Welcome to Game Theory

Thanks for visiting the CrowdScout blog – Game Theory!

The CrowdScout platform was designed to automatically and elegantly aggregate the opinions of awesome fanalysts and create unique content - dynamic player rankings that can:

·     aid the decision making of managers (fantasy or professional)

·     settle arguments that happen over cold ones (or not)

·     provide benchmarks for more advanced analysis, i.e. when determining what players are over/undervalued

·     identify scouts with the ability to be ahead of the curve on judging talent

The inaugural beta season was a great learning experience, and I have some exciting plans for season 2, but clearly the website hasn't hit the critical mass to provide dynamic and self-sustaining content. To supplement the CrowdScout system, I'll be throwing out some of my own thoughts in my Game Theory blog.

What is Game Theory (or what will it be)?

·     Hopefully delivers both qualitative and quantitative insights to sports (predominantly hockey) - the original idea behind the CrowdScout platform

·     Part thought experiment, part analysis. Some logic and some numbers

·     Whatever seems interesting and easy to write to me. If it is boring to write, I can't imagine how bad it would to be to read

·     Ideas a little different than the standard - meant to be critiqued. Ideas are stronger with more diverse input - one of the main principles behind CrowdScout

·     Potentially more advanced analysis, possibly combining my own proprietary CrowdScout data with public data

My Background

I've been lucky enough to live lives of a colligate hockey goaltender[1], an antitrust economist[2], and a data scientist. I plan on relying on the ensemble of my experiences rather than one - there are more interesting economists and statisticians discussing sports worthy of your time (I believe market forces have spoken on my goaltending abilities as well - unless the NHL was really serious about increasing goals). After finishing my college hockey career, I took some time away from being completely immersed in hockey while the hockey analytics community matured. When I decided I wanted to contribute, I thought it would be best to create something different – a platform that was able to combine analytic and traditional information in a meaningful way. I hope to do the same in the Game Theory blog.

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[1] Full disclosure: I played Division III NESCAC hockey (only because there was no Division IV, as my coach liked to remind me)

[2] I also fell ass-backwards into doing anti-trust economic consulting and advising the most recent NHL lockout – a bitter-sweet, but very exciting experience