The Greatest “Cheat Sheet” In DFS
Each week in The Oracle, OWS team members will take on the key strategy questions from that week’s slate :: sharing their thoughts on how they plan to approach these critical elements from a roster-construction, game theory, and leverage perspective.
Usually we start by asking, “what makes this slate unique?”, but this week the answer is fairly obvious. We are all humans and have a big holiday thrown in the middle of our usual weekly process. The result is we essentially have three slates in an eight day period (Week 12 Main Slate, Thanksgiving Slate, Week 13 Main Slate), which really tightens things up. Obviously in our positions, we still are fully involved and will break down every angle of the slate in our content as usual. However, the reality is that playing on “short rest” changes things. Is there anything about how you intend to play on this Sunday’s main slate (i.e. – the contests or amount at risk) that is different from your usual weekly approach?
Great question.
On a typical year, I would say that nothing changes for me.
In the past, “all day Thursday” was my busiest work day of the week (I worked on DFS Interpretations all day Thursday, then rolled right into Player Grid prep at night, and into podcasts and Player Grid on Friday). On Thanksgiving week, I would simply move my Thursday work to Wednesday and knock out everything a day early, which would have me roughly on pace by Friday/Saturday.
This year, with the Journal, it’s even easier for me to be “on schedule” by Friday/Saturday — and if this looked like a normal slate, I would be attacking it with my normal volume/approach.
But given the shape of this particular slate, I plan to cut my bankroll allocation down by 75%(!).
To be clear, this is not “a prescription.” If you’re reading this, and you feel you have extra edge on a slate like this, you should lean into that edge.
Since my “most core edge,” however, is “leaning into certainty,” this is not a slate where I feel I have the same edge I usually do.
I typically play $6k/weekend — and this week, I played $1500 already on the Thanksgiving slate and returned $3000. I’m turning around on Sunday and putting $1500 in play again, so on a busy week with an ugly Sunday slate that may not suit my strengths, my worst-case scenario is break-even.
And of course, as we get closer to the weekend, I’m beginning to gain more confidence in my potential edge — so maybe I’m able to come out of this week with profit overall.
Still, I’m not pushing it on this one. I have the time set aside for my normal play — and in fact, putting less money in play won’t change my time allocation at all. But I will be acknowledging the unique ugliness of this slate by scaling back a bit — and if your edge is similar to mine, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to do the same.
I love the question but my answer is a boring one…I play it just the same as a normal slate. For years now I’ve made DFS a priority over this holiday weekend because it’s one of the softer weekends of the year with a lot of casual money in play, both on Thanksgiving and on the following Sunday, so historically it’s been very profitable for me.
I do think the question is an important one, though, because it’s important to consider why you play DFS. Are you just playing for fun, to have something to sweat, to give yourself another way to enjoy watching football? Cool, throw in a roster for a couple of bucks even if you don’t have time to really research and prepare. Have fun.
But if your goal is to be a +EV player, a profitable one over time, then it’s important to realize there are times when you should play and times when you shouldn’t. Don’t play when you aren’t at your best, and don’t play on days/weeks when you don’t have the necessary amount of time and energy to invest. DFS is hard and DFS takes time. If your goal is to be a profitable player, only play when you can commit to investing the time.
This question really hits home for me this week. I’ll break it down as best I can.
On one hand, the multifaceted aspects of a season full of near misses and “the sweats not breaking my way” has worn on me, mentally. I noticed it a few weeks ago when I was considering blowing additional entries in the $555 Milly, which would have wrecked my bankroll for the season. Fast forward to a week in which the contest schedule has been extreme, and my promise to my wife that I would not work on Thanksgiving while spending much-needed time with my family, and this slate would be one that makes all too much sense to take off.
On the other hand, the state of this slate is absolutely ripe for a game theorist to have a distinct advantage due to its complexities.
With that, I haven’t fully worked through how I will be handling this slate, on a personal level. The next 24 hours (I’m writing this early Saturday morning) will likely be key in that decision as I continue to piece together one of the more unique slates we’ve seen this season (every slate is unique, but this one has a lot of elements we haven’t seen to this point in the season).
I will be pumping down my overall volume on this slate, but primarily playing large-field MME and trying to lean into the uncertain nature of this slate and the likelihood of winning rosters being less common in terms of their build. By that I mean this is a rare week where we don’t really know where the highest scores are going to come from, which means if/when we are right we will have less people we are competing with. As such, I will be working to use a condensed player pool to shoot my shot knowing that if I am right on things I have arguably my best chance of the season to actually bink a tournament.
We see it almost every week, especially at this point in the season. In Week 10, it was the Lions and Commanders. In Week 11, it was the SF/ARI game. In Week 12, it was the NYG/DET game. These spots where the scoring comes in such huge waves that somehow a game stack or aspects of the game become a “must” to have a path to the top. Each of those spots stood out as potential fantasy gold mines for various reasons, however, while this week all of the obvious spots seem to have been pilfered from the Main Slate and what is left is uninspiring. With all of that being said, the reality is that we are now at a point in the season where injuries start to pile up for defenses and desperation sets in for some teams while we also sometimes see changes in approach or player usage. The fact is that it is highly likely that there is a spot that emerges this week as it has in other recent weeks and since it is harder to identify that will make it that much more valuable to be on top of.
Which game environment stands out to you as a potential “Game Changer” for the Week 13 Main Slate?
