Prich has won over $300k the past 3 years and has found an edge in understanding the field biases and more importantly his own biases when building rosters.
If you had a holiday that you could live through on repeat (Groundhog Day style – the movie, not the actual day), which would it be? Thanksgiving is obviously out of the question. I mean, who could eat turkey and stuffing that many days in a row? Christmas is a good answer because merriment and cheer are less likely to get old, and Halloween is definitely up there. 4/20 is a more contrarian option, but I see its merits. It could be your casual NFL Sunday, but you have to relive the same slate of games.
At OWS, we have been talking forever about the theory of playing out a slate 100 times. Now, SIMS is actively building programs that do this. The math behind the systems takes projections into account and randomizes the likelihood of a certain percentile outcome for each player, in different stacks, for an entire lineup. It honestly sounds like a huge time saver. You, the DFS player, then search through the lineups you have built and select a lineup based on a number of different factors including the likelihood of a first place finish, which is really all that matters. Hold that thought.
I have long since adopted the idea of “Playing Fearless” in DFS. This mentality can mean a lot of different things, but essentially the idea helps to construct lineups that are not focused on simply cashing, but rather on securing a first-place finish. The reason for this is easily understood in the context of a Showdown Slate where you can only roster six players from one game, and the top lineup is often duplicated many times leading to split pots. Playing fearless in this context involves aiming for first and aiming to be unique so as to have first place all to yourself. Even in Main Slate contests, you want to be unique, but with nine players and 12 different games on a given slate, duplicated lineups are more rare and you can win while still including chalky players on your roster. The idea of “Playing Fearless” still applies within this context and it has something to do with building for a scenario where you replay a slate 100 or even 1,000 times.
There was a very sharp discussion going on in the Inner Circle Discord this week about how SIMS might be changing the game as the system is utilized by more players. SIMS takes ownership projections and player projections and looks for the best low owned plays with the highest projections in stacks that are volatile with high ceilings (that’s a lot of factors). These are all of the things that OWS tries to identify through the NFL Edge and DFS Interpretations and the various other amazing articles on The Scroll. As a result, ownership projections can significantly change from Saturday Night to Sunday morning. Maybe Jimmy Buffet did say it best, “there’s a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning”. A guy may go from being a smart play (significantly +EV) at projected ownership to a play that is too highly owned and was only really a smart play because no one was on it. A chalky player could lose ownership as a result and be more attractive to the roster. The effect is different for the various contest sizes and buy-in tiers. Let me try to give you an example of all of this.
