People want to measure their success in the game of Fantasy Premier League. But there is no reliable gauge of your success.
Your points total is primarily a measure of how lucky you've been.
Your rank is primarily a measure of how lucky everyone else has been, in relation to you.
The aim of the game should be to exercise and develop your skill in making the best squad selections (and 'chip strategy' decisions, etc.). But your points returns are not an accurate reflection of your skill and good judgement: they depend very largely on pure luck. (And, as I pointed out the other day, with the help of Youtube science educator Derek Muller, the effect of even small amounts of luck on final outcomes can be HUGE...) Very bad FPL managers can sometimes do extraordinarily well. Very good FPL managers can often fare very badly.... It is a cruel and unjust game.
Perhaps a useful place to start is..... focusing less on how good you think you are, and concentrating instead on pursuing constant improvement in your decision-making process.
I've been following Derek Muller's excellent science channel, Veritasium, on Youtube for several years, but I only just stumbled upon this video of his from 4 or 5 years ago on the role of 'LUCK' - in sports, and life.
Just over 3 minutes in, he has a fascinating example of a mathematical simulation he ran of the competitive selection process for NASA astronaut training - which apparently demonstrates that, with even a very small element of 'luck' at play in the process, at least 80% of those finally selected (overcoming daunting odds of around 1,700-1!!) will have displaced more able candidates by virtue of that little bit of crucial luck.
He doesn't go into a lot of detail about his simulation. I suspect that it involved multiple 'elimination rounds', rather as with a knockout cup competition - which would tend to cumulatively exaggerate the impact of the participants' luck. Nevertheless, it is a striking example of how great an effect luck can have in competitive outcomes.
And he was only allowing a weighting of up to 5% for the 'luck' factor in his selection tests. I think in Fantasy Premier League.... it's probably at least 50%; quite possibly more like 70% or 80%!!
I hate it when people naively brag about their rank in the game. Your rank proves nothing about how smart or capable you are. You can't get into the top 100,000 - or even the top 500,000 or so - without having a substantial amount of good luck. And statistics would suggest that the great majority of the top 100,000 are there mostly through luck (that 80/20 split comes up everywhere.....), at the expense of far more capable managers.
Derek also makes the useful point here that believing absolutely in your own ability and your deserving of whatever success you achieve tends to make you smug, entitled, and obnoxious - rather than sympathetic, tolerant, and helpful towards others; whereas trying to remain duly aware of the extent to which 'luck' has contributed to your success allows you to express the more positive traits of humility and gratitude.
Seeking to encourage the latter mindset is my primary mission on this blog.
