Play within Yourself
One of the most important keys to being a successful DFS player is being comfortable with the tournaments and stakes you are playing at so you make optimal decisions. When you are uncomfortable with the amount of money you are risking, you are more likely to seek out “sure things” or try to find the “cheat code” that will bring you the money.
As soon as you are risking more than you are comfortable with, your mind will automatically move to a state of preservation where cashing is of extra importance. Since we know that only 15 to 25 percent of entries in a given tournament will cash, searching for extra security or trying to improve your chances of getting into that cashing group will have a negative effect on your ability to find your way to the top of the leaderboard.
The second-level effect of this is that most of us are aware of that tendency. That awareness will lead us to overcompensate on the other end by taking more extreme risks or trying to be extra “unique” in ways that are actually just very thin plays or strategies. This results in a situation where you are doing one or both of the following:
- Lowering your chances of “cashing” because you end up far too “chalky” (having only popular players) or playing too many thin plays as an overcompensation.
- Lowering your chances of finishing at the top of the leaderboard, because that is not where your mind is when making your lineup and sifting through the information for the week/slate.
I am an avid golfer and have a background in coaching the sport as well. I am not a pro, but my knowledge of the game and a golf swing is very high. There are three key analogies I will make here that are critical for DFS players to understand.
- In the golf swing, two of the most important things are your grip and your setup (alignment, posture, etc.). The reason that those things are so important is that your entire swing is a reaction to that point at which you start. How you are holding the club and the positioning of your body influence everything that happens as soon as you start swinging. For DFS, playing in the wrong tournaments or at the wrong stakes is the equivalent of holding the club cross-handed and swinging from your knees. You will simply be unable to execute the fundamentals of creating top-end DFS lineups if your starting point is not a comfortable one.
- On the golf course, perhaps the worst thing you can do from a mental perspective is focus on the hazards. The optimal way to approach things is to focus on your target. If you are on a hole with a tight tee shot with woods on one side and water on the other, you can’t be thinking “don’t hit it in the water” – because you’ll hammer it into the woods. You also can’t be thinking about not catching the trees on the other side, because you will simply blast it into the water. Sometimes you’ll also find that overthinking where you don’t want to hit it just makes you even more likely to hit it there. Either way, it’s very rare that thinking “don’t hit it there” results in an optimal shot. Your mindset must be focused on where you DO want to hit it – and then executing your swing in an optimal way that gives you the best chance of a good shot, rather than just a “not bad” one. From the DFS angle, obviously our goal is to win the tournaments we are in. The optimal way to do that is to focus on executing good lineups consistently. We aren’t looking to simply “avoid the hazards”, we are trying to make a hole-in-one.
- The final golf analogy I will give is that you want your DFS play to be akin to when you are on the driving range or playing in a “scramble”. You see it all the time – players who can go to the driving range and hit the ball exactly how they want and/or very consistently, but then they go on the course and every swing is different. For those unfamiliar, a “Scramble” is a golf format where players on a team all hit from the tee and then their team takes the best shot of the group and plays from there. All the players on the team then hit a shot from there and they take the best of the bunch again. This continues until one of them holes out and the team’s score is however many “shots” they played from to get it in the hole. It is a very fun format and one that removes tension and pressure from most of the players. In both settings – on the driving range and in a scramble – the players are freed up from worry and concern, which results in improved performance. Overextending yourself in the number of lineups you are playing or total money being risked is perhaps the easiest way to negatively impact your performance as you eliminate that freedom and carefree attitude that results in optimal results.
If you are struggling to find success, a great way to get yourself out of a rut or “find your game” is to evaluate your playing style and level. Try going a couple of weeks and/or a few slates playing at much lower levels than you usually do but approaching it with the same amount of research, content, and attention as you normally would (it doesn’t work if you bump down the stakes but stop paying attention or trying to understand the slate).
You can still look up leaderboards for other tournaments and compare your lineups to the more expensive tournaments to see how you would have fared to give yourself an idea if/when you are ready to bump back up to higher stakes. Most people will be shocked by the results, and if/when they have had a run of improved performance with solid lineups, they can gradually build back up with greater confidence. No more “swinging scared” and no more focusing on the hazards…..just a singular focus on building great DFS lineups and finding a path to the top.
(SIDE NOTE: The other aspect of “Playing Within Yourself” that makes a big difference is the fact that by playing within means that you can afford, you give yourself a greater time horizon to see your results play out. Even the best players have losing streaks, and when you have a losing streak while playing for more than you should it will eventually break you and force you to stop playing, or close to it. You have to give yourself an adequate time horizon to hit that elusive big score, or else you’ll be out of the game before it ever finds you.)
