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 want to begin my last article of the 2024 season by thanking RotoMaven and JM for giving me the space to write about a totally new topic in fantasy sports. I have come across plenty of people talking about bias, but rarely pausing to give it the credit it deserves. Bias is a huge detractor from optimal play and because it involves a simpler and easier form of thinking, it often helps build consensus on bad decisions. Bias can be punishing and compounding, resulting in a sort of decision making that resembles the behavior of a pendulum. The problem is, bias can be hard to recognize.
I have played the last game of a lost season as a Senior in college. Our team came together and convinced our coach to let us run the style of offense we liked best and we dominated a highly rated team. That’s a bias I carry with me into week 18. We did it! So can another team. Maybe CLE can take down BAL. If I recognize this as bias, I can look for similar narratives that involve a final game collapse in a lost season and likely everything in between. I can find out how likely it is that a lost season spells doom for a team. Once recognized, there are ways to challenge that bias and try to make a better decision than the one the bias was leading you to.
I often see in OWS Discord the comments about this topic. The positive comments (haven’t had any negative yet) show a genuine interest in the topic and desire to know more, but I think it is a difficult topic to act on. In order to recognize, one must slow down and that can be hard. In order to act, one must have confidence. I think I have benefited from this article, especially when I have slowed down and built lineups with confidence in my process.
This is the first year I have ever published my DFS Interpretations on the site in a professional way. After the entire OWS team’s write-ups are posted, usually later on Friday night, I read through everything and get little shots of adrenaline and dopamine when my thoughts line up with another analyst. I want to be approved in this space and so seeming sharp is a desire of mine, but it also directs me to read and look for confirmation in my thoughts about the slate. This confirmation bias has been a strong distraction for me this year. I need to be looking for unique thoughts of mine that are going to help me be different while still making +EV lineups. I should be celebrating those places where my thoughts are unique and can set me apart from the field. Chalk isn’t bad, but I have been far too willing to roster chalky plays this year than trust those differentiators.
Are your biases of the simple variety and therefore easier to diagnose? Do you tend to let recent performance dictate your choices? Are you swayed by one writer and the way they “frame” the information you are looking for? Are you always jumping on new situations (injury replacements) and hoping to hit a large ceiling at a cheap cost? Whatever the bias is, try to recognize it and play through it. More likely, you are prone to new biases every week, and even that realization is a great benefit. If you feel like you fall into this category of players, you probably have a lot of NFL knowledge and are looking for ways to confirm this knowledge in your roster decisions. You have probably had weeks where you didn’t quite have time to put in the same effort, especially lately, and have allowed your mind to take shortcuts. Seemingly simpler decisions are ripe with bias and we just miss it.
Why is bias punishing? Compounding? Simply put, the person who is prone to making decisions based on bias is not making decisions at all, and if DFS is a game of decisions, the person who is prone to bias isn’t even really playing DFS at all. How much of our competition falls under that umbrella? They are not even playing the game – they are often taking projectable median outcomes for a game and trying to roster as many median outcomes as possible in various games. Let’s make sure we are at least better at decision making than those players. A few biased decisions can lead to a roster that has no path to first but still makes you feel good for putting it together. Those are the dangerous rosters. They trick us into thinking we are good DFS players too. Be very discerning while deciding on final lineups.
