Allow me to lead this off with some eye-popping statistics relating to NFL DFS. Did you know, the chances of landing an optimal roster on a given slate are roughly one in three trillion? One in three trillion! Let’s put that number into perspective. Statistically speaking, we’ve had about 72 million rosters played in the Milly Maker, assuming an average of 250,000 entries per slate and 17 slates per year (there are some with more and some with less). On that pace, again, statistically speaking, it would take 41,667 years to have a large enough sample size to make the odds of someone, in the history of DFS, landing on an optimal roster an even bet (1:1). What, then, does the game of DFS become? The game of DFS can thus best be described as a game of manipulating variance, and to do that effectively, we must first understand certain truths, backed by game theory.
In statistics, variance is a measure that quantifies the dispersion or spread of data points in a dataset about its mean. Higher variance means the data points are more spread out, while lower variance means the data points are clustered closer to the mean. We’ll return to the textbook definition of variance later.
In game theory, variance refers to the measure of how much the outcomes of a game fluctuate, or how spread out the potential outcomes are from the expected one. Now think about the game of football and the game of DFS – are there aspects of these two individual games that could influence expected outcomes? You betcha! The game of football pits 11 players against 11 players, involves 53-man rosters, and is influenced by coaching tendencies and decisions, all of which involve the imperfect nature of human beings. Then we add outside factors like weather, wind, injuries, the condition of the field, referee imperfections and mistakes, and the way this oblong football bounces, and it is clear to see how various aspects of the sport can lead to more variance.
Combine those two characteristics of variance and we’re left with an interesting puzzle. How do we play a game so influenced by outside factors, things we simply cannot control, that also involves high degrees of statistical variance due to those influences? By managing and manipulating that variance in our favor, that’s how!
