hockey pools are like monkeys writing on typewriters

My grand experiment in seeing if i can outsmart all other hockey fans continues.

My first pool was at supervalue in 97. The staff there got together and I made some decent picks but it really is random. Some players will get hurt and screw u over and some players will go on a streak and excel beyond all expectations.

Well, this yr I joined in the NHL.com fantasy pool. In this pool; one can trade players like stocks! and combined with a valuation system that gets recailbrated once a day decreased the randomness variable that plagues all pools. Once u enter the pool, one gets 25 trades... but one can get more trades up to a max of 300 trades. That is the key to winning the pool. The rules seem simple; pick 3 centres, 4 wingers, 3 defencemen and 2 goalies. points are generated from various stats specific to the position and valuation for trade is based on game by game performance and frequency of trade of the players. Inessence... the stock market. I realized early on that i wanted to see how i would fare by only using the minimum of 25 trades but i noticed that many people were making 12 trades on a daily basis. The strategy was that one would follow the scores and then trade for the players that performed the best. Since the recailbration of value for the players were done the next day; shrewd poolies would b able to pick up players before they would be worth more. This allowed astute poolies to gain value in their budget over the course of 300 trades and once they get to a certain dollar value, they could buy the hot player of the day and gain even more points. All poolies who follwed this strategy ended up with double the points on avg compared to those that did not trade much. Is it cheating? no, they are using the rules and limitiations of the sytem to maximize their potential gains.

y didn't i do this? again, i wanted to see how well i could do based on 25 trades. In the end I finished 173/700 which is pretty respectible. I participated in another version where i ended up as 46/200 and 113/200. My conclusion is that if i am to join this pool again... I would write in my registration instead of paying $20 USD online. 2 stamps is way better than $20USD. If only i can remember to register early! I guess being in a pool allowed me to get to know more players and to have intrest in other games as well.

I did join another pool with my brother and finsihed near the bottom as injuries piled up. I stopped following that pool 1/3 into the season as there was no way i could catch up. I was stuck with so many injured players.

the playoff pool i joined at sportsnet.ca is divided in to segments. These pools last one round so i get a fresh start every round. I will highly consider this one next yr as it is free online and i can compare myself to professional hockey analysts. currently i am tied at 5059 out of 50 000 poolies. But as they all say.... there's stilla lot of hockey to be played!