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Subject: Implications of lower price changes
Posted by: Guru
- [330592710] Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 13:13
This conversation started pretty far down the latest Belly thread, but I though it warranted greater exposure. I'll start by copying a few of the most relevant posts from that thread:
jedman[77]: Species and I were just talking about RV's and our discussion was that we thought that we were much lower than last year.
I just went to the threads from last year, and the Gurupie Stats for 11/15 last year have 2 teams over 60 million and many in the 58-59 mill range, so it is harder to make money this year. 10% difference at this point in the season is a lot IMO. What does this mean, just that it is going to be harder to get to an all stud roster this year, which means the more astute managers should prosper. Wish I was one of them.
Species[79]: I've been pondering the affects of the diluted price changes since we talked jedman. Does it really benefit the more astute manager, or does it even the playing field?
Regarding RV's
One side: it's all proportionate. If you've got a $1mil RV advantage on someone today (i.e. $54 mil to $53 mil), it means a heck of a lot more than $1mil on someone last year (i.e. $59 mil to $58 mil), and that advantage will only get wider due to the lower price changes.
Another side: If you miss some 'trains' early on and fall behind in RV, the true money deficiency isn't as great so it doesn't hurt you as much?
Regarding management:
One side: It helps the more astute managers who find the diamonds in the rough earlier than the crowd, giving them early points and money when everyone else trades into that cheap player
Another side: It levels the playing field in that if you get one solid cheapie you can practically copy the rosters of other managers with higher RV's, because the RV differences are lower.
It's hard to say. You would think it would end up being proportionate. That the longer you go with a lower RV, the harder it could be to make it up, given the overall lack of solid cheapies to make up for a lower RV. I guess we'll just find out throughout the year.
OSU Rules[85]: Regarding lower RV's another implication is trade management. Presumably lower roster values mean less money in the bank. Thus, even a trade from Carter to Bryant or Payton can be an issue, since it requires around $1M in the bank. I think many people will start downgrading somewhere so they can make those kind of trades, which will cost them 2 trades instead of 1. Proper planning for those situations could make a big difference. Overall, I think it is a big positive that RV's are lower this year.
Guru[88]: I was thinking about starting a thread about the implications of lower RVs, and then, lo and behold, I found it started in here.
I think this is a double edged sword.
It is good that we will not get to financial nirvana by January, when the game becomes one of simply rotating studs.
But the inability of cheap players to approach a "fair value" may lead to less roster differentiation. If some players stay too cheap, then everyone owns them. And we then just rotate studs on the rest of our roster.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to cure one without exacerbating the other - simply, at least. If you augment the price sensitivity, then players have a better chance to get to fair value, but then we all get bloated RVs.
Of course, if Tinsley is a good example, then maybe we won't all own him. Or maybe he has reached fair value after all.
But will Kirilenko, or Coleman, or one of the cheap centers, become fixtures on most teams throughout the season (barring injury)? (Wait - how can "Coleman" and "barring injury" coexist in the same sentence?) Or will there also be a natural rotation of cheap slots as different players step up and/or cool off?
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| 1 | OSU Rules
Leader
ID: 15372315
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 13:16
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[Copied from Belly Thread]
The point about cheapies reaching fair value is an interesting one. I think I will take it as a necessary evil to prevent the bloated RV's by the end of the season. In basketball I think it is a little less of an issue than in baseball, because of schedule issues. For example, I have Anthony on both my teams. I consider him a great value but I keep looking at his 2 games in 9 days starting Sunday and thinking I have to trade him. However, after the events of this week I think I am now stuck with him.
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| 2 | rockafellerskank
Donor
ID: 359283123
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 13:23
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I think this year's basketball season may mirror baseball from the past summer. There were many suitable holds at low to moderate prices that became fixtures because they produced at near-stud levels without the inflated price. Such as Rollins, Pujols, LoDuca ... and any number of inexpensive Pitchers.
