Fantasy hockey is a challenging pastime and as anyone who has ever partaken in it will know, sometimes you just need that little bit of luck to go your way.
As much as you plan out your team and put time into getting the fantasy draft just right, things have to swing your favour on the day with real-world player performances.
There is a huge element of skill involved in fantasy hockey, but also a large chunk of luck. It’s the same as gambling.
If you make a deposit at any of the best UK casinos that use PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, debit cards or other payment methods, you can build up skills for playing poker and blackjack for example, but at the end of the day, it’s all down to luck and you can lose all you’ve deposited and bet.
Here we explore how luck affects both worlds.
Fantasy Hockey
Just like picking a fantasy football team, creating a fantasy hockey team involves a great deal of planning. The participants, called team owners, are responsible for creating and then managing their virtual hockey team.
Fantasy hockey is based on real-world players, most commonly from the NHL, points are scored based on the performances of those players. Before the start of a new season, owners pick from the draft to fill their roster.
This is where the first element of luck comes in. In taking turns with other owners to draft, whether a player that’s desperately wanted is available when it’s your turn is going to be down to chance.
It’s a bit like entering a poker game and not knowing the skill levels of the players around you. You could be at a table of rookies, experienced pros or a blend of both – that’s just down to luck.
Where Luck And Chance Thrive
The purpose of researching real-world players is to strengthen the decisions when making a selection in the draft.
Things like the player’s abilities, the strengths and weaknesses of the team that they are playing on, how injury-prone they may be and other general statistics need to be taken into action.
Research and analysis give fantasy owners the ability to make informed decisions, but then unpredictable luck comes along and can ruin even the best-laid plans.
If an owner has taken the best player possible in the number one spot from the draft, and then that player gets injured in his first match of the season, that’s rotten luck.
There is also no accounting for how well players are going to perform.
A player may have had a brilliant previous season and the expectancy is high that they will do the same for the current one, but then for whatever reason, they just don’t hit the scoring levels that they were expected to.
Part of that could be down to line selection in the real world, of who that player is teamed up with.
Team changes during the off-season can be huge variables to try and account for, and combined with not knowing how many minutes a player is going to play in a match, there is a great deal of unpredictability.
Gambling and Luck
Gambling is, of course, naturally stacked with elements of skill, luck and chance. There are just varying degrees of it depending on what games you play.
Slot machines for example require no skill to play, but are arguably the most unpredictable, risky game to play compared to other casino options.
Roulette has a wide range of odds ranging from a one-in-thirty-five chance of landing a single number, to a 5 to 1 odds on a line, through to the even money chances of red/black and odd/even.
A hand of baccarat is down to sheer luck regardless if it’s a banker or a player bet.
The most highly skilled casino games are blackjack and poker. Both can be studied in depth and the skills learned can help to diminish chance to a degree, but it cannot completely overpower it.
You may have played the right move in taking a hit from a Soft 15 in blackjack, but what card comes out next and what face-down card the dealer has is all still down to luck.
Decision-Making and Taking Control
In both fantasy hockey and gambling, the best thing that a player can do is to be confident with their decision-making, to exert an element of control.
There has to be an element of trust in the players selected in your fantasy hockey team for example, just as there is when making a move in poker.
The ultimate outcome is reliant on luck and gambling may rely more on luck than the comparative skill involvement for fantasy hockey.
However, both fantasy hockey and gambling have their elements of unpredictability, which makes them appealing to players.
