NFL Confidence Pool - Week 17 strategy
 

Advance warning - I don't think I have a good play here, but I like the setup enough anyway that I wanted to share it. This place is sometimes collectively clever enough to come up with a few things.

I play in a confidence pool - pick winners of every NFL game, no point spreads, but you assign a weight of 1-16 (or a bit less, 1-14, in bye weeks) to each game and gain those points for outright winners. Mine has enough subscribers that the year-end prizes (even after a weekly prize big enough to put you ahead for the year) are worth watching fairly closely, and I'm in the hunt with one week left.

Here's the scoring setup, after week 16:

1,400 Fred
1,386 QuikSand
1,377 AP
1,350 Ned
...and so forth

The year end payout is that the top two finishers split the final pot 2:1... so the prizes here are 2X, X, and zero for everyone else. So, second prize is a bit better than a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired... you get the picture?

Anyhow... now I'm faced with the obvious desire to finish first, the lesser desire to not lose second, and a quandary as to whether there's any ideal strategy here. Right now I'm not looking for anyone to give me picks... rather I'm looking for thoughts on what my "approach" ought to be for the Week 17 picks.

I have some initial thoughts, but I'll roll this out as an open question for now.

Do you have any insights/predictions/patterns for Fred, Ap, Ned,etc?

No deep insight... but if I were Fred, I would be betting the chalk line here, right? Solid lead, so his best play is to take few risks, basically line up the games by point spread and play all the favorites in more or less that order. That's what I'd expect from him - the weekly prize is nice, but not enough for him to gamble much with the likely top prize.

No real pattern on AP or Ned, I'd expect they are just logical players who are having a lucky/good year but are not thinking this deeply.

So, to put the numbers into perspective... here's one fairly obvious angle, oversimplified.

Let's assume Fred plays the chalk as described above. Let's say that when the point spreads settle, Denver is the heaviest favorite in the list, so the clean play there is to make that your 16 point weight.

Since I'm in 2nd place, one option for me, then, would be to play all the chalk basically as is, but to pick KC (big underdogs at Denver) to win outright and to weight them as my 16 point play. That way, in theory everything else between me and Fred would be a total wash, and I'd have exactly one shot to take the lead -- with a KC upset, I'd get 16 points, he'd get 0, and I'd win by 2 points.

So, that's one way to try to make up the 14 point deficit -- play it straight, but pick one (or maybe two) games to actively flip against the spread, in an effort to make up the fairly big leap right there, with everything else held equal.

But, it seems to me this also makes me more vulnerable to getting caught by the 3rd place guy. If he plays more or less all chalk and he hits Denver over my KC, then he gains 16 points on me and I fall out of the money.

So, that seems like a weak play, based on total EV. Right?

Another element here... I am open to a hedge bet to secure some extra winnings if I have a sound approach there. We don't get to see anyone else's weightings or picks until after the game starts, but I may be able to overcome that if the situation arose.

So, in my situation above... if all that mattered was me needing KC to win outright to take the top prize (skipping the 3rd place worry for the moment), I could consider a money line bet on Denver as a viable part of my approach here.

Flashbacks to sheep and wolves here . . .

Fred picks chalk for the reasons you state

You pick some targeted anti-chalk for the reasons you state

AP knows that you are going anti-chalk, so he pick chalk?

Or, does AP figure that he's got nothing to lose and that he'll need to take chances to win, so he goes anti-chalk?

Have you considered the option of going chalk, but changing up your weights vis a vis rational expectation? Does that get us anywhere?

What is more likely to happen: That the biggest favorite of the weekend loses or that you could pick two or three upsets from the middle (by this I mean not the largest or smallest point spreads, ones that you'd expect the number one guy to weight around 6-10) and get them all right?

I think you have to go chalk except maybe 2 or 3 midrange games where you could see an upset. Not risk a ton of points on them but just enough to give yourself a chance to win without risking it all.

I would think making up 14 points is going to be tough and would probably go chalk and hope to hold onto 2nd place. The guy behind you is going to take a lot of chances so I don't really think you have to worry about him to be honest.

I like the strategy of picking a game where you think the upset is likely rather than one where you think no one else will pick it. With the Broncos having something to play for, the Chiefs have to be no better than 20-30% to win outright. That's a pretty big discount, and a spot where AP is likely to make up some points.

Just want to chime in and say my answer is, without knowing all the picks of other players, I'm not sure any strategy makes a difference.

