Agree.

So I'm not of the mind that I can have a single best lineup for any single week. I expect to end up with a handful of highly correlated lineups that I am not comfortable saying "this one is clearly the best." Maybe that's just me, but that's the starting point.

From there, if I'm playing someone worse than me, who knows they're worse than me, I expect them to try to match my lineup with 1 or 2 different players. My strategy against someone like you would be to mirror the lineup, find a cheaper defense I rank in the same tier, and then spend that extra money on one of the other players (or even holding everything but the defense and eating that cap space).

Thought process there being that defense is one of the bigger crapshoots and I usually have a couple defenses I rank pretty closely. I wouldn't drop down to a someone I had a tier below, but I would absolutely target defense first for a 1B selection.

So, my strategy as the better player to combat something like this would be to choose the cheapest defense I have in tier 1 and optimize the rest of the team around the remaining budget. I wouldn't anticipate this costing me significant EV on my total points scored, but would dramatically impact "my" ability to react to another player's lineup.

and there is no way you can overcome 5:4 odds by pivoting in 1 or 2 spots where you aren't even sure you have an edge. If they are even close to as good as you and share their lineup then you cannot overcome those odds. The information edge is too small.

Agreed.

That's a fatally-flawed starting point. One will be best even if you can't distinguish it with your eye test or whatever you are using (or maybe > 1 lineups have equal theoretical medians, in which case they would draw as n --> ∞).

How does asking for ridiculous odds prove anything?

But if you are sharing your lineup, it doesn't matter what players you choose or if you choose a cheap or expensive defense. Your opponent will mirror whatever you do and just change 1 or 2 players. Am I missing something?

I was just saying that my first choice to change 1 player if I was on the other side would be defense given how variable their scores are. I would feel like choosing my cheapest tier-1 option there makes it harder for an opponent to use that position to get an edge.

Obv this is also matchup dependent, but just my thoughts.