Strength of Schedule Luck
What is Strength of Schedule Luck?
Strength of Schedule (SoS) Luck measures whether a manager faced easier or harder opponents than average over the course of a season. It answers the question: "Did you benefit from a soft schedule, or were you fighting uphill against the league's best teams every week?"
SoS Luck = Actual Wins - Opponent-Difficulty-Adjusted Expected Wins
How it differs from regular Luck
Luck holds your scores fixed and shuffles your opponents. It measures whether your record was fair given how well you played.
Strength of Schedule Luck holds the opponents fixed and measures their difficulty. It tells you whether the opponents you faced were, on average, weaker or stronger than what a random schedule would have produced.
| Metric | What's shuffled | What it reveals |
|---|---|---|
| Luck | Your opponents | Whether your record matches your scoring |
| SoS Luck | Opponent difficulty | Whether your opponents were easy or hard |
How SoS Luck is calculated
The system runs a separate Monte Carlo simulation with 100,000 iterations, but instead of using your scores against random opponents, it evaluates the difficulty of the opponents you actually faced.
The process
- Collect the points scored against you each week — the actual scores posted by each opponent you faced.
- Simulate 100,000 random opponent assignments — randomly assign which opponent points each team would have faced each week.
- Compare opponent difficulty — in each simulation, teams that faced lower-scoring opponents get credited with "wins" (easier schedule), while teams that faced higher-scoring opponents do not.
- Average across simulations — the expected number of wins under random opponent difficulty is the baseline. The difference between your actual wins and this baseline is your SoS Luck.
Interpreting SoS Luck
| SoS Luck | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| Positive | You won more than expected despite facing harder opponents — your schedule was tough |
| Near zero | Your schedule difficulty was about average |
| Negative | You benefited from an easy schedule — opponents underperformed against you |
Combining Luck and SoS Luck
The most complete picture comes from looking at both metrics together:
| Luck | SoS Luck | Story |
|---|---|---|
| Positive, Positive | Lucky record AND tough schedule | Dominant team — probably very good |
| Positive, Negative | Lucky record AND easy schedule | Inflated record — regression likely |
| Negative, Positive | Unlucky record AND tough schedule | Best team with the worst breaks |
| Negative, Negative | Unlucky record AND easy schedule | Bad team that also got unlucky timing |
The "negative Luck, positive SoS Luck" combination identifies the most hard-done-by managers in your league's history — teams that were genuinely good but faced the league's toughest schedules and still got unlucky on top of it.
Related metrics
- Opponent Points Rank: A simpler measure — ranks each team's average opponent score from hardest (1) to easiest
- Opponent Points Percentile: Same ranking expressed as a percentile (100 = hardest schedule)
- Schedule Swap Analysis: A separate tool that shows what your record would have been playing every other manager's exact schedule
See schedule strength in your league
Import your league for free to find out which managers have benefited from soft schedules — and which ones have been fighting uphill all along.
Related — Luck & Schedule
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