Tag: Stat Bollocks

It’s the middle of the season, so what better time to look back at championships past and see if there’s anything remotely interesting from a statistical point of view. And failing that, find some boring things from a statistical point of view to share.

We’ve all seen the records, of course, so there’s no need to regurgitate the results. Instead, let’s look at different numbers. Like, do teams score more points in the final now?

Errr…. No…

Teams that win the final are scoring less, while teams that lose the final are scoring… incredibly consistently (if we ignore the Brees in 2014). It’s good news for excitement – there’s only been one comeback victory (Dyna Hard, 2017) but at least there are closer matches. The second legs of the last three finals – 2020-2022 – have all been won by the team that lost the first leg, after both legs were won by the same team in five of the first 6 finals.

But how about the split of total points across the two legs?

Only two of the nine finals have had more points scored in the first leg than the second. Rather than getting used to each other and neutralising each others attacks, it seems that familiarity breeds explosive offense and an eye for the opponents defensive weaknesses. Or maybe that was a conclusion we could draw if these were actual teams actually facing each other, rather than random players unaware of the importance of their performance in the Dynabowl world.

We can also see, in the top chart, that total points rose to 2018 and have been falling since then. Someone who cares more would probably go back and check the scoring changes we put in place to see if they align.

I can be bothered to do one quick check though. There’s a ranked list of total points scored, per team, per season. Because there’s been an extra game since 2021, we can’t quite compare like for like, but for total points scored to the end of week 16, 9 of the top 20 team seasons have been after 2018, while 11 of the bottom 20 seasons have come in the same period.

Given there were five seasons in the ‘high scoring finals period’ (2014-2018) and only 4 since, this might indicate a slight drop in scoring overall. Especially as the 6 worst seasons were all between 2020 and 2022.

So there we have it – finals are more exciting (CLOSER GAMES) and less exciting (FEWER POINTS) than ever!

Seeding! Does it matter?

What I mean by that is, are the higher seeds more likely to win the title? Let’s take a look…

NB: Third/Fourth determined by third place playoffs

I’m kind of astonished that no one has looked at this before. The abject failure of the number 2 seed to do anything notable at any point is pretty crazy. It took until 2022 for the second seed to win a 2-game match-up (ie the final or 3rd place playoff). The first seed dominance of the past 4 years is also a surprise. In fact, the first seed has always won the 2-game match-up, and in 7 of those 9 years that has been against the number 2 seed.

The run of wins by number 3 seeds also seems like a bit of a surprise. However, in 2016, Kelkowski held the same record as the #1 seed Bombermen (and the #4 seed Hard), in 2017 Dyna Hard were a game behind the #1 seed Hurricanes (then Firebirds), but were league top scorers, 50 points ahead of the #1 seed, while in 2018 the number one seeds were the 13-0 Dyna Hard, who were destined to fail.

Just out of curiosity, I assigned 3 points for a win, 2 for runner-up, 1 for third and 0 for 4th. The number 1 seed gets 19 points, #2 gets 7, #3 17 and the fourth seed gets 11 points. That should really put things in perspective. Idle speculation and shit-stirring, but the top two seeds go to the winners of Peter and Tim. Guess what, 7 out of 9 #1 seeds have come from Tim, bookended by Peter (Losers in 2014, Brees in 2022).

Using the patented 3 for a win, 2 for runner-up, 1 for third scoring system, Tim clocks in with 33 points while Peter only racks up 21 across the nine years, but then with only two titles to show for it – both coming in years when the division managed to send 3 teams to the playoffs – that’s probably to be expected.

So back to the exam question – does seeding matter? Only in so much as the second seed was usually from Peter and they usually lost. What matters most is that the team come from Tim.

Double Hundreds

3 teams have scored at least 200 in both legs of the final, the Hurricanes (né Firebirds) in 2014, Champions in 2015 and the Dungeoneers in 2018. No teams have won the title without scoring 200 in at least one leg (though the Champions really pushed that in 2020, scoring 200.145 in the second leg), while only one losing team has managed to score 200 or more in a single leg of the final (the Tamworth Two in that same final against the Champions in 2020).

