Blair Andrews looks ahead to the FFPC Playoff Challenge and offers some thoughts on general lineup construction strategy and potential leverage opportunities.
The FFPC Playoff Challenge is one of my favorite contests of the fantasy football season. Its unique scoring settings and roster requirements always make for an interesting puzzle, and the game theory aspects add to the intrigue.
You can pick any players you want to fill your 12-player lineup. The only wrinkle is that you can only use one player from each team. Once a player’s team is eliminated, he scores no more points for you. Points scored in the Super Bowl count double, so it’s worth your while to have your highest scoring positions filled with players in the Super Bowl. It’s not atypical to see some players wind up on 75% or more of the lineups entered into the contest, so it’s also critical to differentiate your team where possible.
We can begin to think about constructing a lineup as we would a DFS contest, where we’re trying to find the right balance between what’s most likely to happen, and what the rest of the field is overconfident about. The first step is to figure out which teams are most likely to go deepest into the playoffs. Michael Dubner has updated his numbers now that we have a complete playoff picture.
