Luck (Schedule Luck)
What is Luck?
Luck measures the difference between a manager's actual win-loss record and the record they would be expected to have based on their weekly scoring. A manager with positive luck has won more games than their points deserved. A manager with negative luck has been unlucky — they scored well but faced tough opponents at the wrong times.
Luck = Actual Wins - Expected Wins
Why Luck matters
Fantasy football schedules are random. Two managers can score identically over a season, but one goes 10-4 because they faced weak opponents in their best weeks, while the other goes 7-7 because they drew the league's top scorer every time they put up a big number.
Luck quantifies this effect. It separates the quality of a manager's roster (how many points they score) from the randomness of their schedule (who they happened to face each week).
How Expected Wins are calculated
League History uses Monte Carlo simulation with 100,000 random schedule shuffles to determine expected wins.
The process
- Take every team's actual weekly scores — the points each team actually scored each week of the season are fixed. No scores are simulated.
- Randomly reassign the schedule 100,000 times — in each simulation, the system generates a complete random schedule where:
- No team plays twice in the same week - No pair of teams plays each other more than twice per season - No repeat matchups in the first 5 weeks
- Play out each simulated schedule — using actual scores, determine who wins each matchup in each simulation. If your team scored 120 points in Week 3 and the randomly assigned opponent scored 95, you win that game.
- Average the results — across all 100,000 simulations, count how many wins each team accumulates. The average is their expected wins.
H2H + Median leagues
In leagues that use head-to-head plus median scoring, each team can earn up to two wins per week: one for beating their opponent, and one for scoring above the league median that week. The simulation accounts for both, calculating median wins from the actual league-wide score distribution each week.
Interpreting Luck values
| Luck Value | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| +2.0 or higher | Very lucky — record significantly better than performance |
| +0.5 to +2.0 | Mildly lucky — favorable schedule |
| -0.5 to +0.5 | Neutral — record matches performance |
| -2.0 to -0.5 | Mildly unlucky — tough schedule timing |
| -2.0 or lower | Very unlucky — consistently drew strong opponents in the wrong weeks |
A typical 14-game season might see luck values ranging from -3 to +3 across a 12-team league.
Luck vs. Strength of Schedule
Luck and Strength of Schedule Luck measure different things:
- Luck asks: "Given YOUR performance, how many games should you have won against random opponents?"
- Strength of Schedule Luck asks: "Given THE OPPONENTS you faced, were they easier or harder than average?"
A manager can be unlucky (strong team, bad record) even with a weak schedule, if they happened to face each opponent on that opponent's best week.
See luck in your league
Import your league for free to see which managers have been the luckiest and unluckiest across your league's entire history — and by how much.
Related — Luck & Schedule
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