Stalefish Labs

The Group Chat Had It Right: Why I Un-Fixed Visible Picks

In a previous article, I wrote about how moving our F1 fantasy game from a text thread to an app unlocked pick categories that were too tedious to score by hand. The Overtaker pick replaced Fastest Lap in the app, and made the game better by doing things the group chat couldn’t.

The Pole Sitter Strategy: Fixing a Fantasy F1 Scoring Loophole

Before Open Wheelers was an app, it was a text thread. A group of friends, a shared note, picks submitted before qualifying. One of those friends figured out something the rest of us missed: you could win the whole league by making the same Podium pick every single week.

The None Trap: Game Theory & the Formula 1 DNF Pick

When designing the DNF pick category for our fantasy racing mobile app Open Wheelers, I included an option that felt generous: pick None. If you believe nobody will retire from the race, select None and collect 2 points if you’re right. Otherwise, pick a specific driver you think will be among the first three to retire, and earn 3, 2, or 1 points depending on how early they go out. We take our fantasy games seriously, I want them to be engaging and fun, and I care a lot about getting things right. So I decided to dig a bit deeper on this rule mechanic because it felt suspicious.

From Group Chat to App: How Going Digital Unlocked Better Fantasy Stats

Open Wheelers the app started life as a text thread. A group of friends with a love of Formula 1 just wanted a fun alternative to complex fantasy games with drafted teams, waivers, etc. So we played a manual game within a text thread, a gentleman’s agreement to get your picks in before the lights go out, and yours truly would manually tally results after each race, post the updated standings, and we’d argue about who was actually winning. It worked well enough for years. And it was completely holding the game back.