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In this lesson :: We’ll take in a bird’s eye view of Showdowns, and understand why this is such a remarkably beatable game at the moment.
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My name is Matt McComb, and I go by Xandamere on Draftkings. If you consume a lot of daily fantasy content, that probably means absolutely nothing to you. Who am I, and why should you listen to me?
Well, I’ve played DFS since 2014 (RIP Draftstreet) and have been profitable every year; but I found my greatest success focusing heavily on Showdown last season from week 6 onwards. In the 12 weeks remaining of the regular season, I placed 1st or 2nd in a major showdown tournament seven times and maintained a double-up win rate of just over 70%. Am I the world’s best DFS player? No, I’m not — but I found some incredible angles in the newest contest type that people just weren’t exploiting.
Showdown is becoming a big part of the DFS landscape, with massive prize pools for all of the island games (at least three per week!), plus some extra action during the day on Sundays. But there’s really very little content or data for it. My edge is that I have been tracking the data on every single Showdown slate since the beginning of 2018: I’ve been watching what types of rosters win most consistently and what types flop. How much should you spend on your captain slot? What positions should you focus on in your captain spot to give yourself the best chance of success? Should you build lineups with three players from each team, or focus more on one team? How much exposure should you have to kickers, to defenses, and to those random scrubs who occasionally come out of nowhere and win someone a Showdown tournament?
I’ve collected and analyzed all of that data. So while you can find a lot of touts who are willing to give their opinion on what’s going to be successful in Showdown, I’m not sure you can find anyone who can tell you that across every single 2018 Showdown slate, the optimal lineup had a running back in the captain spot 38.3% of the time — or an awful lot of other interesting and profitable data that you’ll learn by reading further.
