Chris.Derecola

Lets recap how my fantasy football season went this past year. We won’t even talk about the unpleasantness that is the Dallas Cowboys.

Work League ~ 5-8 for 10th of 12
I don’t even really know what to say about this one. I knew walking out of the draft that my team sucked and some questionable trades through the year made sure it didn’t have any delusions of greatness. I spent most of the year deciding between the Ravens RBs and paid the price. The players were out there but because of school (at least that’s what I’m blaming it on), I didn’t watch the waiver as closely as I should have. The guy that ended up winning was because he watches waivers like a hawk. For what it’s worth, there were 5 teams in this league at 6-7 and two people with that record made the playoffs.

Father/Son League ~ 6-8 for 8th of 10
I drafted well and started 4-1 as a result. Then I had some really bad lineup and injury problems and dropped the next 5. I didn’t make any waiver moves during those 5 loses and again I’m going to blame school for that one. I picked up the next 2 games to move to 1 game out of a playoff spot but returned to my sucking ways the last 2 weeks and plummeted down the standings. Probably the most unfortunate thing about it is I was the team with the weekly high score the most weeks in the season… and we no longer pay on that. How I managed to do that and lose, I’m not quite sure. Oh that’s right, in keeping with tradition I had the 2nd highest points against. At least my dad got 2nd place again (I beat him last year).

Family Pick’em ~ 128 correct (141 won) for 5th of 9
What can I say other than I was middle of the road all year long. I’m pretty sure it’s because I suggested we up the entry fee 40% this year. At least I managed to beat the two people who missed a week and got high score 2 of the weeks.

I think this is the first year since I’ve been playing fantasy football (10+ years) that I haven’t made the playoffs in any of my leagues. I managed to lose to the teams in both leagues that weren’t being actively managed, so I guess I deserve it. Mark it down as one of the more disappointing years in football for me.

Five of us played a proper game of Monopoly over the holiday break. I emerged victorious after what was probably three hours of game play. I lucked out and got both Boardwalk and Park Place while no one else was able to obtain a monopoly. I had quite a few properties and was able to prevent most monopolies but those that were possible didn’t happen soon enough. Everyone else mistakenly made deals way too late and it wasn’t until after I had a few houses and collected some serious cash that another monopoly was formed. No one had the money to build anything of significance and therefore no way to keep me from building to hotels. I put the first three players out of business with Boardwalk and the end came not long after that as I built up on my bankruptcy-acquired assets.

This turn of events got me thinking about Monopoly strategies. Surely people have figured out the statistics involved and surely there are countless pages in the internet to document it. I found this article that discusses breakeven probability and cost to own. My method of winning didn’t follow this but it’s interesting to see where the best values are. It’s certainly a good reference when you start trading properties and want to one up your competitor. If you didn’t already know, three houses is the sweet spot.

For the sake of morale, we went bowling today at work. There were prizes awarded for the top three team averages, based on your best two games. There were some fairly good bowlers but since teams were random, they were spread out fairly well. How did we do? I’m happy to report that our team came in second overall, thanks somewhat to me. I averaged 159 over 3 games with scores of 122, 216 and 139. That makes my two game average 178, which isn’t too shabby if I may say so myself.

I’m not a very consistent bowler and I never have been. For the last few years my average has been ~145 but my second game is usually in the 170 range with the other two ranging from 120 to 140. It seems to take me awhile to warm up and am generally spent by the third game. Today doesn’t really seem to be any different, although 216 is my highest score ever. Need proof I did it? Here you go… note the misspelling. It would have been nice not to open the bonus in the 10th frame because it was my only one but that’s the best place to have one so I can’t be too bitter.