Hilow is a game theory expert (courses at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Northwestern) and tournament champion who focuses on mid/high-stakes single-entry/three-entry max
We’ll start with my answer to the first Oracle question about this being a unique slate and go from there:
“First off, we have the game with the highest game total of the season on this slate. Second, it’s a 13-game slate, much larger than the 10 and 11-game slates we’ve grown accustomed to over the previous six to eight weeks. Finally, pricing is tight, with so many key studs we want to jam in and not much in the way of projectable value outside of Woody Marks. The higher game totals and larger slate mean the optimal score is going to be much, much higher than in recent weeks. The tight pricing means we are likely allowed more leeway away from optimal to win GPPs, with true optimal likely including numerous players that hit true outlier production at minimal ownership. This leads to two distinct expected behaviors from the field: (1) people are likely to accept too much variance in search of scores closer to true optimal than are needed to win GPPs, or (2) others are not going to build with enough exposure to risk for the high chance that higher scores are needed to ship GPPs. We’ll discuss more of what this means in the End Around and on The Slate podcast on Saturday.”
Quick explanation: Restrictive chalk is an expected highly owned piece that restricts the maneuverability of the remainder of your roster, while expansive chalk is an expected highly owned piece that allows for higher amounts of maneuverability on the remainder of your roster. Classifying various forms of chalk as either restrictive or expansive allows us to visualize what it means for roster construction on a given slate and how restrictive a certain player might be, meaning more of the field will look similar from a roster construction standpoint with that piece.
EXPANSIVE CHALK. Marks projects for the most points of the players priced below $6,000 on this slate. He is coming off a career-high 29 opportunities in a win over the Chiefs following the departure of Nick Chubb. Chubb is out, and the Texans are favored by 9.5-points at home against the Cardinals. It all checks out to me.
RESTRICTIVE CHALK. The Lions continue to deploy man coverage at rates near the top of the league, against which Puka holds a 0.36 TPRR, 3.90 YPRR, and 0.90 FP/RR.
RESTRICTIVE CHALK. McCaffrey leads the league with 24.6 XFP/G and remained a massive part of the aerial game with all skill position players back to full health. The pure rushing matchup is poor on the ground, but that simply might not matter for CMC.
RESTRICTIVE CHALK. The Bengals will be without Tee Higgins in a game that could eliminate them from postseason contention. Chase is the player with the clearest path to 15+ targets on the slate.