In baseball, it was possible to compete for top 100 WWR without a $100M roster, thus negating the normal value of accumulating so much cash.
I am considering spending 45 days trading ONLY $2-$5M players around in an effort to ride as many trains as possible. Add 1 stud G,F,C and leave them all for 6 week min holds.
rfs
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| 3 | Dirt
ID: 20944228
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 13:26
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I like the deflated price changes. This way, if a player's injury status is day to day, you can hold off on blowing a trade without losing tons of rv. Also, by and large I think that players appreciate appropriately. The one obvious anomoly is Coleman - a player with proven talent who's been a total disappointment for a while and is now re-invigorated. The new system makes the game more about what you know of B-Ball and less about what players thousands of other people want on their rosters.
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| 4 | Blooki
ID: 359321514
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 13:26
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I don't know how likely it is that this will happen, but I really hope TSN doesn't change the repricing algorithm during the game (Erik & Bernie, ya guys readin' this? ;þ). Although I have mixed feelings about it, I think that we should stick to it and if they feel that changes should be made, let's wait until next season to test them out. I just think that an modification to the algorithm midway through the season could have a pretty unfair and dramatic effect on other aspects of the game. Banked trades come to mind...
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| 5 | Dirt
ID: 20944228
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 13:28
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It also will mean that an injured player won't become an obvious way to make tons of loot
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| 8 | OSU Rules
Leader
ID: 15372315
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 13:31
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RFS- I have almost convinced myself of the opposite conclusion. If gains are muted than I can build as much roster value riding the kobe "train" or payton "train" as I can riding the tinsley or kirilenko train. Furthermore if there are not big drops for the cheapies, I might as well hold them and build roster value rotating studs (analagous to pitchers in baseball), since I will also get the points.
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| 9 | Blooki
ID: 359321514
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 13:50
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Anybody care to take a guess at what RVs at the end of the season will look like? I'd say ~$75mil...?
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| 10 | Mike D
Donor
ID: 19105287
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 13:58
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FWIW, TSN Football is the same way. Last year after 9 weeks had been played, the Gurupie high RV was $76.97. This year, after 9 weeks have been played, the Gurupie high RV is only $64.46, a rather large discrepancy I'd say. I'm actually below $60 million on my teams, and only one of them is close ($59.51).
No question that reduced price increases and subsequently reduced RV force us all to find cheap alternatives to go along with our choice studs. Finding the right combinations is a challenge, and certainly more challenging than simply rotating studs. More trades may need to be used at times, which has been mentioned in this thread already, so conserving them for the right times is crucial.
The bottom line is that making money may have lost the allure that is used to have. If one can consistently find undervalued (read: cheap but producing) players, they will likely be held for longer durations even when their money "train" derails. rockafellerskank mentioned that this occurred in Baseball. I have done this in Football (though the "right" choices have eluded me more often than not). The focus has changed.
Chasing the cheapie of the week, fun while it lasted (?), may truly be gone.
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| 11 | DR Stars
ID: 162592010
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 14:14
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Really with RV's growing at a 50% rate of last year's pace (50->55 Vs 50->60) the top RVs should be around 75, but since many of us will still want to grow our RV later than last year we should top at around 80.
I guess another implication is that we'll have to go for money later in the season compared to last year.
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| 12 | Guru
ID: 330592710
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 14:29
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Curious.
In one sense, with muted gains, gaining $value is even more important than last year. Last year, the marginal value of a $ gained was gradually diminished as the season progressed. This year, an extra dollar might be able to get you as many extra points for the next two weeks as it will for the final two weeks. (eg, in past years, there have been times in March-April when I've had more than $10m sitting in cash.)
On the other hand, since it is much less likely that a trade will gain as much in value, it is less important to make a trade with that as the primary objective.
Perhaps the bottom line is that when a larger than average gain seems probable, it is important to jump in. But in the absence of that expectation, you should be willing to ride out the fluctuations.
