We have talked a ton in MVHQ about how important it is to own players from playoff teams. You get to play them in extra slates during the playoffs, thus making the cards more valuable. Pretty simple concept.

 

But just how valuable are these players?

 

And how do I determine when to start rebalancing my portfolio towards playoffs? Let's break down the data a bit to try and answer these questions.

 

Below is the full season guaranteed prizing for Reignmakers, broken down by week & rarity:

 

 

The prizing for each playoff week remains the same as the regular season - around $1 million per week.

 

The big difference in the playoffs is that there are less teams playing each week. So, we will have less competition vs the regular season, but will be playing for the same amount of money.

 

For example, a regular season slate has 32 teams playing (assuming no byes). The first round of the playoffs has only 12 teams playing. That means players on those playoff teams will get minimum an extra 2.7 games of value (32/12 = 2.7).

 

This extra value increases exponentially as a player's team advances in the playoffs:

1st Round: 12 teams, +2.7 games

Divisional Round: 8 teams, +4 games

Conference Round: 4 teams, +8 games

Super Bowl: 2 teams, +16 games

 

If your player makes it to the Super Bowl, you will get an additional 30.7 games worth of value!! (+28 games for a 1 seed)

 

NGL I haven't broken this down before and I was pretty shocked to see that big of a value increase for late playoff teams. Obviously, in order to realize this value, we have to successfully predict what teams will make a deep playoff run. Not the easiest task.

 

Process:

Knowing that we can't perfectly predict how far a team will go in the playoffs, we can instead use their current vegas odds as a gauge. My process is:

1. Look up Conference Championship odds: https://sportsbook.draftkings.com/leagues/football/nfl?category=futures&subcategory=conference-winner

 

2. Plug the teams odds into a calculator to get their implied probability of making the Super Bowl: https://www.actionnetwork.com/betting-calculators/betting-odds-calculator

 

3. Multiply the implied probability by 30.7 (total possible extra games of value). I am left with the implied number of extra games for that team.

 

Example: The Lions are +400 to win the NFC Conference. That's an implied odds of 20%. 30.7 * 20% = 6.1 extra games of value. I can then use this 6.1 extra games of value as a key data point for making buy/sell decisions on Lions' players.

 

This method certainly isn't foolproof. I moreso use it as a baseline and then adjust based on my personal analysis of NFL teams' chances.  

 

Application:

Alright, we got 9 weeks left in the regular season. Time to really start buckling down with our portfolio and allocating for those juicy playoff prize pools. When assessing value of playoff players, I like to compare their price with a similar non-playoff player at their position. From there I can weigh in the implied extra games of value the playoff player will receive to see if there is any value there.

 

An important thing to note is the value ratio will change drastically as we get closer to playoff time.

• For example, right now a Lions' player has 15.1 games left (9 regular + 6.1 implied playoff) vs non-playoff player has 9 games left. Resulting in 1.7x value for the Lions player.
• Fast forward to Week 16 when there are only 3 regular season games left. Lions player will have 9.1 games left vs non-playoff player will have just the 3. It's now a 3x value ratio.

 

There are some other things to keep in mind with making buy/sell decisions, such as next year's value, crafting, franchise score, etc. Hopefully this breakdown can help y'all get prepared for rest of season. Let's take down some tourneys.