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.
What did you do to prepare for this year’s NFL season? Based on Discord chats I have been scrolling through, there are plenty of people who are “so excited” for the season because they “did more prep work than ever.” My ‘X’ (Twitter) feed is full of people displaying their ownership percentages for their 150 Best Ball teams. There are plenty of people who already know a lot about the player pool, organizational depth charts, and player rankings. For DFS purposes, these people know too much . . .
During the offseason, I took some time to read a book called Thinking, Fast and Slow where Daniel Kahneman calls into question our surety in making decisions. We are often overconfident based on extraneous or irrelevant information, especially during times when optimism prevails. Optimism is certainly the mood with which so many of us will be building lineups for Week 1, and I am guaranteeing that many of your competitors in DFS this week are feeling pretty confident in what they know.
If you have been spending a lot of time in the Best Ball streets, you are likely in a spot where you have a good handle on the player pool and the top players according to ADP. You definitely have “your guys” as well. Your “slow thinking” mind has taken the time to make some decisions about player ranks and you have more or less cemented those thoughts into your mind. They are now quite easy to rely on and trust. You have developed confidence in them. Those thoughts may be good, but they can also lead to this overconfidence, and in effect turn bad. These thoughts are bad when they affect subsequent decisions.
Here’s an example. If you have been drafting Dak and Lamb and think DAL/CLE could produce some good offense this week, then how likely are you to roster any other combos in DAL? How do I roster players that are not the best options according to everything I have researched? Try switching your modes of thought. Our “fast thinking” mind can quickly recognize the big price differences between DAL players and immediately see Jake Ferguson costs less than Lamb. You can again turn back to the slow mind to recognize that CLE will be forced to pass if an expensive DAL is succeeding and maybe you roster Watson plus a pass catcher instead. Switching between these mindsets or “modes of thinking” can be beneficial to making good decisions and help us avoid times when we are overconfident.
This weekly article explores how to do that well. Where are we overconfident to start this season, and how can we recognize the bias that blinds us from constructing winning rosters.