Clear as mud.
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| 13 | valkyrie
Leader
ID: 51815210
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 14:56
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I assume that we are talking about the pay game only (not playing free so i have no idea what's going on there). It would be quite interesting to know whether the muted price increases are due to the smaller data base, more knowledgeable managers (on a whole) or a muted algorhythm. Like Hardball last summer I think the lower RV values will make the game more interesting longer so in that regard I think it is beneficial. As to the significance I think it makes money making much more rather than less important. Smaller RV value differences are more significant. It is much harder to pick up a deficit this year. Of course I am a little biased having started poorly due to a poor draft so i am about $1 million behind everyone and closing the gap appears to be a very long process.
If someone wanted to "fix" this I think anti-gravity or momentum increases are a pretty simple answer (and I think we already have a little of this built in). This would also prevent the cheapie fixture problem however due to the significance of scheduling and the frequency of injuries in basketball I don't think the cheapie fixture problem will be that significant.
All in all I think this is a positive change which rather than leveling the playing field will lead to a much greater differentiation among quality players than last year, although probably with a lesser (but still significant) separation of the quality players from the "masses" such as myself.
One other point to consider- we have had an inordinate number of early injuries to potential and/or actual trains like Tinsley, ERob, J O'Neal and Coleman (whose spectre of injury is constant but may not have occurred yet). This has created a lot of forced and not necessarily planned trading which as expected has resulted in a diverse buying pattern and finally no Baron Davis and Marion have appeared as of yet which by themselves have probably reduced RV's by 4-5M after 3 weeks in comparison to last year.
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| 14 | Mike D
Donor
ID: 19105287
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 15:00
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Guru, the last 2 points you mentioned are the ones I really believe:
"On the other hand, since it is much less likely that a trade will gain as much in value, it is less important to make a trade with that as the primary objective."-----This is why I feel chasing the cheapie of the week is a thing of the past. Buy players for points, who eventually if they do well will accumulate (some) wealth since others will jump on them too.
"Perhaps the bottom line is that when a larger than average gain seems probable, it is important to jump in. But in the absence of that expectation, you should be willing to ride out the fluctuations."-----This relates to my point (rockafellerskanks, et al) about long-term cheapie holds. Don't trade if a player starts to drop, unless the player's drop is very large, and unless the production/schedule has slowed too much. DO jump on money trains, IF (and only if) you are convinced one is leaving.
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| 15 | Erik B.
ID: 239592612
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 15:08
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Gang:
This is something we've been discussing with Guru and others. Our games have two components -- a stock-market side and a fantasy side. We think if we emphasize one over the other, users will suffer. Last year, we found that it was too easy to "make money," thereby decreasing the sports side of the game. On the other hand, if players don't move quickly enough, EVERYONE ends up grabbing that player. Fortunately, if you look at pay hoops now, there is still incredible diversity among the top managers as tho who is taking whom, yes?
-ESB
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| 16 | havenbros
Donor
ID: 0102298
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 15:18
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Erik: Are you saying that you have made adjustments to the pricing algorithm that was in place last year to mitigate changes?
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| 17 | DR Stars
ID: 162592010
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 15:20
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Seems like it havenbros...
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| 18 | Guru
ID: 330592710
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 15:26
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valkyrie - I'm pretty sure the algorithm has reduced price sensitivity in two ways:- the raw price change factor has been reduced
- the magnitude of large changes has been further reduced by a logarithmic factor. Thus, if a player A has twice the amount buys as player B, his price increase is not doubled. (more like 1.4x, I think)
I was recently discussing with Erik and Bernie the possibility of incorporating an anti-gravity component. In past free games, there were enough new teams being added along the way to continue to pump up the prices of fundamentally cheap players. But in the pay games, where the universe of managers is relatively constant, players tend to plateau rather quickly.
