This article could easily have been titled, why pay $8 for a chook you can get for $2!

Ive been looking under the TooSerious hood, and Im seeing a little bit of analysis of the most popular pages; in particular my interest is in what pages are looked at in the Stats references over the past month.

Ive found it quite strange that the sorting on breakeven is not considered to be the most important sort you can do.   The first one I do each week is on average points per game (ppg).  The second is on break even ascending for the upcoming week.

The stats on numbers of people sorting by breakevens were actually beneath sorts on position (understandable to an extent) and the biggest of all, salary movement descending.

Now I know its great for me to watch who has gone down the most $ value, and yeah there is a morbid fascination at laughing at my fellow coaches in my leagues misfortunes, but its not my most important search.   Every week, I look at breakevens, because its not necessarily the price today thats optimal, but the price in the next few weeks.    More on this over the break (just not too much more!)

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The same logic down the shops says "Why buy the chips packet at $2 when I can get it later in the week for $1.45?"   Or more pertinently the inherently silly things we do to buy petrol on a Tuesday (or whenever we deem the cycle to be at its low point).   The absolute grand daddy example, is why buy a rotisserie chicken from Coles at $8 when at 8pm on a Sunday you can cruise in and chomp on a $2 chook?!

The great thing about breakevens, and about the viewing of stats that detail price movements not just for this week, but individual weeks for the next two weeks, is it helps you to time the ideal week to bring in (and trade out) a player.

So - how do you search breakevens effectively?

First - sort by them ascending - its a simple as clicking on Stats, then the heading for the column Break Even. Look at all players who are listed in green, but most particularly those who have a negative break even.  This means that by turning up and getting subbed off the entire game, they will still go up in price!   If you can also filter by the using Fresh Meat option, you can see which players have played less than 3 weeks, meaning they are on their first price bubble.

Second - sort by them descending - its generally as simple as just clicking on the heading for the Break Even column again (toggle). This helps you to see the players who are in danger of going down in the next week.   These are NOT the players to trade into this week.   These are the players you should note down on your watchlist and keep an eye on their price in a few weeks time, because todays high break even is tomorrows bargain.

Rookie Break even Analysis

There is a good rule of thumb mentioned here, applied almost exclusively to rookies:  When your break even is higher than your average, its time to move along.   That means if you have a rookie who you are preparing to cash in, this is nearly always the optimal week to do just that.   Thats why so many are looking at trading in Nick Duigan, even though his form hasnt been bad at all.

You might look at a current example to see whether your break even analysis can be used to even greater effect.

Say you want Mitch Wallis before his price goes up, but youre not sure whether to trade in David Swallow just yet.   Aside from other factors (such as team strength, job security, byes coming up, opposition), another factor is comparing the breakevens.

Wallis, after his two games of 54 and 22, has a break even of -6.   This means that if he scores his current average, he will go up almost 20k.

Swallow, after his great start to the year averaging 82 has a break even of 32.   If he scores his current average, he will go up 22k.

The question you have to weigh up is the chances of Wallis or Swallow getting better than average scores.   If they get their current averages, its better to hold Swallow and trade down to Wallis the next week (or even better, perform this analysis again next week to see if its still viable - you might find Curnow is a better player to trade out).

Hope Ive given some basic assistance to those doing a breakeven sort.   And hope to see the number of these skyrocketing in the next few weeks as we look to upgrade 7 or so rookie picks to premiums.