Regular Season Results Between Finalists

Every year, every team will play every other team at least once. Twice if they are in the same conference, once in the other conference, though since 2021 teams have had a second game against one team from the other conference.

The table below shows the match-ups in the final and the regular season record between the two teams.

Only once has the team winning the final not beaten their opponents at least once in the regular season. That came in 2019 when the Bombermen used the playoffs as a revenge tour. Having gone 11-2 in the regular season they beat Tamworth Two in the playoff semi-final before knocking off the Dungeoneers in the final – those were the only two teams to beat them during the regular season. Is this more impressive than Dyna Hard going 13-0 and then losing the playoff semi-final in 2018? Almost certainly.

What Can We Learn?

Want to win a title? If you make the playoffs, ideally be the first seed and, if not, be the third seed. Try not to be in Peter and make sure you beat your opponent at least once during the regular season, and score 200 in at least one game week.

Fun Facts About The 2017 Chatterbowl

March 31, 2018

Commish

The following things are all facts of various kinds from the 2017 Chatterbowl, or Chatterbowl history to date.

Three of the previous Chatterbowl Winners scored more points in the final than the the two 2017 Finalists scored, put together (112)
Every team has now made the playoffs at least once. The last to join the list were Spunky Beans (Ian Kulkowski) and Martysaurus Sex (Jay Kelly)
Every score between 39 and 133 (inclusive) has now been scored at least once
The three GMs to have scored the most points are David Slater (8289 in 96 games), Ben Hendy (8280 in 95 games) and Dan Sayles (8276 in 96 games) – 13 points covering those top 3
The top 4 players for average points per games have not played all 6 seasons to date (Chris Braithwaite, Dan Smith, Pete Conaghan and James Goodson)
Dan Sayles has longest playoff streak (and it’s still active), making the playoffs every year from 2013 to 2017 (5)
Other top playoff teams (Total/Active Streak in brackets), Ben Hendy (5/4), David Slater (4/0), Mat Ward (4/4)
Mat Ward is the only person to have won 6 games against another GM and not lost to them (he is 6-0 vs Dan Sayles, which is quite remarkable given Sayles’ consistency)
No one else has more than 4 wins without also suffering a defeat against that GM
Ben Hendy has scored a century in the highest percentage of his matches (28.8%, 23/80 – data excludes 2012, which had 12 teams). Second is Ben Archer (28.1%, 9/32), and third are Max Cubberley and James Goodson (27.5%, 22/80)
Dan Smith has been on the receiving end of the most centuries (27.1%, 13/48), Jay Kelly is in second (26.3%, 21/80), while third is split between Ben Archer, Chris Braithwaite, Max Cubberley, Pete Conaghan and Phillip Malcolm (25.0%)
2017 had the lowest scoring average of all seasons of the Chatterbowl to date
- 2012 – 86.26 – 1 week averaging less than 80 points
- 2013 – 85.34 – 4 weeks
- 2014 – 83.13 – 4 weeks
- 2015 – 84.40 – 2 weeks
- 2016 – 83.08 – 4 weeks
- 2017 – 78.85 – 12 weeks
The average score put up by Chatterbowl teams in every single week in 2017 was lower than the average score in that week in the combined average for the previous 5 years
- I realise I have phrased this confusingly – take the average score that every team got in week one of the previous 5 seasons – the average in week one 2017 was less than this. The same goes for week two, week three, etc and so on.
The total number of centuries scored in 2017 was 18. This compares to 32 in 2013, 26 in 2014, 25 in 2015 and 28 in 2016.
Week 9 of 2017 was the first ever week in which no team registered a century
3 teams failed to register a century in any week of the 2017 season (Chris Braithwaite, David Slater, Jamie Blair)
- This has happened 3 times before – Phillip Malcolm 2013, Chris Braithwaite 2015, Chris Hill 2015
Teams that made the playoffs in 2017 outscored teams who didn’t make the playoffs 85.08 to 72.63, a difference of 12.45
- The only bigger gap was in 2013 – 17.61 – 94.15 to 76.54
- The third biggest gap on the list was 8.63 in 2015 (88.71 to 80.09)
The top 3 scorers in the 2017 Chatterbowl regular season were separated by 5 points – Mat Ward (1186), Ben Hendy (1185), Neil Hawke (1181). These are the 17th, 18th and 19th top Chatterbowl regular season points totals ever recorded.
- Chris Braithwaite and David Slater hold all of the top 5 spots in that particular table
In the 2017 Chatterbowl Final, 6 of the Andover Anteaters failed to achieve double figures. This is the second time this has occurred (Flutie Flakes – 2013)
No player for the Andover Anteaters scored more than 17 points in the Chatterbowl final (Ben Roethlisberger). This is the lowest top-scoring player ever (previous lowest top scoring player, Allen Hurns & Texans DST, 22 points, Brett Favre’s Junk Calls, 2015 final)