In SAT terms, the old (D) Not enough information given.

Seems the safest bet is pick as you have all season, and not worry about any perceived outside factors, that you can't be certain are even occurring.

Maybe the right one is to go where you think he has the lowest confidence in the favorite and go big for the upset?

I think the last note in Quik's second post indicates that 3rd place isn't likely to drastically alter his picking strategy due to the fact that they aren't likely to be thinking too hard about it.

From a pure situational strategy standpoint, I think the strategy you outlined is probably not your best bet, if only because the risk you're taking is on the outcome we are valuing as least likely to happen. In reality, your best bet is probably going to be gaming the teams/games that are likely to involves teams resting players and/or seeing what they have for the future with some of their youth. If this was with point spreads, I'd say you have a better shot, but since it's winners, it's tough to ask the Kansas City's of the world to come up with a win when Denver has the #1 seed on the line.

I seem to remember week 17 being unpredictable, kindof like bowl games, because some teams are trying and some teams are just mailing it in. So Vegas chalk isn't as reliable as it normally would be. Aim for who you think would actually win with, as stated, a couple little hedges in the middle points if you want to go for 1st.

Either that or just try to lock in 2nd. Being risk averse, I'd do this, but that's me.

SI

How reliable is Vegas chalk? What's their record this year/over the last few? How confident are we in their predictive success?

The more I think about it, the more your hedge bet idea sounds like the surest thing.

Do the other guys mentioned have a history of playing the chalk? If they don't, I would just keep doing what got you there in the first place. If they do have a history of playing the chalk, I like your idea of trying to copy that, aside from the one gamble.

Yeah, I knew the risks.


The one thing that I am fairly confident about here is *not* trying to get crazy, and pick 4 or 5 games against the chalk. I see that as very unlikely to give me a +14 gain on the leader, and the likelihood of it backfiring and screwing me out of 2nd seems far too great to merit it. So, that's nearly out to me.


The idea of just altering my weightings is fine - but 14 points in one week is an awful lot to make up that way. Back to our heavy favorite example - if I play Denver for only 7 while the leader plays them for 16... then that means I have other games out there to be won for more points, but it's not exactly as liquid as actually betting against and pocketing the points. Very tough to see a +14 or more by picking all the favorites (or even the heavy ones), but just in a different order... again, I likely need to actually nail an upset to pocket the points for the big hit.


And as evidenced by the thread, I reject the idea that no strategy matters here. We're down to one week, we know what the scores are, and we know the payouts for final placement. This is a very different game at this point than it was in week 1 or week 10, and strategy seems to matter a ton right now. My goal is not just to maximize my expected score for the week, my goal is to improve my chances to win without unreasonably compromising my chances to stay in second -- that's a totally different game, I think.

Okay, here are last week's picks from Fred, who has had the lead each of the last few weeks:

Fred ATL (6) MIA (7) SDC (2) NEP (16) PIT (5) IND (13) DAL (4) WAS (11) GBP (14) TBB (8) CAR (9) HOU (12) DEN (15) CHI (10) BAL (1) SFO (3) 104

Without doing any kind of side-by-side, it looks pretty chalky, but not strictly so.

I know Fred personally, and while he's a smart guy, I would not be shocked if his approach is basically like mine has been all year long - use sense of smell primarily, and make the week's picks in the space of about 60 seconds.

I wonder if that makes a strict all-chalk slate the best way to go... and leave the door open for him to get a little too cute? (The theory that week 17 is unpredictable seems to undermine this, but I'm still chewing on that)

What about arranging a split with (edit) AP, then betting on KC? Wouldn't that at least lock you into either 1/2X or X? Further, if you can have him go contrarian on the top 2 games you guys could each get 1.5X.

If collaboration is allowed

While I'm sure that a side deal would be fine - I don't know AP personally, and doubt I'd be able to strike up a deal that quickly.

But I confess, I hadn't thought about collaboration.

I like stevew.

Sorry but that's weak. You win or lose on your own.

Do you know Fred?

As in, do you have the opportunity to try to subtley screw with him and get him to over-think his strategy so you can play the smarter straightforward play for yours?

I know Fred, but geography has placed us far enough apart that I likely have zero chance to either influence him or make this more personal than it might otherwise be.

Here's the pasted projected weightings from one randomly googled site:

From that listing (if we start with that as the "chalk") I see picking CLE and OAK as fairly viable upset plays, if I wanted to go that way. I just entered in some dummy picks (just to make sure I didn't completely forget) ... and I overweighted both TEN and BUF it seems, without that being a true strategy.

