How to win trades and influence people

One of my all-time favorite movie scenes is in Rounders when Mike McDee walks in on the judge’s poker game and just blind reads every hand.  When it comes to trading, sadly I’m not Mike McDee, but I am Worm.  I am a trading savant/hustler, I propose trades like an auctioneer, and I almost always win.  In any one league I trade more than all the other GMs combined.  Trading is a science and you have to consider all the angles, but it’s also an art and art is in the eye of the beholder.  The key to trading isn’t trying to humiliate the other side. It’s ideally a move that makes both teams better and there is nothing wrong with losing a trade in the short term, in order to win in the end.

There are two types of fantasy GMs in this world.  Those who like to make trades and those so terrified of losing a trade they won’t ever risk trying to win one.  Don’t be the latter, trading represents 37% of the pleasure I derive from fantasy.  A league without trades is like watching a movie in black and white while the sound isn’t in sync.  It’s only fantasy, it’s not reality and unless you are in a dynasty league, you get to reset your roster each season. Can you imagine how many trades would happen in real sports leagues if the rosters got reshuffled every year.

Here is the secret about trading that they don’t tell you about when you sign up for your fantasy league.  No one really knows anything.  The future is unpredictable and especially in fantasy football, injuries are often the final arbiter of who wins a trade.  You have to live by the process, not the result.  Make trades, take risks and always declare yourself the public loser and private winner of every trade.  If you can’t win the league, at least win the battle of psychological warfare.  Everyone wants to trade with a presumed chump and if you get the reputation as a shark, no one is going to risk letting you bleed them out.

If you are going to trade, there are a certain set of guidelines you should follow as you take a spin down the fantasy trading rabbit hole.

• Trade Construction

The simplest trade in the world is a one-for-one.  The problem is that it’s too simple and as a result very hard to pull off.  Here’s what happens.  I propose a trade to a GM and the only thing he does is compare who was drafted higher.  If I offer my third-rounder for his second, even if they were drafted four spots apart, that’s the only thing he can see.  Once the draft ends, it’s over.  Don’t get attached to where everyone was taken.  The best trade is the two-for-one as it scrambles the values just enough that two people can approach the same problem and get two different answers.  Anything more than a two-for-one and you are getting into blockbuster territory and leaving too much fate up to the gods.  Keep it simple, stupid.  The two-for-one is where you should live and the only real question is should you be a two or a one?  Now, aside from the existential ramifications, deciding which side of the trade you should fall on depends more on league size, your activity on the wire and your depth than the actual players involved.  Don’t play the players, play the league.  If you are in a 12-man league or less, you almost always want to be on the side of the one.  That means you trade two semi-studs for his one super-stud.  That goes double-down if you are active on the wire.  In a 12-man league, you can find usually find 80% replacement value for one of the players you just moved.  In a 14-team league, the wire is less friendly and it comes down to personal belief.  Do you play fantasy for the ceiling or the floor?  If you want to build a super-team and have a high risk of winning and/or flaming out, then you want the one.  If your goal is depth and simply winning the war of attrition and being the last team standing, then you want the two.  There is no right answer, but if you are a two, then you want to try finding and trading with a one.  It’s just math and the law of attraction.

• Know Your audience

Whenever I am in a league with people I don’t know or at least don’t have psychological profiles on, I need to first understand if they are an actual potential trading partner or just a trade denier.  The best move is to offer them a trade you wouldn’t actually do (like your Justin Jefferson for their Derrick Henry) to see if they are rational or not.  Now of course, do not officially propose this trade.  I repeat do not officially propose this trade. Do it over a message and if they say no, then cross them off your trading list because they are irrational and probably hate Christmas. Find the GM who loves making trades or who is in the bottom of the standings and either hates his team or is desperate for a shakeup.  Trading is all about having the high ground and dictating terms.  If you know your one buddy likes to pop a few tops on Friday nights, send him a deal after 10pm on Friday that you know he probably wouldn’t normally do, but maybe he can’t help himself.  All is fair in love, war and fantasy trading.

• Know everything

The key to winning a trade is having an edge and the best edge is knowledge.  If you have the framework of a trade in place, do the work.  Make sure the player(s) you are going to receive aren’t secretly nursing a back injury, make sure the schedule over the next month favors your side of the trade and also make sure the fantasy playoffs tilt your way as well.  Are you trading for players on a team that isn’t going anywhere and could shut down their star late in the season?  Is there an up-and-coming RB breathing down the neck of the starter you are about to trade for? Are you trading for a stud WR whose QB keeps getting destroyed because of a weak O-line.  Everything matters if you want to win your trade because no matter what you know, there is still the great unknown that threatens to careen your trade into the rocks after only a week.  Do all the due diligence you can and then simply pray to the fantasy gods for good fortune.

