Outthinking myself

One of the biggest things I noticed about fantasy football players who fail is their reluctance to take players from teams they despise or to play those going against their favorite team. Many times I have taken players from teams I hate and have them in the lineup against the Dolphins especially since the team has mostly not been good this century.

Due to an offer to try to get players to play other sports than football, I have a free entry for a game that corresponds with this years Masters golf tournament. My first thought is that I am only going to take right handed golfers from the northern hemisphere whose country speaks English that are not named Tiger Woods since that is who I root for in tournaments.

I then looked at the list of champions and realized that of the last 21 Masters, 18 of them were won by either a left handed golfer, someone from the southern hemisphere, someone from outside the US, or Tiger Woods. Not having any of them in my lineup would likely cause me to not win even though 8 of the top 20 players on the site (as well as 37 of the 87 in the event) fall in my preference.

I then entered a lineup with those I don't want to see win. I was seriously considering putting Tiger Woods in the lineup even though I really don't want him to win but his game cost was higher than I was willing to pay and went with a different option.

During the round on Friday, my lineup was in the top .5% of entries but by the time the tournament ended, I was out of the money barely in the top third. Ironically, the top three finishers of the event were right handed and from the US. The last time this happened was in 1998 when the top 7 (including 58 year old Jack Nicklaus) were right handed from the US and Tiger Woods tied for 8th.