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.
What slates and contests are you planning to play this weekend and what are some things that you are focusing on in your builds or strategies as you enter these contests?
I like playing two different strategies on small slates. I play large-field tournaments in which I aim to be overweight on various bench players, because the field tends to underrate the likelihood that some cheap punt guy scores a touchdown and is in optimal lineups at minimum salaries. Most (not all, but most!) small slates see punt plays in optimal lineups and that’s especially true in playoffs when most teams tend to have real stud skill position players that can put up huge scores, and punt plays let you afford more of those studs. This is a much higher-variance strategy, and worth noting it works better on Fanduel and Yahoo with their half-point PPR scoring system, as a rando dude grabbing a touchdown is more likely to be optimal.
I also play small field stuff and in those tournaments I focus on just building tight, strong top to bottom rosters and let other people make mistakes.
Finally, on any slate that progresses over time like this one, I like building duplicate lineups. So, if I have 150 entries in a contest, I’ll start with 50 lineups. My goal is to find the optimal build from the first game, and then if I find it, I want to have multiple copies of it so I can build around those potentially winning starts in different ways. Building as the slate progresses lets you make smart decisions once you see where you are and what you need, and most people just build once so it’s a huge edge to continue building in different ways as we get more information.
I’ll be playing the biggest MME contests for all available slates this weekend, using layered strategies across all slates. As we’ve talked about on other sequential short slates this season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, previous MNF double-headers), these slates are so unique because we get more information with each passing game, drive, and play. We also know how the theoretical components of short slate play interact with valuable concepts like optimal score and score needed to win, making these slates a game theorist’s dream. I plan on leveraging as much of that as I possibly can this weekend, meaning MME play in the biggest contests available.
I’m with X on overarching strategies – I typically like building duplicates on slates like these to allow me even more maneuverability throughout the weekend. Finally, I plan on building some 6-game rosters as if they were two-game and three-game slates as the field generally wants to account for every game on builds for short slates.
My main focus for the weekend is the full 6-game slate that entails all the games on the weekend from Saturday through Monday. I like the strategy elements of the staggered game times as well as the bigger player pools. I prefer playing larger contests with bigger payouts at the top, and those types of contests are tough to give yourself a chance to win without having a duplicated lineup when you get into the smaller playoff slates. I’ll of course be playing the Saturday 2-game slate and Sunday 3-game slate as well, particularly on Fanduel where the full weekend contests are somewhat limited, but based on the salaries, contests, etc. my main focus this weekend is the full weekend slate.
This week presents a massive change in thought process and approach as we are coming off the most uncertain week of the year in Week 18 in terms of how teams will approach things, what player usage will be, and even whether or not some teams actually even want to win…..and head into the NFL Playoffs when every team’s goal is very clear. With that in mind, this feels like the most competitive and unpredictable opening weekend I can remember as five of the six games have spreads of four points or less, nine of the twelve teams playing won 11 or more games this season, and two of the three teams who were under that mark are playing at home. It sure feels like this could be a fun and wild weekend (pun intended).
With all of that in mind, there is the potential for a game environment or two to really take off. What are your two favorite game environments to build around this weekend?