Anti-gravity would serve to provide a small daily increase to players who are the most heavily owned (and not being sold).
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| 19 | DR Stars
ID: 162592010
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 15:33
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Anti-gravity should help those that conserve trades, making strategy more valuable.
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| 21 | Species
Donor
ID: 304521510
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 15:58
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I was very happy to return to this thread and see that Erik contributed.
I'm along the lines of Mike D. on this (and we miss you in the hoops game, buddy). To go further with his point, not only do the muddled gains lessen your need to hop on the "cheapie of the week", but perhaps more importantly the lack of huge losses on questionable/injured players (i.e. Jermaine O'Neal a couple days ago) makes it more palatable to hold the player with that mild ankle sprain a day or two in order to get more information. Too many of my bretheren dumped Jermaine for Shaq and lost out on the 30-odd points Jermaine got the other night when, in the end, they didn't need to.
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| 22 | Ender
ID: 52438315
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 16:35
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Just like all you bums who move Tinsley right before he plays back to back games. He's going to make you all pay.
I hope... ;)
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| 23 | valkyrie
Leader
ID: 51815210
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 16:49
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Ender I agree with you completely- nevertheless I dumped Tinsley on 2 of 3, and J. O'Neal one day early on 1 team. I realized that these moves were not "logical" and thus resented the belief that I had to make them, nevertheless I think $ are more important than points right now and so I followed our furry friends over the cliff.RV is too hard to build this year to throw away for the sake of "mere" points. LOL (kind of)
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| 24 | blind ambition
Donor
ID: 89372816
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 18:17
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i've been contemplating what all this means to the other end of the price spectrum...we've established that cheapies and rising as quickly, but what about when one of those cheapies stops performing, will they fall less quickly too?? i think tinsley can be the first experiment of this over the next week if doesn't do well this weekend......
i think the lower RV are a plus IMO...my personnel playing strategy has been to maximize the numbe of games my players have...in the past, i have lost money due to this, but it appears getting the most games from your team could benefit more this year......?????????
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| 25 | DR Stars
ID: 4211161321
Fri, Nov 16, 2001, 22:55
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Ender your words were prophetic, Tinsley with a Huge game, I only have a very tough decision ahead, Getting out of JermO or getting back to Tinsley... only 1 trade left.
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| 26 | rockafellerskank
Donor
ID: 359283123
Sat, Nov 17, 2001, 18:10
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I am having a hard time understanding how less managers ISN'T affecting the prices.
Theoretically (I understand) prices are driven up or down by the PERCENTAGE of total buys/sells a player receives. So, theoretically, let's assume all 6,000 owners in the Ultimate game reached 'roster paradise' except for one: let's call him TRADE_BOY_101.
If 5,999 owners make a combined ZERO (0) trades because they are happy with their lineups, except for TRADE_BOY_101 who decided to trade Jermo for Ben Wallace. Now since Ben received 100% of the day's buys and Jermo received 100% of the day's sells, shouldn't Jermo lose $1M (the max) and Wallace gain $1M (the max)?
If you say that the price swing shouldn't be max, then you are thereby admitting that the NUMBER of sells/buys (as opposed to the percentage) does affect the price swings! Certainly if there were 6,000 Jermo sells and 6,000 Wallace buys on a given day, one would have an easy time envisioning a $1M price swing both ways right? However, either examplel is still 100%/100%.
Now I will agree in the unlikely example that there was only 1 trade for a day, a price swing should be minimal. If you go with that asusmption, doesn't it go to show that the fewer managers this year (6,000 as opposed to 300,000) are a direct impact on the lower prices?
Maybe I am missing somehthing here, but I constantly hear that "it's not number of sells, it percentage of sells" argument. I understand it in concept and when applied to a 'normal trading day, but when one takes this argument to extreme ends, it breaks down to me.
