Survivor strategy

[J_V]

Sorry i didn't respond to any posts, I forgot to look on this forum. Anyway, we can pick whoever we want every week. So, the best game is often heavily picked. Should I be picking the second best game if one game is likely to be heavily picked? I.E. some other game besides colts bengals this week? Thank you. No one gave me an answer before.

If you are looking to this forum for picks only, I think you should go with whatever poster you seem to think knows what he is doing, either from his picks and/or based on his analysis of the games. If you are using this forum to validate and/or compare your picks with others, and to provide you with analysis for a game you like, it doesnt matter who you follow or what the consensus is. I know this is kind of vague advice, but I would not base a pick or picks on if a certain game is getting discussed here by a large number of posters. Best of luck.--Big Al--

[hutz]

If I were in your position, I'd only consider your strategy if the second best game was a very, very close second. Two weeks ago, I picked New Orleans instead of Philly because I wanted to save Philly for later in the season (ours allows buy-backs the first five weeks). Had I been in a suicide pool, I'd have picked Philly for sure. That's an example of a time when the second-best game isn't close to the best. In other words, I'd pick my spot to exercise your strategy.

Your idea certainly has merit. Look at the math. Say there are 100 people in your pool and 99 take the lead favorite. Say the lead favorite is 90% and your pick is 80%. Obviously they are independent events. 8% of the time you will win the pool that week. Another 74% you'll be in the same boat 'they' are. 18% of the time you will bust. If this was a $100 pool your expectation would be $874. Sounds good? Can you see others picks before you make yours? If you can it can easily be right to pick the number 2 team. As long as there are less than 30 people on the 2d favorite you are right to go there. Of course if there are 29 people on game 2 you might want to go to game 3....although it is unlikely to be anwhere near this simple.

The formula is:

(100*B*(1-A))/bettors in b
+
B*A
+
(1-B)*(1-A).

This sum must be greater than 100.

Where A is the probability of the big favorite and b the probability of the second favorite.

For those of you mathies, sorry if i put the ()()() in the wrong place, it has been a while.

Danny

[J_V]

I agree completely with your analysis.

[Wildbill]

I probably would just stay with the pack. First of all you don't know if they might try to do the same thing at some point. If you stick with the first team and a few go for others in your strategy, well you win that battle because you get the most likely winner on your side. Think of this like a casino game or poker tournament. Your goal is to survive a few more spots before making your move. There will come a time where there are a couple of games will all look like big winners and then the pack will diverge some and possibly a few names will fall. Until you get to the end, I think proper tournament strategy is just stay with the lead pack by picking what you feel is the best game until you thin out the field. When it gets down to just a few people, then everyone will be looking at the other names and wondering if they are making some kind of strategy changes and if they should adjust to those. At that time you might still be able to take who you think is the best team and the "threat" of you taking another team might convince them to change teams too. Also important for you to mention is if there is a prize for second, third, etc. Big difference obviously, then you can play for getting into the money and then take your shot at making the big money up top.

[youtalkfunny]

...in fact, it's the ONLY sports-betting format that I've ever had any success with.

Like WB said, it is very similar to a poker tournament, and I usually have more experience there than the other guys in our office Survivor Pool.

I don't think you could devise a strategy without knowing the specific rules of your contest. Are you allowed to take the same team week after week, or are you required to take a different team each week? Are you picking against the spread, or straight up? Is there a tie-breaker, for those times that all remaining players get rubbed out the same week?

Here's the strategy I've been using, with remarkable success, against fields of 20-50 people:

RULES: Pick one NFL team straight up. Ties Lose. Can't take the same team twice. Winner take all. Tiebreak system: total points scored by the teams you selected.

EARLY SEASON STRATEGY: Do NOT try to "save the good teams for later". Guys who do that usually get eliminated before they *get* to "later". It's called Survivor, so for now, just try to survive. Go with the obvious pick, even if everybody else is on it, too. Keep doing this until there are just a handful of players left. When you reach that point, it's time for the...

LATE SEASON STRATEGY: If 90% of the players were rubbed out in Week 1, then you can consider Week 2 "late season". The Week Number is irrelevent; maybe, in keeping with our poker tournament analogy, we should call this the "Final Table" strategy. NOW it's time to pay attention to those tie-break points. If you have "the chip lead" (the tie-break edge), then you should only try to pick the team that everyone else will pick. If there's one double-digit favorite on the board, and none of your opponents has used that team yet, you can be 90%+ sure that they will all get on board. Your mission is to get on with them, AND HOPE THIS TEAM LOSES, since your tie-break points give you the money.

(How do you know if your opponents are going to make that obvious pick? ASK THEM! They'll usually tell you, as long as you don't point out that giving up that info would be to their disadvantage.)

Conversely, if you are at a disadvantage in the tie-break scheme, then getting on that obvious pick CAN NOT HELP YOU. Find another favorite, and hope *they* all go down, while you move on.

One last tip: Do everything in your power to NOT pick a road team. Road teams kill more Survivor players than anything else. Home-ice advantage is even bigger straight-up than it is ATS.

Hope this helps.