Thursday, December 23, 2010

Let's Talk Salary Cap For A Minute

This is something that is really bugging me right now. The salary cap games on Fan Duel are priced very inefficiently. This means that the prices of the players do not move accurately enough to reflect their performance.

A superstar that under performs sees his price rarely fall. This also means a value pick - a low priced player having a breakout fantasy season - will see his price move slowly upwards, but not enough to accurately price his fair value.

This has two effects on the game, as I see it:

1) Makes the bargains too obvious.
2) It doesn't make the cap "tight" enough. It allows you to pick obvious bargains in conjunction with studs. In other words, you don't have to make any sacrifices or tough choices.

Now I understand they offset this inefficiency by offering a expert cap game. The problem is, none of the significant money plays that game.

I have discussed the pricing model several times - even with Kaiseroll13 & Zoobird - and they seem to think the pricing model is almost perfect. Here is an actual Zoobird excerpt from Fan Duel chat today:

"No. We've thought about it, but if the prices are TOO accurate, then there's no real advantage to being good at these games.

Imagine if an all knowing God sets the prices...he knows the exact likelihood of all possible outcomes...so the prices are all fair, and you could do just as well throwing darts as researching the games

We think we have the balance about right, but do tweak things from time to time."


No disrespect to Zoobird, but I think this argument is baloney.

If the prices WERE accurate, the skill to the game is completely intact. Not only do you have to make tougher choices, you still have to know the injuries, suspensions, lineup changes, weather, favorable matchups, etc.

I realize I'm in the minority on my view. I also realize that Fan Duel wants to make the games easy to play, as they target the newbies to grow their player base.

It's just a shame that the biggest site (currently) has a lousy salary cap.

1 comment:

SirFWALGMan said...

Ya I might try ING. It is funny how all their ATMs are in CVS's and kiosks like that. :).