Please feel free to enlighten me?
rfs
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| 27 | valkyrie
Leader
ID: 51815210
Sat, Nov 17, 2001, 18:18
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Good point Rock- With the small data base things should be simpler to fahom but don't appear to be. One possibility is that TSN is using total possible trades per week as the denominator for price swings thus each trade would have a % of 1/15,000 or so even if it were 100% of the daily trades. It looks to me like using a % of daily trades is a thing of the past at least when applied to small data bases?? The other possibility is that they are using some type of rolling average (perhaps weighted) averaging two or three days trades?
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| 28 | rockafellerskank
Donor
ID: 359283123
Sat, Nov 17, 2001, 18:18
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.... next let's talk about the missing 294,000 +/-owners this year. There was a certain percentage of bozos in that group. For arguments sake, let's say there were 5% or roughly 15,000 that traded based on stupid stuff like favorite teams, cute guys, uniform color or astrology or etc.... These owners would often make such informed buys as Mitch Richmond, because they remember he was good once upon a time and Patrick Ewing for the same reason etc.... Shouldn't their ill-informed moves serve to dulite the price impact even farther last year becaus the number of quality trades was dispersed with infromed trades, thus lowering a gain expected by a Gurupie because an unexpected percentage of trades went to a no-name?
It seems to me as though prices should have been lowered by this 'lemming effect' Does this mean we have a higher PERCENTASGE of lemming this year as a ratio of the total owner pool?
signed,
rfs (disgruntled cash-maker)
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| 29 | valkyrie
Leader
ID: 51815210
Sat, Nov 17, 2001, 18:29
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Rock another good point- unfortunately the only comparison I have is pay baseball last year where it was (if memeory serves me right ?) about 20% harder to make money than in the free game. Of course the baseball pay game evened up with the free game somewhere in August when everyone had sufficient $'s in both games. Obviously TSN is using a different algorythm (how is this spelled anyway), for the small data base games. Now we just have to figure out what it is.
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| 30 | PeterGunn
ID: 471014108
Sat, Nov 17, 2001, 18:31
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Is a disgruntled cash maker similar to a disgruntled postal worker? You're not going to blow up the internet are you? LOL.
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| 31 | Stuck in the Sixties
Leader
ID: 3610481717
Sat, Nov 17, 2001, 22:18
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One of the things that first attracted me to Smallworld was the stock market aspect of the game. I know that we don't want roster nirvana by January but if TSN is going to deliberately mute its pricing algorithm, I'd like to see some sort of reward for picking a sleeper or lesser-known player. Of all the ideas I've heard so far, I like the one about muting gravity the best.
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| 32 | Guru
ID: 330592710
Sat, Nov 17, 2001, 23:27
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rfs - I believe, in your one trade example, the player with the buy would get the maximum possible gain. However, that isn't necessarily $1 million.
TSN has clearly dampened the overall price sensitivity, so I'm pretty sure a $1m price gain is impossible this year. Even if that player had 6000 buys and no one else had any buys, it wouldn't be $1m. It also wouldn't be any different than your 1 trade scenario.
In baseball, the dampening (including a logarithmic adjustment) resulted in a maximum daily gain in the $200+ range. I suspect the hoops formula is similar.
But I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that overall volume of trades has any influence.
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| 33 | Bethesda Panthers
ID: 33922016
Sun, Nov 18, 2001, 01:13
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Guru,
$1m changes must be possible as Tinsley started at $2.25 and peaked at $3.38.
Other than that, I agree with your analysis as per comment #12. By my calculations, last year $1million early was worth about 150 points (44 in the first month but decreasing from there). This year, depending on how rapidly RVs rise, it could be more like 200 points.
That said, even though the $ are more valuable, since the prospect to make $ with a trade is lower, $ may have become less important relative to points.
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| 34 | beebop
ID: 471056717
Sun, Nov 18, 2001, 01:15
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Guru was talking about in one day... otherwise, yes, it is very well possible for a player to rise $1mil plus......
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