The current world record to beat the original Nintendo Entertainment System classic video game Super Mario Bros –from a fresh start to evading Bowser to save the princess — is 4 minutes, 54 seconds, and 881 milliseconds. The second-fastest time is 4 minutes, 54 seconds, and 914 milliseconds. A human thumb can’t twitch fast enough to accurately clock the difference between first place and second place (although I bet you’re trying to prove me wrong right now). That one-thousandth of a percent faster time by the elite speed-runner Niftski has placed him at the top of the Super Mario Bros speed-running pantheon. Many speed-running fans believe we have reached the human limit of optimizing the Super Mario Bros speed run, meaning that everything about the game has been studied, examined, optimized, and played out. In other words, if you decided to go pick up Super Mario Bros and try to speed run it today, you would have the work of hundreds of thousands — nay, millions — of other runs that have shown you the optimal path to complete the game in the best possible time. To arrive at the top of the speed-running leaderboards at this point, one would need a confluence of skill and luck: they would need to be skilled enough to pull off the necessary moves AND successful at lining up each and every one of the low-chance maneuvers in order to succeed.

Of course, this whole speed-running spiel is a metaphor for fantasy sports: we fantasy sports-ers have draft optimizers, lineup optimizers, draft analyzers, projections, and people competing to be the best in the world. Only, the difference is, is that people can make a lot of money or social capital in fantasy sports. Speed-running Super Mario Bros isn’t something that Niftski can do to make a million dollars in one night or even one year. But for a fantasy sports fan, you could win any number of contests through multiple providers — whether they be season-long or daily fantasy sports — and walk away much richer or much more respected. OK, maybe not either of those, at least for most of us. But when providers like NFC, DraftKings, FanDuel, and so on are paying out millions of dollars to players every year, there’s a natural human urge to, at the very least, wonder how to climb that metaphorical fantasy mountain and stand atop it for a short while. The same sentiment applies to even the most mundane fantasy player who wants to win their friends and family league just to show up Uncle Ken, the guy who both introduced you to the un-edited cuts of Star Wars and the flavor of tequila on your 16th birthday.