011 "The Machine Is Almost Doubling The Probability To Win" ***

I am excited to report mid-season performance of The Machine. We collect weekly metrics data to see how our users' teams are doing and to ensure we continually improve our product. The results are in - users in 12-team leagues that used The Machine to draft have a 15.8% probability to win. The average user in a 12-team league has an 8.3% probability to win. So using The Machine is almost doubling the probability to win.

I play in 3 leagues, the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) Expert's Contest, a CBS Double Diamond League, and a private MyFantasyLeague called Hog Wild. All three of my teams are 5-1 and my probability to win each league averages 33%.

The FSTA Expert's Contest is a publicly viewable league at: http://www34.myfantasyleague.com/2011/home/14552#0

Here are snapshots from the HOME page of The Machine for each of my three leagues:

You are welcome to run The Machine yourself at: http://advancedsportslogic.com/en/run-it-now?host=myFantasyLeague&L=36745&F=0009

Fantasy Football is played for a lot more reasons than just winning a pot of money at the end of the season, but when it happens getting that check at the end of the season is always a sweet feeling. So assuming the probabilities we are measuring so far carry through to the end of the year and The Machine ultimately does increase the average person's chance of winning by 7.5%, what is the return on investment (ROI) for purchasing The Machine for a single league assuming a purchase price of $25, that your entry fee is $100 and the first place prize is $600. 7.5% of $600 is $45. Therefore the average ROI for purchasing The Machine for only a single $100-league is $20 - smart move! It gets only better if you play in multiple leagues or in higher prize money leagues.

*** Glenn Pearson: October 2, 2011 "Quote of the Week" ***

*** Leonard LaPadula: October 1, 2011 "Announcing Trade Arbitration" ***

Today marks another historic day for Advanced Sports Logic. We are the first ever to provide a trade arbitration capability based on the impact the trade has on each team's probability to win. Since no two people can agree on how all NFL players will do, many times trades are protested based on varying opinions of a players value. Advanced Sports Logic runs a trade analysis with four industry recognized sets of projections taking into account each team's roster, matchup schedule, scoring rules, and starting line up requirements. It also takes into account what players are available from waivers. Then if the trade analysis is good for each team with at least one set of projections, the trade is considered a fair trade because based on varying opinions each team owner could reasonably believe the trade benefits them.

Advanced Sports Logic hopes to provide services to league providers in the future to make it much easier to identify and prevent collaborative and lopsided trades that owners lack the stamina to fight towards the end of the season when only a few teams remain standing. This year, the beta version of trade arbitration, shown above, will be made available free of charge to all commissioners in MyFantasyLeague, RealTime Fantasy Sports and to a select group of commissioners in CBS.

*** Leonard LaPadula: September 10, 2011 "Trade Analysis Just Went To Production" ***

I am excited about our new Trade Analysis feature. It is the most comprehensive trade analysis tool ever available for fantasy football. Using The Machine's patent-pending probability-distribution season calculations, it is able to calculate the impact a trade has to your team based on your probability to win the championship. It includes consideration for the
strength of position on your roster and also what players are already available in waivers.

I received a message from one of my opponents, "BenJarvus Green-Ellis on the block, looking for a WR". So I opened up The Machine and compared the importance of my players and the importance of my opponents players using The Machine's drop analysis decent tier2 RB, so I plugged Malcom Floyd #2 WR for SDC, for BenJarvus. The Machine says this trade increases my change to win by almost 0.5%. I don't know if the proposal will be accepted, but I have entered the proposal, starting a process of trade negotiation. Hopefully, the trade will be accepted, if not, maybe I will get a counter and can use the Trade Analysis feature to help me find a beneficial trade my opponent will accept.

The Machine takes the guess work out and gives me the tools I need to continuously improve my team through the season.

*** Leonard LaPadula: September 2, 2011 "Waiver Recommendations Now in Production" ***

My league just finished its draft today.  I used The Machine for my draft and before the draft started, I used the player and pick value table to guide me in keeper trades and pick for pick trades.  The Machine gave me the information I needed to trade out of the first round and pick up and extra early round pick.  At the conclusion of the draft out of 12 teams, The Machine gives my team a 73.2% chance of making the playoffs and the highest probability of winning, 17.1% out of 12 teams.

My team is off to a great start, but our studies last year showed that on average, about 50% of the players we acquire during our draft are not on our team at the end of the year.  Well we just released our full waiver recommendation capability less than an hour ago.  Within minutes after my draft completed, The Machine was giving me valuable recommendations about how to improve my team.  Our patent-pending waiver recommendation process has three steps.

First it analyzes all the players on your team roster to determine how much your probability to win the championship is impacted by losing the player.  As you can see in the following figure, players are ranked from most valuable to least valuable.

Next it lets you guide it through some of your preferences.  Being in a keeper league, and believe Jacoby Jones is going to step up this year, I did not want The Machine to consider Jacoby to drop him on the waiver wire, so I clicked the retain button next to his name.  Also, there are still some good defenses available on waivers and I did not want The Machine to recommend to pick a defense, unless I was dropping another defense in exchange, so I clicked limit under Def.

Finally I clicked the "Get Recommendations" button and in under a minute I had great waiver recommendations to consider all sorted in positionally sensitive manner to enter into my leagues blind-bidding multi-round waivers.  It has shown me how I can improve my team's probability to win the championship by 1% simply by swapping defenses and kickers. It also lightly recommended I consider dropping Todd Heap and picking up Brent Celek.  Tough choice there, but I am sticking with Heap because I feel Kolb will be dumping off to Heap a lot in an offense where Fitzgerald will be stretching the field and receives will be working to get on the same page with Kolb for a while.  I feel Vick would rather take off and run than dump off to his TE, so sticking with what I got.

