Column: Dominate your fantasy league with 4 trade tips

These are the trades that make other owners in your league hate and respect you; these are the trades upon which championships are built. My own experience in fantasy baseball suggests four common rules that should help you make unfair exchanges.

Rule No. 1: A good trader is like a casino manager. He feeds on people’s impulsive natures. Often, when I am contemplating a trade, I look through my own players and see who has outperformed expectations or played well recently. I then try to trade these guys for talented players who have not done well recently.

In psychology, the tendency to overweight recent information is called “recency bias.” In fantasy sports, this strategy can be called “taking advantage of the league’s impulsive guy.” In my experience, the profile of an owner who is likely to accept this kind of trade is a guy at the bottom of the pack who actively manages his team and cycles through free-agent pickups. The tendency of most online leagues to post little “hot” or “cold” icons next to players based on their recent performance will help you execute this trade strategy.

One downside to this strategy is that it needs to be done quickly, before players revert to their natural talent levels. You can’t spend that much time developing a negotiating position based on a series of unfair starting offers.

Rule No. 2: Trading should be like selling water in the desert. Every team has weaknesses, but most owners tend to forget that the key to fantasy sports is getting points, not addressing needs. If a guy thinks he needs closers or saves, indulge his fantasies. Offer him exactly what he wants (e.g., your second-best closer, if he wants saves), but save the player that most fits his needs (e.g., your best closer) for a later offer. Ask for something he has a surplus of, but make sure the initial offer is as unfair as possible without being incredibly obnoxious. He will counter-propose for what he wants. Eventually you will either reach a mutually acceptable deal (generally a sub-optimal result) or he will overpay for the best player for his needs after a round of offers.

A real-life example of Rule No. 2 might be the Oklahoma City Thunder’s recent trade of a protected first round draft choice, Nenad Kristic and Jeff Green for Boston Celtics center Kendrick Perkins and point guard Nate Robinson. The Celtics wanted to get younger and acquire a perimeter player, so they ended up trading a championship-caliber center for a young but bad small forward and a low draft choice. A corollary of this rule is that anytime you think you need something, you should remember that the trading market is fairly liquid and you can probably get very close to fair value if you are a little patient.

Rule No. 3: A trade can be proposed in as much time as it take Donald Trump to tell you that he is rich, powerful and skeptical of Obama’s birth certificate. In 10 minutes, you can propose 5 to 6 trades. Instead of checking the scores frequently, just check your weekly performance and focus on trading instead. About one to 50 of these initial offers will be accepted.

Recently, I traded pitchers Joe Nathan (who lost his closing job two days after the trade) and Ricky Nolasco for all-star starter Chris Carpenter. Sometimes people will accept your initial crazy offers, so you should propose a fair number of them.

Rule No. 4: Do not negotiate as a House Republican would. Acting crazier than you actually are may work for debt ceiling negotiations in which a deal has to be reached. In fantasy sports, however, no one needs to make a deal. In general, people are pretty risk averse, suspicious of fellow owners and reluctant to interact with jerks. I generally try to be funny or give a reasonable-sounding rationale for my proposal to make the negotiating experience pleasant for the other owner.

An example of how to introduce a trade might be the following comment I made on a recent offer of Dan Uggla and Dan Haren for Adrian Gonzalez and David Price: “I don’t like the name Dan ... But more seriously, I have a good backup second baseman and need corner infield help.” Actually, I am just trying to exploit Haren’s unsustainably good start to acquire an underrated pitcher, Price, and possibly the second-best first baseman in the game, Gonzalez, after his very bad start to the season. But I would never admit that my real motive is maximizing value.

Also, it is generally a bad idea to explain to a trading partner why a deal is in his favor. People like thinking that they have discovered why a deal is in their favor, and are rightly suspicious of a competitor who acts like he is trying to help fellow owners.

These four simple rules should help you make terrifically unfair trades. I would avoid competing against friends, however. I find that it is much more enjoyable to manage a team with friends or siblings and to compete with anonymous competitors. Unfair trades are much more fun when you can celebrate them with friends.