Fantasy Sports + Texas Hold 'em

Its time for a sports column, with a bit of poker. Haven't had one for ages, and with this break of mine, I finally have some time to do one =) I promise I'll keep is short and sweet. This can also be a Texas Hold'em 101 for those who are not familiar with the game.

So after a nice night of auction drafting with the guys, it brought back alot of thoughts I've had about fantasy sports in general before I started "working very hard" for school. Fantasy, much like alot of things, depends on luck. A phrase I like to describe the skill and luck factor in poker, applies in fantasy sports as well: "You skill will determine how much you are affected by your bad luck or your opponent's good luck". With that said, here is an poker example. You hold pocket aces preflop, the best starting hand in the game. Your opponent hold AK. This is the best match up you can have with any hand. You are a 91% favourite to win. However, the flop comes 10 J Q. Your opponent flops a straight, and you only have a pair of AA. The only way you can win the hand is if the next two cards give you a full house (lets assume flush is not a possibility). The person with the AK suddenly becomes 85% favourite to win, with the person holding the AA only have approximately 2% to win (with 13% chance of a tie). With that said, your opponent got "lucky", because he/she went from a 9% underdog, to a 85% favourite. Now...good players, could potentially get away from this hand. There are a few hands out there that the opponent could hold that has AA beat (AK, QJ, Q10, 89, J10, K9), while fewer hands that the AA is still ahead of (AQ, AJ, A10, KQ, KJ, K10 - note, even a hand like KQ or KJ is still a favourite to win statistically) [note: assumption is that the opponent will not be betting hard with hands like 77, 88, etc]. There are too many players who get "married" to a hand like AA on such a dangerous flop like this example, and end up losing alot of money. However, certain good players have the ability to read the action, and potentially fold this AA and save him/herself alot of money. Now this is an extreme example, but this example demonstrates the point about skills revolving around luck.

Now moving on to fantasy sports. There are many things that are within your control, yet many things aren't. One move I was totally against, was the Minnesota Twins pushing Francisco Liriano back into the rotation despite not being 100% healthy. He was a highly touted pitcher, whom many experts have said could potentially be better then Johan Santana in the neaf future (#1 starting pitcher in the league). As a manager of a fantasy baseball team that held Liriano, the managers would be delighted. However, the Twins decided to start Liriano despite his health, so they can make a push towards the playoffs. What ended up happening is that Liriano now requires Tommy John Surgery and is out for the entire 2007 season. Not only is he out for a year, this surgery has had major impacts on many pitchers who had a very bright future. So Liriano could potentially never live up to his potential as a result of this injury. So while the fantasy managers were good, and skillful in digging up his potential and drafting/picking up Liriano, their bad luck with how his health was managed in real life will make a big impact towards their team in the future.

That was pretty short and simple I think. Looking forward to another few days off before heading back to loo and "study" for the last few days before my exam. I really don't think I will be starting until the day before, so that will give me two days (since my exam is at night), which is plenty by my standards. So with that said...

TTOW!