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.
I teach a Freshman-level class in high school creatively titled, “Theology 1.” It is an introductory course on God and faith wherein we look at the religions of the world as a way to explore the many images of God and the many ways to practice faith. We were studying the building blocks of faith the other day and discussing the term belief when a kid totally shocked me. “Uh, Mr. Petrich,” he asked. “If beliefs are sometimes just opinions, does that mean they have bias?” I did a double take and thought to myself, “Is this kid reading my articles and just trolling me right now cause if so, bravo.”
The working definition of belief that I use reflects our acceptance of something as true. Beliefs are rooted in truth, but often we believe things that are very far from the truth, but bias has clouded our thoughts and made an opinion look like a fact, or made an untruth look like a truth. What do I mean in terms of DFS? Think about the biases that you have fallen prey to this year. Here’s an easy one for me. I will do all of my own DFS Interpretations, as much in my own bubble as I can, meaning I do not read any OWS content and try not to listen to podcasts until I am done with my interpretations. I think it is important that the OWS community has a lot of independent thoughts to read through, and although a number of us here at OWS are in lockstep (I mean we have all kind of trained together) we do disagree, and more importantly, we favor good situations differently. However, when making decisions for my tighter builds (I haven’t had time or resources to make 150 lineups for a couple of weeks), I often confirm my thoughts with those of other OWS members, namely JM. I can admit it, friends. I have fallen prey to confirmation bias.
Last week, I typed this into the chat because I noticed my Interpretation for this game hadn’t been published: “This interpretation (about the PIT-CIN game) didn’t make the site, but I wanted to share it. I think it’s a great way to increase probability. “This is a nice spot to attack for DFS. The options are few so it is clear how to attack this game, should you guess right and get a high scoring affair. What do you do with Chase Brown ($6,200)? He is obviously a central part of this CIN offense at this point and has been getting tons of work in the passing game. I think he almost has to be included in any game stack, but it’s a tough matchup as a one-off.”
I liked the game stack because there were so few ways to play that game that if it did in fact go off (it did!), it would be hard to miss getting the pieces right. However, I only played about five lineups and JM’s Player Grid confirmed some of the thoughts I had about the HOU game stack so I immediately elevated that game in my mind and ended up building around that stack. It was not a wrong decision, and it may have been +EV, but it was not my decision and the reasoning for it was because someone else I trusted confirmed it. I often am prone to confirmation bias. I had a clear reason why I wanted to attack the PIT-CIN game and I passed over those clear thoughts that would have produced a good decision in their own right in order to feel better about my lineup pre-lock. Don’t do that!
