The Art of Clear Thinking - It's only a game!

I recently came across a fascinating book called The Art of Clear Thinking by Rolf Dobelli*, which looks at various errors in reasoning that cause many of us to come to illogical conclusions which may in turn lead to bad decision making.

As I read this, it struck me how applicable this is to the FPL. We spend hours pondering questions such as "who will score the most points this week/month/season?", "what will my next transfer(s) be?" and "who should I have as my captain?". How clearly are we really thinking? Are we making errors in our reasoning?

I would like to share some of these typical errors with you in a series of posts on the topic of 'The Art of Clear Thinking'. I hope to enlighten and entertain in equal measure and who knows - it may even help you to improve as an FPL player! Here is the first of the series:

It's only a game!

It's Saturday morning and there are still decisions to be made for your fantasy football team. You've been contemplating changes all week and have been watching highlights, analysing various players' and teams' statistics, trawling the internet for relevant information and discussing your findings with those who share your obsession with football, all in the hope of gaining some extra insight.

However you still can't decide. You still don't know whether to transfer that player out, who you should transfer in, which player you should captain this week and which players you should bench. After sweating over it all the way up to the deadline, you finally make your decisions, hit that 'confirm' button and hope for the best.

I think we all know where this is heading; Sunday evening comes round and it turns out you made all the wrong decisions and your team did terribly! How could it go so wrong? The player you transferred in and made captain didn't even start the game, whereas the player who made way picked up a tidy double figure return. By the time your captain even came on, his team were winning comfortably and there was no need to push for goals, leading to a frustrating thirty minutes of football for the fantasy manager. Even the players on your bench did fantastically. In fact, they almost outscored your whole team! But it was obvious when you look back at it.

I'm sure you can recall many an example when you've done something similar, only to look back and ask why you made the decision you did when the outcome seems so obvious. Our old friend 'hindsight', a.k.a the 'knew-it-all-along effect' or 'creeping determinism', the phenomenon where events that have already occurred seem far more predictable now than they actually were at the time of making. Looking back, the player you transferred out always looked as though he would do well. However, in reality, you thought they would do terribly as they seemed unfit, out of form or you simply didn't fancy them. As for your bench, the supposedly tougher opposition were in truth dire, but you knew it all along! Why didn't you just play them in place of any of your players who struggled to even pick up the customary two points for simply turning up? In reality, the way you remember thinking and what you actually thought are not entirely the same - a feature of hindsight. In reality, you thought you knew better and were reasonably happy with the decision you had made, at least until ten minutes into the game when it all started to go wrong.

Thinking about it further, your non-starting captain was always going to be rested for the Champions League game three days later. What were you thinking taking such a risk? It turns out that we are likely to judge a risky decision less favourably if, after we know the outcome, it turns out to have been a bad one (something which is known as 'the outcome bias'). But don't kick yourself! It was a calculated risk and one which didn't pay off. Who's to say it won't next time?

Perhaps after all your were just unlucky. You did everything you could and it was just unfortunate that the player you parted company with waited until this game to come good, despite the mediocre performances over the last few weeks. That first goal for example, he looked offside from the replays. Plus, he'd never have had that penalty for the second goal had the referee been close enough to see that the foul was just outside the box. This is a good example of the 'self-serving bias', where you blame your failure on factors out of your control. The flip side of this theory is of course that when things go your way, it's all down to your expert knowledge and hours spent digging up statistics on players' performances. That smug feeling you get after a successful gameweek is well-deserved, whereas the week where you slip down the rankings in your mini-league feels entirely due to factors out of our control.

The key thing to take from all this is that no matter how much time you invest in trying to gain an edge over your rivals, the reality is that it's partially, if not mostly, down to luck (or at least 'randomness'). So chin up, it's only a game! There's always next gameweek after all.


Further Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome_bias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_serving_bias
*Dobelli, R. (2011) Die Kunst des klaren Denkens ('The Art of Clear Thinking'). Munich: Carl Hanser