ConigliarosPotential said:
None of that is to say that I wouldn't pick the Saints on a number of tickets in a survivor pool this week, but loading up heavily and almost exclusively on them is exactly the sort of knee-jerk reaction I'd expect of the betting public - the only real value you're getting out of this pick is getting the Saints out of the way, and if they wet the bed at home you're probably screwed. Conversely, if you go easy on the Saints (maybe 5 tickets out of 20) and they somehow lose, that hurts you a lot less than it's going to hurt the rest of the field. Honestly, I'd say that one of two overall strategies makes sense this week: either a) trust your preseason instincts and load up on the teams you thought were going to be good before Week 1, using the Week 1 results sparingly to inflect those instincts, or b) don't trust yourself at all and diversify, on the basis that Week 1 results will throw off the public enough that Week 2 "upsets" will put you in a stronger position going forward in relative terms.
tims4wins said:Thoughts? (not thoughts on which you would pick, but if these should be our scenarios to vote on)
Strictly from a strategic POV, I'd divide the scenarios into two questions: (1) how many picks do we want to put on NO and (2) what do we do with the rest of the picks.
I'm breaking this out into two questions because it seems that NO is the lynchpin of our entire analysis. It seems like we've agreed (along with basically the rest of the betting population) that we need to play them. But do we want to overplay them, underplay them, or just be neutral?
Putting anywhere from 7 to 10 picks on NO basically means that we basically won't be gaining - or losing - any ground on the rest of the population.
If we decide to overplay them (say 15+ picks), that will influence how we allocate the rest of the picks.
If we decide to underplay them, then we will be overplaying other game(s) and we should figure out which games they are.
I would be interested in hearing how many picks people think we should put on NO. I don't claim any special insight to either of those teams or that matchup so I'd be interested in hearing others' opinions on this.