Game Theory in Fantasy Football
With fantasy football just beginning, everyone involved is trying to figure out how to get the best combination of players at one time to beat their opponent’s lineup. Those who choose to play for the big money pool have much more at stake. Two of the biggest fantasy competitions include DraftKings Millionaire Maker and FanDuel $5M Sunday Million, in which the winner for the week in each receives $2 million and $1 million respectively. With a salary cap for the week that contestants are to spend on their players they choose for their lineup, the common strategy would be to spend it all, as the best players cost the most money. However, a new theory is proposed in which it is best to leave money on the table; the majority of contestants will all be looking to spend their entire salary on trying to get the top players for the week, but even if you were to win with this combination, the odds of many other contestants with the same lineup is very high. Splitting the winnings with over 100 people will be a lot less satisfying. In another strategy, contestants may go for spending less money to get a more unique lineup and have much less of a chance of having to share the prize if they win. In large tournaments such as these, a better method may be going against the crowd to create a unique lineup.
As we discussed in class and as is stated in the article, game theory involves logic and predictions of what your opponents moves are likely to be in order to optimize your own gains. Of course each user wants to get their best response, in which they will get the most gains out of all of their options, but sometimes this depends on which move their opponent makes. It is necessary to predict what your opponent will do in order to then make the best choice to work to your advantage based off their move; your best response may only be achievable with an option your opponent is very unlikely to pick because it does not play to their advantage at all. For example, your best response may be the one that is most likely to be successful, involving spending your entire salary to get the best players. But for this to truly be your best response, this would involve winning all the prize money and thus counting on none of your opponents to choose the same lineup, which is very unlikely. Thus, you must account for the likelihood of which lineup your opponents will pick. If you were to realize many people are likely to spend the whole salary and end up with the same lineup, picking a lineup that leaves leftover money from your salary creates a unique lineup that will result in more winnings for you if it were successful, and when anything can happen, you might just get lucky.
Source: http://www.chicagofootball.com/pro/2015/09/08/a84d570e63964c909a13844d59376422/