Dice Man

 “It's the way a man chooses to limit himself that determines his character. A man without habits, consistency, redundancy - and hence boredom - is not human. He's insane.”

It’s the eve of GW14 deadline and after a rare “pandemic” night out with close friends, the laughter, the pre-Xmas atmosphere is in the air, I fire up Twitter on returning to my humble abode. My timeline is awash with Salah benched rumours, Mo was my planned Captain Pick for this coming gameweek.

I check my GoTo Twitter Group Chat and some of the bunch are confirming the news, Cian a Liverpool fan and former No.1 FPL Player in Ireland is insisting that one of the accounts is legit. The Moretti is still flowing through my veins so no point in making decisions when my FPL judgement could be clouded. I switch the armband to Bruno, just in case, and my merry head hits the pillow, lights out.

The following morning, I awake, and after a hearty breakfast I assess the data with a clear head. Yes, multiple accounts are reporting that Salah will be benched, but one of them I had doubts about in the past. Gnawing at the back of my mind is my “Conditional Probability Method” I started to rely on since GW8 which are screaming Salah at me. I roll the dice and decide to go with the system that has returned circa 19 pts per GW for the last 6 GWs.

A decision that could have unexpected repercussions and the train of thought reminds me of the cult classic “The Dice Man” where psychologist Luke Rhinehart who, feeling bored and unfulfilled in life, starts making decisions... based on a roll of a die. Along the way, there is sex, despoliation, murder, 'dice parties', breakouts by psychiatric patients, and various corporate and governmental machines being put into a spin.

Those elements are in the book by the way and not this blog.

In the previous post “Doors of …” I outlined a need to open other avenues or FPL Doors to gain an advantage and eliminate my random decision making that set me back so much in the early part of the season.

More specifically I was getting my Captain Picks, probably the most powerful selection criteria in FPL all wrong. I urgently needed to de-clutter the information overload and find a mechanism to pick my Captains using some probability theory and remove the emotion.  I also needed to get back to basics and stop the rot.

So from GW8 and onwards I use what I call my “Conditional Probability Method” to pick my Captain and you can see the impact from the “Captain Picks Analyzer” courtesy of https://www.premierfantasytools.com/ .

Conditional Probability P ( A | B ) where A is Soccer Power Index (SPI) > 50% and B is Highest % of “Anytime Goalscorer” from my FPL Squad.

Step 1: Review the Soccer Power Index (SPI) ratings from https://fivethirtyeight.com/  and more specifically related to the PL use the following URL. Thanks to @FplGaz

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/premier-league/

Step 2: I cross reference the betting odds from the match depicting a greater than 50% probability of winning versus the “Anytime Goalscorer” Odds published weekly. Concentrating on the top 5 players predicted.

Step 3: Pick one of my MIDs or FWDs from my team who fit into Step 1 & 2.

For Step 2, I started out with a well-known website but the inconsistency of their articles pushed me to rely on two FPL Accounts who post the results week in week out, @FPL_Salah and @Ryansm05. Thank you, gentlemen, for the hard work.

Example for GW13: Step 1: the games with a >50% probability of winning was Chelsea, Man City, Leicester, West Ham and Man Utd. 

Step 2: The top 5 “Anytime Goalscorer” odds from the two FPL Accounts mentioned were:

So my Captain Pick was KDB.

⚽ The Magic Number ⚽

This season I will be highlighting my preferred 3 Differential Players (<10% ownership) for a period of 3 GWs and pitting my wits against a challenger to see who scores the most points.

To-date its 1 win for Rogue and 2 wins for the challenger, for GW10-12  @FPLDifferentia2 had two double digits hauls with a 13 pts from Sterling and 16 from Maddison. His three picks of Sterling (0,13,3), Rashford (5,6,3), and Maddison (2,4,16) amassed a whopping 52 pts. That will take some beating for the remainder of the season.

My 2^nd punt on Aguero backfired spectacularly with a 2^nd duck egg in a row from the Argentinian over 3 GWs. My own picks were: Aguero (0,0,0) , Cancelo (0,6,6) , and Watkins (0,2,1).

Period	FplRogue	Challenger
GW 1 - 3	35 pts	34 pts (@or_fail)
GW 5 - 7	8 pts	29 pts (@FPLDifferential)
GW 10  - 12	15 pts	52 pts (@FPLDifferentia2)

Due to the fixture congestion, prospect of rotation etc I will postpone the Differential Challenge until later in January but if you feel like taking up the challenge in the next round then just DM me.

⚽ An interesting read ⚽

Since the last post “Doors of …” one of the greats of Football sadly passed away.

If you have not already seen the documentary Diego Maradona then I would highly recommend it.

Sadly, due to the over exposure of the “Hand-off-God” goal in the media his 2^nd goal of the infamous quarter-final is sometimes often forgotten. Check it out if you have not seen it before.

Diego Maradona: The dream we all want to be:

https://thesefootballtimes.co/2017/08/25/diego-maradona-the-dream-we-all-want-to-be/

⚽ Rogue-grams ⚽

Teenage Kicks: Part 1

We hit the exit doors at speed and in sync, but the heavy doors broke our momentum and now standing in the yard of the local hotel looking at a wall, that was higher than we had envisioned, a standing jump was not going to work.

We both looked at each other with an air of “right, what next?” I quickly suggested to John that we back track into the nightclub and take another run at it, after all we had no other option. this was our only escape route.

We quickly turned on our heels, back through the now open security doors with the alarm blaring and the sight of security guards making their way towards the commotion. Turning, we sprinted as fast as we could out again to the yard, a hop, one leg onto the wall face and a reach for the top. Our hands gripped the top and we hauled ourselves up just as the security guards entered the yard.

The adrenalin was pumping through our bodies as both lay on a roof top looking up at the stars and we both burst out laughing, why we were laughing we had no idea as we were still potentially in danger…. [TBC]

⚽ Next Post ⚽

In the earlier part of the season I was relying too heavily or rather finding myself in the Monty Hall (3 Door) situation. My selections were not working so I was not applying patience and changing to hastily or too often.

For the remainder of the season I am going to rely more on probability for my decision making.

The Probability Theory can be traced back to peoples’ attempts to analyse games of chance and dice (before the mathematics of probability was invented).

If you wish to find out how that experiment continues then just keeping an eye out for the upcoming posts.

So until then enjoy the FPL madness, interact with the Community and remember rule no.1 “Play your own game”.