CLE and OAK are both without their starting QBs in all likelihood this week, and while Weeden stinks, some guy I never heard of got the 1st team reps for the Browns today. I know there were no lines for those games originally because of this, so maybe that could be throwing it off in those rankings (can't check for updated lines from work, sorry).

eta: I'd personally put much more faith in GB winning. A win locks up a bye, and they've been playing very well of late.

Yeah you just have to find the right upsets.. Philly at New York ?? Vick starting. Reid's last game. Could they be inspired to end the playoff hopes for the giants?

Look at the vikings packer game and look at how your opponent has been weighing the two teams for the last few weeks. Heavy on packers? Who's he likely to pick based on history ? Pick the opposite for around a handful.

Who's his favorite team ? Are they out of playoff contention? Will he make a bad biased pick?

Yeah, I'm with you there - I had them as an 8 in my first draft, should have mentioned that as well.

If that is somewhat reliable, I max my points on Bills. You then need to choose either Vikings, Bengals, Colts, or Lions as 15 points and then play the rest straight up.

You don't have to choose major upsets here. If he puts down a game as 3 and you have 13, that's all you need. I wouldn't go choosing upsets but would instead look at low confidence games and max them if you can get two of them you really like.

I've screwed myself in a similar pool a couple of times and I am now convinced that playing each week as if it were week 1 is the best way to go. Making your normal picks put you in 2nd place for the year, why change things up now?

The more I think about it, I think I'd just make my picks as-is, i.e. without trying to do something just for "strategy". I tend to be more pro-risk in these types of things, but with a 9 pt lead and 14 pts to make up, I think you're better off protecting 2nd with a still solid chance of making up enough ground through normal picking to win 1st. And making a pick just to potentially add big points in one shot will likely lose you 2nd when the upset doesn't happen.

eta: Or what Marmel said.

Most definitely.

OT - Hungry lions puzzle - Front Office Football Central

I've been thinking about this. If I am in 3rd or less, I convince myself to go risky here. If 3rd place is as good as last place, I have no reason not to go for broke.

So, if I were to guess, the guy above you is going to go chalk, while the guy below you is going to go risky.

Thanks for the input to all.

My picks, likely final, include mostly home teams, with low weights on the three road picks (GB 6, HOU 4, BAL 1). My heavy picks are DEN, SF, NO, NYG, ATL.

I think it's very unlikely that I can catch the top guy, and my entry really isn't taking a shot at that.

I may offer a side by side pick list once they become publicly available, for those who gave this some thought.

Yeah please do. 3rd place guy as well.

Among the longshots, I continue to like CLE as my top play here -- in this contest I reflected that by weighting PIT as only a 2-weight pick, but I did manage to talk myself into a money line bet on the Browns at +400. I actually suspect that a combined wager of several money line bets on the several longshots this week might be +EV in week 17.

Also, I have WAS as my 7 weight, so I will have a hedge opportunity if we get to that game and it looks like I could be caught for 2nd. I doubt I'd take it, but that is in my thinking.

Here are the unformatted picks for the early games, sorry in advance for the likely mess - don't have time ATM to clean it up.

- - - - -

Fred BUF (2) HOU (4) CIN (1) TEN (6) PIT (8) NYG (7) CHI (9) ATL (5) NOS (11)

QuikSand BUF (5) HOU (4) BAL (1) TEN (8) PIT (10) NYG (13) DET (3) ATL (12) NOS (2)

AP BUF (8) HOU (4) CIN (3) TEN (9) PIT (12) NYG (2) CHI (10) ATL (1) NOS (5)


As you'll see, I wussed out on PIT. A Lions win, Giants win and a Saints loss might get me pretty engaged here, from my quick read.

Hmm, if the Bears win in Detroit, that looks really bad for me.

Given the setup, right now it seems much wiser to have just played CHI for a low value rather than playing DET for a low value. If I really wanted to go all in on DET, the move was to put them in as a high value pick and shoot the moon. Disliking that move right now, even though I realize the big value deltas are overrated in these systems, psychologically that feels like a blunder.

3rd place guy went for it all on the Cowboys tonight, and it looks like the last game will settle 2nd place between him and me. Ugh.

Can you hedge?

I declined to, just don't like paying that much in vig.

Hail to the Redskins, indeed.