Since I drafted with The Machine, my team is already well balanced, so for me waiver recommendations will really only jump around as player's projections change.  However, for someone that did not use The Machine to draft, it is amazing what it finds.  And for a limited time, the full waivers recommendation feature is free to My Fantasy League and RealTime Fantasy Sports participants.  Users don't even need to register to try it out; all they need to do is click the link from their franchise page within their leagues.

It feels good to finally make the technology available that I prototyped in 2009 that caused my team to win its first six games in a row, have the highest fantasy points in the middle of the season and give me great odds to win in the playoffs and which got us a 2nd place finish in the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Hearts League last year.  The functionality for Trades is coming soon!

*** Robert Freeman: September 1, 2011 ***

Rob Freeman is an experienced and savvy fantasy football enthusiast and has been playing in multiple leagues for about 30 years. Rob has experience with many of the competitor’s products and has been instrumental since the early days of The Machine in helping to define a product from the viewpoint of the average fantasy football player.

This is what Rob is saying about The Machine 2011:

The Machine 2011 is a revolution in fantasy football software. Gone is the static, old school based philosophy of drafting by RB theory or utilizing some other kind of template. Magazines are not needed anymore for draft help and paying for the usage of fantasy football weekly cheat sheets is no longer the leading edge that they once were, as those personal opinions can be found everywhere. Enter The Machine 2011!

Some people think that the mathematical formulas that define The Machine 2011 will make fantasy football less fun to play because the Artificial Intelligence is superior to a random player's judgment. Other people wonder who can win the one available championship if two or more owners in that league are utilizing The Machine. The strengths and tools within The Machine are best when combined with the fantasy football player's intuition and skill. The Machine is a set of fantasy functions that break down the hardest fantasy decisions into easily viewed choices. Choices such as...

Who should you draft? The Machine gives you the top few players available at each position and ranks them as to who will help you the most. Want to see which free agents can help you more than your current players, during the season? The Machine utilizes data that is derived from schedules, weather, injuries and much more, then gives you actual names of up and coming fantasy scorers. Want to know who to start in an important regular season or playoff game when you have many equal choices between your players? The Machine will give you the edge that, in conjunction with our partners, top media outlets use to make similar decisions.

At the end of the day though, it is up to each and every player to choose amongst the choices that The Machine puts together for you. Even Tom Brady or Adrian Peterson have poor games and each fantasy player needs to utilize their gut instinct to truly choose the starters they are comfortable with. Tweaking your own player projections will alter how The Machine computes your edge, and is one of the real advantages that is placed at your fingertips. The Machine is there to simplify all aspects of fantasy football. The fantasy owner still is the one who pulls the trigger!

Rob's thoughts from the 2009 NFL Season:

It was the twelfth round of the 2009 fantasy football draft. I already had two starting running backs in Chris Johnson and DeAngelo Williams, my two super stud keepers from the prior season. I had selected the Panthers WR Steve Smith in the first round and Tom Brady in the second. I felt like I was way ahead of my league competition and my team was already beginning to rise to dominant status.

I wanted to take a rookie at any position with this pick but I wasn’t sure who. I knew that my friend Leonard was working on some fantasy sports software that crunches math and analyses player probabilities to suggest which player increases your odds of winning the championship at any given time of the season. I asked Leonard what The Machine recommended that I do.

The Machine indicated, very strongly, that WR was the most valuable choice for my current position and for my league itself. It also recommended that I get my 2nd TE. Even though I had been leaning toward Fred Taylor who looked like he might win NE’s rushing job, The Machine’s suggestions were fine with me, so I took the Eagles’ Jeremy Maclin. In subsequent rounds, now following The Machine’s recommendations more closely, I landed Vernon Davis, David Akers, and Ricky Williams. Then I picked the player who really helped me win the championship, and a player recommended by The Machine for the last four rounds, Sydney Rice in the 16th round. Rice will be a great keeper for years to come as will Davis and maybe Maclin. Looking at that draft now, I can see that rounds 1-5 produced players that scored a total of 1215 fantasy points for the year, including production from Chris Johnson. My picks from rounds 12-16 produced 982 points, which was excellent.

I now realize for the last few years, I had been drafting in a somewhat stagnant way. I ascribed to the running back theory in which two starting RB’s are chosen in the first two rounds. I usually picked the first QB or the last, the first TE or the last, and always picked the first defense. Every league has a fantasy point scoring system that dictates certain strategies but generally speaking, my drafting was questionable and too reliant on gut feelings. In fact, I’m not sure if I was focused more on choosing the most productive rookie, highlighting my keen sense of discerning new talent (bragging rights), or putting together a complete, winning team.

The Machine does not care about finding the best rookie or biggest surprise. It does not have to face scrutiny over picking a defense in the seventh round or a starting QB in the eighth. It is all in the math as to which player benefits my team the most at the time I am picking a player. I don’t want to draft solely without intuition so I will look at The Machine’s top 3 recommendations and hope that the player I already have in mind is amongst them. If he is, then I really feel confident that it’s a great pick. If not, I’ll look more closely at the numbers, even in the 16th round!

Now I am wondering which players The Machine will recommend as my best keepers for 2010!

Robert Freeman