• Short term vs. long term goals

The best trades are when two GMs have opposite priorities.  You both want to win the trade, but if you are 2-5 and the other GM is 7-2, you might have different goals (which is good).  The most common and dangerous trade is when you have to sell-off an injured stud to plug the immediate hole and stop the Tsunami of losing.  There is nothing wrong with this as you almost always win the short term and there is no guarantee the stud you moved comes back healthy or on time and if they do, they could still reinjure the same body part down the road.  The reverse of this trade is the benefit of having a great team.  You can afford to take a risk and eat a few weeks as a player recuperates and if he comes back at a 100%, your team might now be a juggernaut that other GMs will write songs about.  Personally, I love trading for injured stars, it’s an actual problem I’m working on, but the counter argument is if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.  Your team is killing it, why mess with a good thing.  I can’t tell you what to do, but I’m like a vulture when I see a team rotting away at the bottom of the standings surrounded by the red cross of death.

• Go Fishing

Not every trade starts by knowing what you want, sometimes you simply know what you can afford to give up.  Maybe you drafted two elite TEs and have an extra RB2 wasting away on your bench.  So, you know you want to trade a TE and a RB for an elite WR.  Find a few teams that fit your trade profile and offer the same version of the trade and see if anyone bites.  It’s good to have your floor WR that you want back and then adjust upwards accordingly.  You probably aren’t going to get AJ Brown for Evan Engram and Aaron Jones, but you never know unless you try and as long as you offered reasonably fair trades to all the GMs, someone will usually take you up on one of your offers.  If they don’t, then you at least know you probably swung a little too high and you can readjust.  The best trade for you probably isn’t if the first proposal you send gets accepted.  This is a process and while you don’t want to be the GM who offers stupid trades every other day, there’s nothing wrong with chiseling value to make sure you don’t give up more than you need to.

• Seek balance

Don’t just think about what’s in it for you.  Seek logical trading partners.  If you have too many RBs and are thin at WR, look for the inverse.  If you both win the trade, then everyone else loses and that’s still a win.  The ultimate goal might be to bamboozle your opponent, but that’s not nearly as likely an outcome as making a mutually beneficial trade.  If you must try and impose your will, use whatever leverage fate wills you.  If you have two top-15 QBs and another GM just lost his QB, then dangle his salvation, but certainly don’t let him get off easy.  The balance doesn’t have to be in the players being exchanged, but in the need to make a deal.  A team that has lost four weeks in a row is exponentially more likely to make a deal than the team on a four-week winning streak.  You can’t bully a GM into making a deal, but you can entice him.  Sometimes it makes sense to make a small deal where you probably are on the losing side to get him hooked to make the deal you really want down the line.  Trading can be addictive and once he sees he won the first trade and is basking in adulation from the other GMs, he might be more incentivized to take a bigger risk.

• Game theory

You have to give a little to get a little.  It’s rare in life and in fantasy that you can give a little and get a lot.  So don’t be the guy who offers three fringe players for one stud and then complains that no one in the league wants to trade.  That guy is the worst.  The best trades are the ones that neither team really wants to do, but both GMs know make sense.  If you just picked up a player off the wire, don’t offer him in a trade even if it was a great snipe.  You didn’t invent the concept of sell-high and buy-low.  Everyone generally follows the same principles, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t valid.  The hardest thing to do in fantasy is realize your player is overachieving and will likely regress and that you aren’t a savant who just crushed that pick.  Just because your last round QB lottery ticket started off hot and is ranked as the QB3 after three weeks, that doesn’t mean you can trade him for Pat Mahomes who is ranked as the QB8.  If you want to sell-high, that usually means you should try and get 80% of whatever his value is now.  Don’t overreact to short term swings, fantasy is about the long game, but that doesn’t mean other GMs won’t lunge for the shiny new thing.

Bonus Nugget:

The trade veto is a hotly contested issue and many, many prominent fantasy experts are highly against it.  I couldn’t disagree more.  Not every GM in every league is on the ball and often some care much more than others.  You can’t let one GM ruin a league because he made a terrible trade that alters the competitive balance for everyone else.  Trade vetoes should 100% be valid, but it should be a league-wide vote and only used sparingly and as a last resort.  A lot of this depends on your league style and buy-in because the more expensive the buy-in, the less likely that a GM is going to make a truly terrible trade.  If you’re in a 14-team league with strangers and the buy-in is $20, the team in last place might just accept a terrible trade because he’s bored and now 12 other teams have to suffer.  That’s not fair.  Having said that, 98% trades should always go through, even if it’s a fleecing, but I draw the line at a pillaging.