How to spot a bargain in Fantasy LCS

So how do you win a fantasy league? It's all about value. I played in three fantasy LCS leagues last season, all of them eight-person leagues. In those leagues I won two and finished second in the third one -- ironically enough to my girlfriend who had begged me for fantasy advice through the pre-season. I guess I did it right! The secret to success lies in the concept of "value drafting." It's a simple concept that you can apply to your own 2015 Fantasy draft, and on it's most basic level, involves ignoring the obvious choice to figure out which player will ultimately yield you the most points.

Value in tiers

While the basic idea of drafting in any fantasy game is to draft the players with the highest point values, in practice, it's impossible to get all the top players for each position with the most points -- well, at least if your league isn't a total pub stomp. Instead of just trying to pick up the top player for each position, it's more important to understand the relative value of players in each position. Look at the above chart. Notice anything? While initially you see "OMG the ADC and Mids get all the points!" your gut reaction shouldn't be to just draft the best ADC and Mid laner. It's important to think in terms of cutoff values. Rekkles and Creaton are two of the top three players overall, but after them, there is a drop off between them and other ADCs. Meanwhile, further down the list there are a bunch of ADCs who have similar point totals. The key is to look at positions in terms of tiers. After Creaton (No. 2 ADC), there is a drop of 1.6 points to Tabzz (No. 3 ADC). However the drop from Tabzz to Altec (No. 7 ADC) is only 1.9 points. While the difference in points is greater in the latter, there is only one spot separating Creaton and Tabzz and four spots separating Tabzz and Altec. If I am unable to get Creaton or Rekkles, it doesn't make much sense to then go for Tabzz as soon as he's available, since I can probably get Altec much later in the draft (Remember: Tabzz and Altec bring in pretty much the same amount of points). Rekkles and Creaton may be in a class of their own (S tier), but there are many ADCs who earn similar point values between Tabzz and Altec (A tier). Even below them there are a bunch of ADCs who earn similar values between Mr. RalleZ and Woolite (B tier). A correct strategy would be to grab players in a certain tier, when you expect these players to start coming off the board. For instance, say that Tabzz is the best available player, but several other ADCs of similar value are still available. There is also Kevin available, who is much higher than every other top laner (in a tier of his own), so it may benefit you more to wait on your ADC, and pick Kevin. This is because the amount of points you give up for passing on Tabzz is less than the amount of points you gain by picking Kevin. In these situations, it's good to grab the player with the most upside, which leads us to our next meaning of value.

Your evaluation vs opponents

Tiers aren't the only factor in deciding when to pick a player. Take Kerp for example. In general Kerp was valued as a B-tier mid laner before fantasy began. Despite him likely being B tier, I thought he could be A tier because of his strong individual performances, and a great jungle player (KottenX). Traditionally, junglers help mid laners more than other players statistically (think Xmithie and ManCloud, or Meteos and Hai). I also knew that most people believed him to be B tier because he is not a flashy or hyped player, in contrast to those like Froggen or Bjergsen. Knowing that I valued Kerp slightly higher than my peers allowed me pick up Kerp very late in the draft (Round 5 and 6 in the two leagues I had him). As such, I nabbed a potential A-tier mid laner at the position of a B- or C-tier player. Gaining incremental advantages like this are important in a draft. Make your own player evaluations and then rank them -- then determine how your ranking matches up against others. If you see places where you rank players lower than others, you won't get the player anyway, so ignore them. But if you see players that you evaluate higher than others, then that's a potential steal.

Positional value

The reason I valued ADCs (and mid laners too) so low was because I wanted to take an early support -- specifically Yellowstar. Why? Because of Rekkles. I expected them to be a potent bot lane, but I didn't think I could consistently get Rekkles -- so I took his other half in every league possible. Yellowstar was 2.1 points more valuable per game than the next highest support. That is a massive advantage! Granted I couldn't get him in every league because others identified him as a strong pick, or my pick placement didn't enable me to get maximum value by drafting him early (based on the first criteria of tiered value). But when things lined up, Yellowstar was more valuable than many ADCs and mid laners in the field -- even if he wasn't putting up the same number of points.

Putting it all together

And one last point about value: It's important to put aside your bias when you're making your picks, especially when it comes to your perception of value picks. Your perception should be informed by elements such as their team quality, competition, and helping hands -- not so much playmaking or hairstyle. Stealing value picks will get you incremental value over the course of a draft. And finding key opportunities where your player evaluation will be better than others' is also important. It's critical to know when your evaluations won't be as great as you want them to be. You can use the default rankings in combination with your own intuition to guide you here, but generally if a player is hyped, chances are they will be overvalued in drafts. When drafting, it's important to think of the impact a player will have on your lineup, relative to other available picks -- especially when puzzling together your team as a whole. Think of what value each pick will get you, and the potential value you will miss with every draft pick on your board. Happy drafting!

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