Variance and Limits

Introduction to GPP
How to use player 'Limits'
How to use 'Variance'

An optimized lineup is great for Head to Head or 50/50 games, but what about tournaments?

GPPs, or "Guaranteed Prize Pools", require a slightly different strategy. Here we will talk about some of the features in Lineup Lab that will give you the ability to construct better GPP lineups.

When we build a typical lineup with Lineup Lab, we are optimizing for the expected points. Again, this is very effective when playing against individuals, but to win (or even cash) in a big tournment against 30,000 other players, your lineup is going to have to explode.

So then how do we know which players will have huge nights? Well, if you could figure that out with one lineup, you would be in Vegas and not on this site. Instead of one magical lineup, we need to build a set of intelligent lineups with just the right amount of 'Variance' (ie: diversification). Just like buying a raffle ticket, the more you have, the better your odds are. But we don't want a bunch of lineups, we want the right mix of them to give us good exposure to different players. We incorporated a few special tools in order to accomplish this.

Getting Started with Limits:

For this tutorial, I went ahead and built some lineups like I normally would. If you don't know how to do that, then go read our basic training at Calculating Optimized Lineups.

So lets assume we have some results, but as we look at them we notice something peculiar... Marc Gasol is in all of our lineups. Lineup Lab

Look, Marc, I like you and all, but I don't want you in all 200 of my lineups!

Lets click the "Calculate Again" button to go back: Lineup Lab

Ok, here we are back in the application. If you look at your 'Selected Players' table, on the right, you will see a column titled "Limit" and below it are text boxes with a little infinity symbol. Click in the text box and enter '2'. Lineup Lab

By entering a '2' in the limit field, the calculator is going to 'Limit' Marc to 2 results. After those 2, he will no longer appear in any other results. Lets calculate and see what happens: Lineup Lab

Great, now Marc is only in 2 of our results. If you keep scrolling down, you will see that the Center position is now mixed up really well with different players.

If you have a change of heart, and want Marc back in all of your lineups, then simply click the 'Calculate Again' button, and erase the '2' in Marc's limit field. The infinity sign should re-appear. Lineup Lab

Limits can be applied to multiple players, and if you play around with it, you will find some great lineups for both H2H and GPP play.

But enough about Limits. Lets look at variance. You may already have seen the little "variance" slider near the calculate button. Leave it at zero and click calculate. Lineup Lab

Looking at the results, I see that results #1 and #2 are nearly identical, with the exception of one player. Lineup Lab

This is a fairly common scenario when calculating lineups. They might not always be 90% alike, but many times you may feel like the first 20 results are all extremely similar. So lets change this. Click "calculate again" to go back, and then drag the 'variance' slider up to 35%. Lineup Lab

When you click calculate, you should see results that are at least 35% different from each other. Look at results 1 and 2. The different players are marked in Red. Lineup Lab

So now, with a little variance tossed in, we can easily calculate optimized lineups for GPP play. This way, we have better exposure to more players, and should have a better chance of hitting one of those stelar lineups. Please keep in mind, that variance is in beta mode. So if you receive strange results (like no results at all), then go back and lower the variance, or add more players. We will continue to develop this powerful feature as time goes on!

Check out some of the other tutorials or jump into the application and start building lineups!

Go forth!