Mastersball Fantasy Forum

I've played in 39 of the daily Mastersball contests on FantasyScore so far this year. I thought it might be interesting/informative to look at these results, as compared to the Mastersball contingent and a few of the top regular players from the site. Some have played nearly every day, and some have only played a few times, so the sample size is small, and the percentages of those who have played only a few may be misleading. Here are the %'s (note that this only includes the dates when I've played, so your % may be different than this over all the contests):

ToddZola 100% (4 contests)
brianjesterff 85.7% (7)
ryan2485 68.8 (32)
BrianWalton 66.7 (9)
Pasko 66.7 (6)
Philtheez 63.2 (19)
RealFishman 62.2 (37)
alleyoop 59 (39)
MarcTheGator 51.7 (29)
RobMastersball 50 (2)
missjanisjames 48.4 (31)
DH125 37.5 (8)
lawr 34.8 (23)
ZachMLB 0 (2)
Rob_A_L 0 (5)

Observations (too early to call these conclusions):

1. The top site players, in general, have outperformed the MB players.
2. Most of the players listed who have played regularly have a high enough percentage to win money, though not a lot. RealFishman, who is the top player on the site, only has cashed 62.2%.
3. My gut, and my results elsewhere tell me that this site/contest is significantly softer than average. If so, beating this contest doesn't mean that one can win across all sites/contests.

Comments?

yeah, i should play FantasyScore more

Roger that, although I'm not sure I want another tough competitor there. Just kidding - the more MBers the better.

Truth be told I've been playing the Baseball HQ GPP a couple times a week. We're selling out our 50/50 regularly and really don't want to take a spot from a reader. I'll do it, of course, when my alter ego represents the site.

My hit rate with the GPP isn't great but I do OK. The sharks aren't on Score (yet anyway) so maybe if you grind your ROI is good.

I suspect I'll end up playing more football with Score than baseball. My time to do lineups is so limited, I'm sticking to where I'm most comfortable - and successful - at least for now.

Interesting and fun data Oops. I do know I am my own worst enemy, setting a roster and then forgetting to double check starters, or worse, setting changing, and forgetting to hit update. ugh.

it is fun, though, the DFS route!

While it's still the short term, my guess is that the results reflect the relative experience levels of the players more than any ability/inability to play the game. There is definitely (or should I have said "indeed"?) learning curve with this. While some may have good results right away, most likely those will be short-lived, as I believe they are at a big disadvantage to those who have been at it for quite a while, no matter how strong their analytical skills and baseball knowledge might be.

The jury is out on whether or not I can beat the game. My results have been somewhat discouraging, but I think I have learned quite a bit. The question is whether my current (or more to the point, my future) skill level is good enough to beat the "vig". I need to win more than 55.5% of the time to beat it, in 50/50 games. Right now, I'm not doing that - well, I am in this particular contest, but not across the board. I think that I can improve to the point where I beat it, but that begs the question - by how much? The good news - I enjoy doing it, so I consider the time spent as a non-cost. So I don't need to beat it by much to feel like it's worth doing. The little bit of analysis that I've done so far indicate that some people can, and do beat the game, by significant margins. I'd sure like to become one of them.

Lawr, I suspect that your results would be better in large field GPP contests than in 50/50 or h2h games. I say this because you tend to zig, when others zag. That really lends itself to large player pools with a small number of relatively large prizes. But it's a liability, IMO, in 50/50 and h2h games.