by JM
This might be the single thing I hear most often from DFS players: ‘My player pool was too big.’ I ‘didn’t want to miss out on that guy in case he had a big game.’
Until now — in spite of this being one of the biggest issues that DFS players run into — OWS has not had a solution in place to help you overcome this problem. How do you go about building a sharper player pool? — a player pool you can feel confident had you in +EV* territory, even if things didn’t work out in your favor that week?
Because…that’s one of the biggest issues, isn’t it? Even with an ultra-sharp process, approach, etc., you won’t be profitable in GPPs every week. And if you don’t KNOW that you’re leaning into a quality approach to your play, you can find yourself second-guessing yourself and changing up your approach every single week.
This course gives you everything you need in order to KNOW that you are sharpening/optimizing your player pool every week — putting yourself in position to bank on profit over time.
“EV” (a term you’ll come across often in DFS) stands for “expected value.” I’ll often say, in my writeups or podcasts, “If we played this slate a hundred times…” The thinking being: crazy things will happen on the small sample size of a single slate. But if we could play out these slates, with these matchups, over and over again, what would give you the highest return on your investment? What approach would have the most positive expected value?
There’s a course for that, too. It’s called “The +EV Primer :: How To Lock In Positive Expected Value.” It was also created by MJohnson86.
Mike shares his DFS journey, and lays out the basics of building a sharper player pool.
Mike dives into Volume: exploring what “volume” means by position, and examining the ways in which he uses volume to assess and understand individual players in relation to his DFS rosters.
Mike explores the similarities and differences between Matchup and Game Environment (two categories that most DFS players, and even most DFS touts, mistakenly group together! — much to their detriment), and takes a look at the angles we can lean into for properly assessing each of these “boxes.”
“A huge mistake people make is having lineups with TOO LOW of ownership levels“
Mike takes a look at what TRULY matters about ownership projections/percentages, and how to properly use them.
“The key to ownership is how a lineup works together and making lineups that can win“
I absolutely love this lesson…
Since 2015, I (JM) have been preaching a very similar system to what Mike lays out in this course: “Talent, Matchup, Opportunity, and Price.” But “talent” has been the most ill-defined of these categories, as talent — borrowing from what Mike says at the top of this lesson — is subjective. Talent is also, however (as he also says at the top of this lesson!) an extremely important aspect to consider when selecting players. So how do we assess “talent”? This lesson provides a tremendous foundation for understanding HOW “talent” fits into our decision-making process in a week-in, week-out manner.
Mike wraps our roster-building process by taking a look at the way defenses fit into our decision-making, including how we should balance matchup, ownership, and talent, and how many defenses we should be considering each week in our sharpened player pool.
Mike ties everything together, through the lens of a roster of his that took down a $200,000 win in Week 17, 2020
Great course. Provides a framework and structure to really focus on your process and criteria for establishing a player pool.
Helped me realize mine was not robust as it could have been. Lots to rework and I know it will pay off in the not too distant future.
Thanks so much for putting this course together! I’ve read through the course three times already and have taken away a new insight each time. I look forward to incorporating the ideas that you outlined into my process this year. BEST OF LUCK!
Probably the piece that hit home for me the most. The herd mentality has often been what led me to my final pool selections and of course, it didnt usually end well. This course has drove home the point that I need to own a process and dont allow FOMO (fear of missing out) cause me to waver in my final selections. Will refer to this EVERY week as I start my pool analysis!
Fantastic course!
This really spoke to me as this is one of my biggest issues I face. My system for narrowing down my player pool was not strong enough or as in-depth as it needs to be. It really makes a lot of sense and I have no idea why I haven’t been doing it before now!
I improve my process a little every year, but having too loose a player core has been a consistent problem that I was going the wrong way to address. Now I am going to add a new section to my excel document that will incorporate what I have learned from MJohnson86!
I have one 6 figure win in 2018 to my name and a lot of near misses since, with a tighter, coherent core, I think MJ might have just unlocked something in my brain!
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