Historical Chatterbowl Dominance Report

March 30, 2018

Commish

Chatterbowl Stat Attacks No Comments

For the longest time I have been searching for a way to measure relative performance across the entire league, and for season against season. Fantasy football performance can’t be directly compared year one year because the source of the point scoring, the NFL, has so much variance. League trends mean points scoring, both in real life and in fantasy leagues, can vary significantly from one year to the next. One season an average team may score a century every other week, the next season an average team scores one only every 6 weeks. A team in the second of those two seasons may totally dominate the league, but their numbers look very ordinary compared to teams in the first season, so how do you compare them and determine the best?

Finally, I think I have a reliable system to compare teams year on year. Let me explain the maths…

In any given week there are 16 scores produced by the teams in the Chatterbowl. These obviously vary, sometimes hugely. The first step of this methodology is to calculate the standard deviation of this collection of 16 scores. Thanks to Microsoft Excel, this is as simple as using the formula =stdev([range of scores]). This will give you a figure which, typically over the past 6 seasons of the Chatterbowl, comes in somewhere between 15 and 25, but occasionally outside this range. The higher the number, the more variability there is across the 16 scores.

To explain, one standard deviation (what is calculated above), is the range above and below the mean that you would expect 68.2% of all scores within that range to fit into. Two standard deviations is used for a lot of statistical models because it equates to approximately 95% of a range, but we don’t need to do that for our purposes. Instead, we go onto step two…

Step two is to take the score of an individual team, subtract the average score that week from it, and then divide the result by the Standard Deviation calculated in step one, above.

This step essentially calculates how many standard deviations away from the mean the given team’s score was that week. If the standard deviation were exactly 20 and a team scored 20 more than the mean then the score calculated would be 1.00. However, if another team scored 10 below the mean, the score calculated would be -0.50. And so on.

In fact, here’s a real world example. In week 1 of the 2017 season the average score was 74.44, while the standard deviation was 20.97. Chris Hill scored lowest, with 43 points, which is 31.44 below the mean, so gives a score of -1.50, while the top score was by Steve Smith at 117. This is 42.56 above the mean and gives a score of 2.03.

Step three is to do this for every week of the season and then take an average of all the weeks. Finally, take the square root of this average and you have a final score or rating. Now, full disclosure here – I do not now recall the reason for doing this, though I am sure someone more statistically sound than I will be able to tell you where this element of the methodology comes from. Honestly though, there is a proper reason for doing this.

I have done this in three different ways – for the regular season, for the playoffs, and for the entire season as a whole, and have done this for each season the Chatterbowl has been running, since 2012. From this there are some interesting scores that have come out. In total there have been 92 seasons completed so far, and the top ten regular season scores are as follows:

Rank	GM & Year	Regular Season Score
1	Chris Braithwaite 2014	1.036
2	Mat Ward 2017	0.827
3	Neil Hawke 2017	0.824
4	David Slater 2013	0.821
5	Chris Braithwaite 2013	0.811
6	Ben Hendy 2017	0.809
7	David Slater 2015	0.795
8	Jamie Blair 2015	0.735
9	Chris Braithwaite 2012	0.716
10	Dan Smith 2013	0.685

Some interesting things here:

Chris Braithwaite’s 2014 season was astonishingly consistent – during the regular season he was never below zero in his score. However, he truly shat the bed in the playoffs, scoring -0.73 in the first round.
None of these teams won the Chatterbowl
Three of the top 6 teams came from 2017 which was by far the worst scoring season so far. The average weekly score in 2017 was 78.85 – the previous worst was 83.08 in 2016 while the highest was 86.26 in 2012 (the single 12 team season, which would be expected to have a higher average points total)

The table below gives you the regular season performance of each Chatterbowl winner:

Rank	GM & Year	Regular Season Score
11	C – Ben Hendy 2014	0.675
18	C – Max Cubberley 2012	0.614
31	C – David Slater 2016	0.364
36	C – James Goodson 2017	0.348
38	C – Pete Conaghan 2013	0.295
49	C – Ben Hendy 2015	-0.191

The playoffs, unsurprisingly, tend to show slightly better performance from the eventual champions and, with them only having to take 3 games into account, are liable to higher scores overall.

Rank	GM & Year	Playoffs Score
1	C – Ben Hendy 2015	1.360
2	C – Ben Hendy 2014	1.300
3	Chris Braithwaite 2012	1.215
4	Dan Smith 2013	1.210
5	Max Cubberley 2015	1.171
6	Jay Kelly 2014	1.021
7	C – David Slater 2016	1.012
8	Jay Kelly 2017	0.947
9	Dan Sayles 2013	0.926
10	Mat Ward 2017	0.924

Of those seasons, only Ben Hendy 2015 and Jay Kelly 2014 had regular season performance worse than zero. The full list of champions is below.

Rank	GM & Year	Playoffs Score
1	C – Ben Hendy 2015	1.360
2	C – Ben Hendy 2014	1.300
7	C – David Slater 2016	1.012
11	C – Pete Conaghan 2013	0.923
12	C – Max Cubberley 2012	0.920
22	C – James Goodson 2017	0.681

Next, overall performance for the full season – regular and playoff (including the split):

Rank	GM & Year	Regular	Playoffs	Full
1	Chris Braithwaite 2014	1.036	-0.026	0.934
2	Mat Ward 2017	0.827	0.924	0.848
3	David Slater 2013	0.821	0.914	0.839
4	Chris Braithwaite 2012	0.716	1.215	0.832
5	C – Ben Hendy 2014	0.675	1.300	0.829
6	Neil Hawke 2017	0.824	0.816	0.822
7	Dan Smith 2013	0.685	1.210	0.810
8	David Slater 2015	0.795	0.638	0.768
9	Jamie Blair 2015	0.735	0.709	0.730
10	Chris Braithwaite 2013	0.811	-0.346	0.715

And for the Champions alone:

Rank	GM & Year	Regular	Playoffs	Full
5	C – Ben Hendy 2014	0.675	1.300	0.829
12	C – Max Cubberley 2012	0.614	0.920	0.681
19	C – Ben Hendy 2015	-0.191	1.360	0.563
23	C – David Slater 2016	0.364	1.012	0.548
28	C – Pete Conaghan 2013	0.295	0.923	0.480
33	C – James Goodson 2017	0.348	0.681	0.430

And finally, while I don’t want to dwell on it, I know you’ll all want to know about the 10 worst seasons ever (2013 was not a good year), so without comment, here they are:

Rank	GM & Year	Regular	Playoffs	Full
83	Jay Kelly 2016	-0.775	0.118	-0.697
84	Neil Hawke 2015	-0.733	-0.541	-0.701
85	Jay Kelly 2013	-0.684	-0.970	-0.746
86	Chris Hill 2015	-0.801	-0.624	-0.771
87	Max Cubberley 2016	-0.672	-1.184	-0.794
88	Geoffrey Manboob 2013	-0.916	-0.538	-0.858
89	Philip Malcolm 2013	-0.824	-1.033	-0.867
90	Ben Hendy 2013	-0.850	-1.024	-0.885
91	Philip Malcolm 2014	-0.929	-0.959	-0.935
92	Jamie Blair 2017	-0.940	-1.286	-1.014

Oh, and this data is available here:Chatterbowl Database Download

Championship Game Statistics