Why Fantasy Paintball Will Change the Way We View the Game

With the launch of Fantasy Paintball, the way people view the game and it’s players is going to change.


Federov after winning a Point at World Cup 2011 - Photo by Skip Hickey

Thank you Skip Hickey for the Awesome pictures! Originally written by Aaron Kohn.

So Fantasy Paintball is out, big whoop. Now what?

After the PSP’s biggest turnout ever at Galveston, and the release of player stat’s, it was time for Fantasy sports to hit the paintball scene. After months of work, we released our very own fantasy paintball website, acknowledging the demands of the masses. So how will this effect the PSP or paintball? It’s just an online game right?The statistical revolution began in 2002 with the Oakland A’s baseball season just around the corner. General Manager Billy Beane was

Damage Player at World Cup 2012

in a dilemma. The Oakland A’s did not have a very large budget compared to other teams, and they had just lost some of their all-star players to higher paying teams. Beane had no way of making a team capable of winning the world series with the money that he had. Until he discovered what is now called “Moneyball”. Normally in baseball, new players are found by scouts, who look at the talent level that player has. The scout bases it off of intuition and past knowledge of the game. The concept of Moneyball is to use the statistics record in baseball to discover players who are able to get on base more often than others. The idea is that the player that gets on base the most will be “safest”, meaning that he does not normally strike out, but he also does nothing special, he just get’s on base. If the player get’s on base, it’s possible to score runs, without having to worry about a player striking out. sure he won’t get a home run, or have some last minute game winning hit, but it’s the “safe way” of playing baseball, using statistics and data rather than skill or luck.

Ok, ok, so what the heck does this have to do with paintball? Well let’s see, usually when we think about who the best player in paintball is, there are some names that first come to mind right? Oliver Lang, Konstantin Federov, Justin Rabacoff, Ryan Greenspan, Brandon Short, all well known, respected players in the PSP pro division. But why do we think of those people as the best out there? We see them pull off stunning moves that change the outcome of the match, such as Justin Rabackoff’s save during the 2011 PSP Chicago open against Dynasty. Sure that’s cool, and sure it saved the team, but in the long run, is he truly the best for one move that he made?


Justin Rabackoff at PSP Chicago 2012

In paintball, it’s all about staying alive and getting G’s. It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you win. Here’s where statistics and fantasy paintball come into play. Gaining points in fantasy paintball is based off of a series of different point factors. Staying alive at the end of the point, and the G count are just some things you can gain points on. If people truly want to win Fantasy paintball, they’re going to have to factor in a lot more things then just who their favorite players are. Sure you can still pick your favorite players for fun, but if your going to get serious about it, more fundamental things will begin to edge into your mind.

“Oh Ollie Lang is the best, I’ll put him on my team! But wait, he was ranked 70th on Paintballaccess.com, but why? Well let’s see – it seems his survival rate is pretty low, and he doesn’t get many G’s off the break. I also know that he loves talking back to the refs, and gets lots of penalties. If I want to win my fantasy league, I need the maximum amount of points. I won’t be able to do that with Oliver. Let’s see who is more consistent.”

That’s basically a scenario that will happen a lot more often now that the fantasy league is out. People will really look at the core parts of the player’s, if they stay alive at the end of the game, how many G’s they get, and how many penalties they can collect. Pro teams looking to draft new players might not exactly take up the “money ball” approach, but surely many pro teams will start to look at how their players are doing, and what they can do to change their chances of success.

We will not see and immediate change in how teams will go about playing the game. Pro’s will still be picked up based off of what coaches think of them, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But that decision to pick up a pro player over another might be influenced just a little bit by these statistics.

Go check out the Fantasy site and sign up if you haven’t already