The generally accepted definition (and utilization) of roster construction is simply the manner in which you build your daily fantasy sports (DFS) roster. Methodologies like salary allocation, differentiation, stacking and correlation, floor and ceiling, and ownership management are mostly understood by the masses, while higher level theorem such as Game Theory, leverage, chalk builds, human psychology, and tailored rosters fall more in the category of conscious incompetence (when one knows they don’t know).
My goal in this course is to condition your mind to think unlike the field when building rosters. We’re going to confront the field’s behaviors head-on using individual psychology, crowd psychology, epistemology, and Game Theory doctrines. There is still such a massive edge to be gained by intrinsically working on your process to develop these habit patterns, something I hope you leave this course better equipped to do.
Before we jump in, I again want to emphasize the fact that what we’re going to explore here should be considered higher-level DFS practice and execution. These concepts should also be considered theories in the most strict sense of the word, as in, I have developed these processes over the previous four years of Game Theory doctrine study and applied them to fantasy football. There have been no Harvard or Yale papers on Game Theory application to DFS.
I have, however, taken courses on Game Theory at Harvard and Yale, dove into the deepest corners of the internet learning everything I can about Game Theory and its close relatives (epistemology, Game Theory Optimal (GTO), human psychology in game, etc.), and read countless professional papers and books on the subjects. All of that isn’t to toot my own horn; it’s simply to relay the fact that there might not be anyone else in the fantasy space who has put as much work into developing Game Theory as it relates to, and integrates with, fantasy sports as I have.
Paul A. Wagner summarizes the end goals of Game Theory perfectly in his excerpt “Game Theory as Psychological Investigation,” describing Game Theory as “a theoretical approach for identifying strategies that increase the likelihood of decision-makers under conditions of uncertainty optimizing expected value (EV) in real world decision-making.” There couldn’t be a more perfect quote to get us started.
With that out of the way, I’m super pumped to have you reading this, and stoked for the season(s) ahead. We’ll start by taking a peak at psychology and how we can leverage those tendencies to our direct benefit, parlay that into a discussion on chalk and the chalk build (if you haven’t heard me refer to that phrase before, it’s okay, we’ll define it shortly), take an intrinsic look at our own goals, continue that discussion as it pertains to contest selection and tailored rosters, take an analytical and statistical look at stacking and correlation, discuss building a weekly portfolio, and finish with a practicum discussion that explores my personal weekly habit pattern in attacking a given slate.
