SOURCE: MARC STUDER/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, BOTHELL, CAMPUS MEDIA CENTER
By day, Clark Olson is a professor of database systems and computer vision at the University of Washington, Bothell. By night, he's a king of fantasy sports, a hobby in which individuals create and manage imaginary teams of real players that compete with one another based on their season's statistics. Olson's computational and algorithmic skills have earned him five straight top-three finishes in an international rating system of online fantasy players, plus about $5000 in winnings every year.
Q: How well do you know the games themselves?
Sports knowledge isn't crucial to doing well at fantasy sports. More important are knowing where to get good information, being able to analyze stats, and developing successful strategies for building a strong team.
Q: How much of your decision-making is art and how much is science?
I'm not sure there is any art at all. I try to make every decision based upon principled analysis. For some moves, new information makes analysis trivial.
Q:Who will be more successful this season: your fantasy picks or your favorite baseball team, the Seattle Mariners?
It is extremely unlikely that the Mariners will finish as well in their league as I do in the ESPN Uber contest, where I am in fourth place overall. However, if success is measured in revenue, then I can't compete with the Mariners.
