My friend and colleague at the Daily Racing Form, Peter Thomas Fornatale, wrote an interesting post on his blog this week. He's talking about strategies for handicapping contests, but the advice applies to fantasy games of all stripes.

It's OK to finish with zero. One of the biggest mistakes players make in their first contests is to worry about "not embarrassing themselves." It's a natural instinct to not want to be at the bottom of the leaderboard, and there's a sense of safety about ending up somewhere in the middle of the pack. But this instinct will hurt you in the long run.

(Full post here - Fornatale: It's OK to score zero points)

In a nutshell... playing for third in a league that only pays two spots makes no sense at all. All the spots that don't pay are tied for last.

You'll see the same reasoning pretty regularly in Chris Liss' weekly survivor pool column. And I'd actually argue that the same is true in real sports, which is why I have no problem at all with what the Sixers have been up to for the last few seasons.

(The fact that my performance in my home MLB league has been Sixers-esque for the last couple of seasons does not play into my reasoning at all.)