Some people have told me that there is more luck involved in say a $140 million cap league versus a $100 million cap league.  Was wondering why this would be the case?  It would seem to me that you are just dealing with better players in the higher cap league, but skill in drafting should still be somewhat the same.  Perhaps less "cookies" can be used in the higher draft, but there are probably higher priced cookies as well.  In the $140 cap, there would be no AAA players where in the lower caps you get the AAA players.  So it would seem there would be maybe LESS luck involved in the higher cap league since AAA is out of the equation. 

The higher you go, the more likely it is that everyone is picking the same guys, in my experience.  Especially if you're surrounded by owners who've played a thousand times.   Granted, there is still managerial strategy and ballpark that differs.  But I think the natural feeling to have is that since everyone has similar rosters, it's a coin flip every game.

It seems to me that there would be similar rosters no matter what the salary cap is.  In the $140 mil cap league, I am actually in a theme league where you have to choose players from only 2 franchises...one franchise for all your pitchers and a separate one for all your hitters. I'm in a $80 mil cap league and I see multiple instances of Raines, Dilone, Vizquel, Bip Roberts, Joss, Maddux, etc etc...the same guys you tend to see in open leagues all the time.  It seems there is in fact more luck when it comes to those leagues because you never know what you will get with your AAA players. 

I thought somone might tell me that there is more parity in a higher cap league because teams are more closely matched.  If this is the case, I would think there would be more skill involved in such a league with building a team around a ballpark and with managing from game to game.  If I'm wrong, I won't take offense. But just seems like that would be the case.

Luck decreases as the salary cap increases, until you get to about 140mil, then it increases slightly until up to 255mil.

The reason being, the higher the offensive output the larger the gap between efficient and unefficient managing becomes. The reason it decreases after 140 slightly is because the database runs out of players. If there were a much bigger variety of high end players, the luck factor would still decrease up to 255. Having said that, even in a 255 league there is still a lot of difference between the winning and losing teams. Elturdo uses the same roster over and over and over and wins 60% of his games consistently.

luck increases with parity. similar players and similar strategies = more luck involved. If owners are all of similar level then there is more luck. When there is a big disparity between the top and bottom owners then luck plays a smaller role. OLs are a curious case, big disparity means the same people are always near the top but because of cookies there is a lot of luck separating the top teams from each other.
So I could make an argument for almost any cap having less luck. Mid caps have a greater variety of player selection and workable strategies, low cap strategy is more difficult, high caps may attract a smaller percentage of top owners, etc.

I agree with elduro in regard to the higher cap leagues, because unless someone seriously misdrafts, picks an obvious wrong ballpark, or has obvious deficiencies in his starting pitching, everybody in the league will pretty much have a lot of the same players, therefore resulting in parity.  And if you notice, in those high cap leagues where there are many veteran owners, there's usually no runaway team as most teams hover a little over .500. 

There certainly is a luck factor in the game, but blaming too much on luck is not wise. When I read the forums, and/or participate in leagues, I am forced to admit that there are managers who understand this game better than I do. There are guys who discover the cookies that the rest of us copy. If you read the posts of guys like boogerlips, zubinsum, grizzlyone, jfranco77, to name just a few, it is obvious they spend a lot more time figuring things out than I do. Our records of success bear this out. The most successful, regardless of salary caps, are the innovators. Sometimes, we imitators have some success, and we figure some things out, and we are able to help those who know even less, but make no mistake about it. Luck plays a very small part in our results.

I'll second that....when I find myself in the same division as grizzly or jfranco, I immediately start looking at who I have to beat to get the wildcard...