A look at whether trade posting rules, generally used in tougher leagues, might benefit your league.Just to go back to my prior post on the owners in my high stakes league that have no apparent plan, and the story of Cortes, I wanted to make a point about “strategic moves” and commitment. In any strategic conflict or “game” to use game theory terminology, the eventual outcome of a game can often be discerned by the parameters. This happens because of the assumption that both parties are looking to maximize their return. So, in a game where the order in which participants act is determined beforehand, the party who acts first can usually divine what his opponent will do by looking forward and reasoning back.

However, what might seem like a predetermined outcome can be changed, by the use of a “strategic move” by the party to act second. Essentially, he can signal to the other party that he will do X or Y even if it does not necessarily maximize his return. The only way this works, however, is if he is committed to it. Commitment is the key.

The nuclear arms race is a perfect example, and has been analyzed to death in this respect. The key aspect of that analysis is that there has to be some way for the retaliating party (US or Soviet) to commit ahead of time that retaliation would occur, otherwise there is nothing preventing a sneak attack; hence the doomsday device. I have even heard stories that Nixon tried to convince the Soviets that he was mentally ill and couldn’t control what he might do in the event of an attack.

Sometimes though, a soldier (or fantasy owner) is not willing to make a commitment. In that circumstance, it must be forced upon him or her. This is what Cortes (and William the Conqueror, who first used this strategy) were doing; taking away all hope of a different outcome among their soldiers by committing them to either fighting or dying.

The point of these stories is that a commitment is often needed to bring about a reasonable outcome, whether it be avoiding a nuclear war by mutually assured destruction or by forcing parties to act in a certain way that is beneficial to the whole.

In my high stakes league we have a message board on which trades must be posted. Once posted a deal CANNOT be removed. So, once you agree to post a deal you are committed to it. The only way to back out of a deal is to get someone else to counter it and to then post that deal. The sequence below is an example; once deal number 2 was posted it must be done and deal one is no longer on the clock.

This rule serves the same purpose as Cortes’ burning of his ships; once an owner posts a deal there is no turning back, he must go through with it. Is this to say that you can’t have fair trading without it? Of course not. However, when the stakes get high it is better to force the issue rather than leave it up to an individual’s decision.

What is the effect of this rule?? The first is that it because it prevents a party from backing out of a deal, it prevents an owner from taking advantage of the unwary. When the deal is posted, if it is extremely unfair, a bad dump trade for example, it will quickly be countered. So, once posted the weaker team is “off the hook” so to speak. Their poor judgment can be rescued by other owners, who are all acting in their own self interest by the way, lest one think we are just trying to help out the weaker owners. This at least fosters the idea that overall trading will be fair. In fact, those readers who are familiar with game theory may recognize that a “fair trade” is virtually an equilibrium outcome among competent owners. More on that later.

Aside from poor judgment, there is also the possibility of cheating or collusion. The owners involved simply cannot hide once an unfair deal is posted. So, if there is collusion (and in a high stakes league you should not ignore this possibility, and as I will discuss in a later post, we recently had this situation arise) it must be out in the open. This fact at least helps to prevent collusion since the colluding owners can’t just do it without anyone knowing.
Of course, if owners want to be outright cheaters no rule can prevent that; it can only make their cheating transparent. I will have more to say about this in the future, as in my high stakes league there was a trade that was arguably collusive. But, at least it wasn’t done under the table; the posting rule made all the owners aware of it.

It also fosters fairer trading. This is an extension of the first principle. By forcing a team to a commitment to a deal, an owner who is looking to post a trade will be more introspective and less willing to just post a trade just for the hell of it. No owner can post a trade simply with the hope of driving up the price, since there is no guarantee that it will happen, and no turning back.

Given that a posted deal is, prima facie, a fair deal, it provides much insight into the motivations and thought process, or lack thereof, of the owners. When a deal is posted it is assumed that each owner involved views it as “fair value” or a “good deal.” Otherwise, they wouldn’t commit themselves to the deal. So when a deal is posted, you can tell what is going through someone’s mind. Sometimes, as is the case below, you may learn that nothing is going through one’s mind.

In many leagues, and some readers may have direct experience with this, there are “pipeline” deals where one team appears to be a pipeline to another. Or, you may have a problem with one owner’s evaluation being so far off the mark that he routinely makes what the rest of the league sees as bad deals. You may be in a league where there is simply a lot of gross dump trading. In these instances, a trade posting rule is likely to benefit your league.

In one of my low stakes leagues, there are often bad trades, simply because of a disparity in skill among the owners. What happens is that a deal is made, and then emailed to the league. There is no posting and no way for anyone else to know negotiations are ongoing unless the player is actively shopped; which presents a problem with deal pipelines. So what happens is that once a bad deal is emailed to everyone the email flame wars start. This is bad for the league in terms of morale, and also bad for the league in terms of competitiveness.

If you are in a league,or if you are the commissioner, then you should give some thought to adding a trade posting rule if you do not have one. Fostering fair trading is good for the league and good for each individual owner, and who doesn’t want that?