What is the key to success in Fantasy Football? Ultimately, our season boils down to a series of decisions. The transfers we make, the players we bench, the captains we choose. The quality of our choices determines our points total, our overall ranking, and our mini-league position. To help us make the decisions that define our season, websites like Fantasy Football Scout provide a wealth of advice and resources. With all this help, we are well informed, make rational choices, and inevitably succeed. At least, that’s the theory.
Cognitive Bias
Unfortunately, we are not the rational beings we might like to be. Our decisions are subject to cognitive biases, which are illogical mental shortcuts we take in certain situations. Cognitive biases exist because, from an evolutionary standpoint, the logical choice is not always the best one. When we hear a gunshot outside our window, rather than a car backfiring, our brain is prioritising our welfare, not predicting the likeliest event. Strange as it may sound, the same thing can happen when we play Fantasy Football. Our decisions are not just the result of weighing every outcome’s probability. Our emotional welfare, and how good a decision makes us feel, also plays an important role in the choices we make.
For example, some Fantasy managers will captain a player from the final match of the Gameweek, not because they believe this fixture boosts performance, but to avoid the trauma of an early captain fail. This is cognitive bias in action. By looking at a few of the common cognitive biases that affect our decision-making in Fantasy Football, we can make more logical decisions. I realise this article is more theoretical than most, but I have tried to make it as accessible as possible. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting, and take something useful from it.
Confirmation Bias
This is perhaps the best known of the cognitive biases. Confirmation bias is the tendency to find information that confirms our current beliefs, at the expense of other views. We often fall for this when looking at a statistics, where we ignore those that don’t fit our theories, and focus on those that confirm them. For example, if you read a ‘Captain Sensible’ article with your team’s armband firmly on Anthony Martial, you are likely to find it containing evidence that supports this decision. This is not always particularly harmful, as sometimes confirmation bias simply strengthens our conviction in decisions we were always going to make. On the other hand, where confirmation bias leads to us dismissing alternative options out of hand, it can cause problems.
The Scarcity Heuristic
The scarcity heuristic is a mental shortcut where we value something by its scarcity. In other words, the more difficult it is to acquire an object, the more valuable we perceive it to be. In Fantasy Football, this can be observed when we over-value expensive players, and under-value cheaper options. This error makes some sense, as the top performers from previous seasons start with the highest prices, whilst unproven quantities are relatively cheap. That said, when prices guide us more than performances do, bad decisions follow. Riyad Mahrez in 2015/16 and Harry Kane in 2014/15 were both budget-friendly, top tier performers. Because of their low prices though, the scarcity heuristic led Fantasy managers to bench their big points hauls and to underestimate their captaincy credentials.
The Gambler’s Fallacy
The gambler’s fallacy assumes that, because something has happened less frequently than expected over a period of time, it will happen more frequently in the future, or vice versa. It is what underpins the Fantasy concept of a player being ‘due’. Players can be seen as ‘due’ a goal, or ‘due’ a blank, depending on the difference between their displays and our expectations. Unsustainable performances can be expected to revert to the mean over the long term. However, when we make a short-term prediction about an under-performer, such as that they will score in the next match, just because they’re ‘due’, we are falling for the gambler’s fallacy.
The Endowment Effect
The endowment effect is where we place a higher value on something when we own it. It leads us to pay more to retain our possessions, rather than trade them for something new. Given that we talk about ‘owning’ the players in our teams, the endowment effect’s applications to Fantasy Football are clear. It often leads to stubborn behaviour, as we keep faith with players despite continued under-performance, perhaps ignoring in-form alternatives. The endowment effect has been explained by our loss-aversive natures, where our displeasure at losing something outweighs our pleasure at gaining something. This can lead to managers focusing their transfers on moves that won’t lose points, rather than looking for those that might gain points. A common example is when we keep an out-of-form player with a good fixture, to avoid the potential disappointment of ‘missing’ their points. The endowment effect also makes us likelier to predict success for our own players, and to recommend them to others.
Omission Bias
Omission bias means we judge harmful actions more severely than harmful inactions. When we score 50 points with 5 points on the bench, we feel better than when we have 20 on the bench, as those benched points could have given us a better Gameweek rank. The actual result is the same in both cases, though, as our team scored the same amount of actual points. For another example, imagine that our captain scores two points, and our vice-captain scores 13. If we kept the armband on the captain all week, we would feel better than if we switched from the vice-captain on Saturday morning. A fear of mistakes can make us pursue strategies which limit the number of decisions we have to make, such as by avoiding rotation, or spending the absolute minimum on bench players. What really matters, though, is the number of points you have on the pitch, not whether or not you played your perfect team each week.
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon, where the desire for conformity in a group can lead to irrational decision-making. Group members reach a consensus by discussion, then minimise further conflict by suppressing dissenting views. This is not due to malicious intent, but arises from our collective desire for harmony in groups. Groupthink can be seen in the criticising of RMTs and opinions that differ from the ‘template’ on Fantasy Football Scout. The solution, of course, is to properly consider alternative views, rather than immediately shooting them down. Projection bias is another phenomenon that happens in isolated groups, where we assume that outsiders agree with us more than is really the case. The effect is that we gain the false impression that a particular template is dominant, even though it is common for highly-owned players in the Fantasy community to be completely ignored by the majority of Fantasy managers.
The Bandwagon Effect
This one should need no introduction. The bandwagon effect is where the uptake of something increases the more that it has been adopted by others. The bigger the bandwagon, the more people decide to ignore their personal misgivings, and blindly follow the behaviour of others. This is a cognitive bias that has been used positively by the Fantasy community. Like investors buying a fast-rising stock without doing their usual research, Fantasy managers often jump on early-season bandwagons to make some quick money, in the form of team value.
Recency Bias
Recency bias is where we disproportionately focus our attention on recent information. Recency bias can often lead to ‘chasing points’, as we focus too much on a player’s latest performance, rather than on their overall prospects. That said, form remains the best predictor we have of future performance. The hot-hand fallacy is the error we supposedly make when expecting an in-form player to continue their success. Research now suggests that it might not actually be a fallacy, however, as performance is boosted by the confidence success brings. Another example of Fantasy managers falling for recency bias occurs in pre-season, where we look for the players that match the characteristics of last season’s stars. This summer, we will look for ‘the next Riyad Mahrez’ and ‘the next Jamie Vardy’, trying to find situations which mirror those at Leicester a year ago. Last summer, we looked for ‘the next Charlie Austin’, scouting the promoted sides for prolific forwards. Before that, it was ‘the next Michu’, and we looked closely at cheap players arriving from overseas, following the Spaniard’s goalscoring exploits. With the successes of these players fresh in our minds, we make the mistake of assuming that next season’s bargains will follow the same narratives.
The Psuedocertainty Effect
The pseudocertainty effect is the tendency to take fewer risks when you are confident of success, and more risks when you are not. This can be seen when managers with a good rank play it safe, and struggling managers take wild punts in an attempt to catch up. Interestingly, game theory suggests that this cognitive bias can lead to good decision-making. This is because the goal of Fantasy football is not to score as many points as possible, but to score more points than everyone else. The value of differentials, or low-ownership players, is that if they do well, they give you a big advantage over your opposition. Likewise, blocking moves to limit the chances of an opponent overtaking you is a viable, risk-averse tactic, such as bringing in the player your rival is likely to captain. That said, Fantasy Football is certainly not a game in which everyone behaves identically. As a result, the best differential can be to simply focus on scoring as many points as possible, given that it is very unlikely that anyone else will make the same decisions as you every week.



8 years, 11 months agoThanks for this. Excellent article - I'll look to theme today's daily hot topic around this.