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Hilow is a game theory expert (courses at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Northwestern) and tournament champion who focuses on mid/high-stakes single-entry/three-entry max

MACRO SLATE VIEW::

This is the first main slate in some time that holds no less than four quarterbacks and offenses that could destroy the slate. As we’ve talked about in the past, the viability of lower-tier quarterbacks (and offenses) swings wildly from slate-to-slate, except we’ve seen extremely tight player pricing this season, enough to increase the number of times that pay-down quarterbacks (and offenses) have been viable to us. On this particular slate, we’re much more likely to need 30+ fantasy points from our quarterback, and we’re much less likely to see a 15-18-point score from a skill position player matter. As such, our process for constructing rosters should be fundamentally different, ignoring salary multiplier in favor of raw point upside. Let us begin!

RESTRICTIVE CHALK VS EXPANSIVE CHALK::

Quick explanation :: Restrictive chalk is an expected highly owned piece that restricts the maneuverability of the remainder of your roster while expansive chalk is an expected highly owned piece that allows for higher amounts of maneuverability on the remainder of your roster. Classifying various forms of chalk as either restrictive or expansive allows us to visualize what it means for roster construction on a given slate and how restrictive a certain player might be – meaning more of the field will look similar from a roster construction standpoint with that piece.

CHASE BROWN

NEITHER RESTRICTIVE NOR EXPANSIVE CHALK. Chase Brown has seen opportunity counts of 32, 24, and 29 in the three games played without Zack Moss, with a ridiculous 23 of those opportunities coming in the form of targets. We’re talking about De’Von Achane levels of pass game involvement (slightly more, actually) but with heavier rushing volume, at a price of $6,200 instead of around $8,000. Sounds pretty sweet to me.

ALVIN KAMARA

RESTRICTIVE CHALK. The field simply cannot shake Alvin Kamara after his three-touchdown game earlier this season. I get it, but a better way to view Kamara is that he has returned a GPP-viable score in two of 11 games this season and is subject to weekly torment by means of the great troll (said lovingly) Taysom Hill.

EVAN ENGRAM

EXPANSIVE CHALK. Evan Engram is highly likely to approach or surpass double-digit targets against the Texans while playing without Christian Kirk and Gabe Davis. That said, he has proven to carry modest, at best, touchdown equity while playing for a position that derives immense value from finding paint.

COLTS D/ST

EXPANSIVE CHALK. Cheap chalk defense. Hmmmmm.

BIJAN ROBINSON

RESTRICTIVE CHALK. Bijan Robinson has seen his involvement in the offense jump in recent weeks, seeing opportunity counts of 26, 20, 26, and 24 before seeing just 16 in a blowout loss to the Broncos in Week 11 before their bye. The most promising aspect of that slight uptick in volume is that almost six per game of those were targets. I prefer different running backs this slate, in a vacuum, but that doesn’t change the fact that Robinson is a pretty solid on-paper play.

CHALK BUILD::

JMToWin is a high-stakes tournament champion (Thunderdome, Luxury Box, Game Changer, Wildcat, King of the Hill/Beach, Spy, etc.) who focuses on the DraftKings Main Slate

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OWS Fam ::

This is not a complete list of all the good plays on the slate

This is, instead, a look at the player pool I’ll be fishing

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The Grid ::

Bottom-Up Build

:: covered in-depth in the Angles Pod (it’s highly recommended that you listen to the breakdown of the roster in order to see the thinking behind it, and in order to understand what we’re talking about when we look at a “bottom-up build”)

Blue Chips

:: my “Tier 1” plays: the plays I feel confident leaning into across different types of builds; these players have a high ceiling and a low likelihood of price-considered failure

Build-Arounds

:: games, offenses, situations, or scenarios I’ll be looking to build around across my rosters

Building Blocks

:: unique player pairings that can be used as foundational building blocks for tournament rosters

Bonuses

:: players who don’t fit into the categories above — either Upside pieces who don’t have the floor to be Blue Chips (and are not being focused on within my game-focused builds) or players who may not have a strong shot at ceiling, but are worth keeping in mind from a “role” perspective

Beta

:: a new category for 2024! — these are players who are not going to be “featured” on my tighter builds (i.e., one could show up on a tighter build, but they are not being prioritized as such), but who I will be mixing and matching across some portion of my MME builds

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Sunday Morning Update

Bottom-Up Build

Full breakdown (of what this is, and what the thinking is behind these players) can (and should) be found in the Angles Pod (on the One Week Season podcast feed).

Bottom-Up Build
DK Salary Remaining :: $6.1K

C.J. Stroud
Bucky Irving
Rachaad White
Nico Collins
Brian Thomas Jr.
Adonai Mitchell
Dalton Schultz
Kayshon Boutte
Cardinals

Join The Bottom-Up Build Contest On DraftKings!

Buy-In:

Free

Rules:

Build with a salary cap of $44k or below!

Prizes:

1st Place = 150 Edge Points + Rare Blue Name Tag in Discord
2nd Place = 75 Edge Points
3rd Place = 40 Edge Points

*1 Edge Point = $1 in DFS courses on OWS

<< Find “BUB Challenge” Channel Here >>

*must use an OWS avatar (found on your profile page) to be eligible to win

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Blue Chips

None

No players line up as Blue Chips for me this week

“Light Blue” Chips

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Build-Arounds

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Building Blocks

“No Pressure”

C.J. Stroud + Nico Collins + Brian Thomas Jr.

Story:

“Jags can’t get pressure.”

Why It Works:

The Jags can’t get pressure.

Stroud has taken a step back this year. But as explored in DFS Interpretations, a lot of this (not ALL of this; but a lot of this) has been due to his poor play under pressure, and his poor handling of protection looks from his offensive line. This week, however, Stroud gets the Jags, who generate pressure at the second lowest rate in the league and blitz at the lowest rate in the league. Stroud’s second- and third-best fantasy games of his career have come in this matchup, and he and Nico Collins ($14.3k in combined salary) have combined for 60+ points in back-to-back games vs the Jags.

With Trevor Lawrence expected to return this week, we also have an underpriced Brian Thomas Jr. on the other side of this game, likely to see plenty of downfield work if Stroud/Nico are cooking. This is a great spot for ignoring the implied team totals and thinking about the upside. I really like this block this week.

How It Works:

Currently, Nico is not trending for too much ownership (around 12%), while Stroud is going overlooked. (BTJ is looking likely to be popular.) With the ceiling on this stack (85+ points if everything comes together), you’ll be in really good shape if this one hits; though this won’t be enough on its own to put you on a clear pathway to a tourney win. Still look to do something unique or different on a roster that’s using this stack.

POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE:

The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.

“Mateys”

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Bink Machine

A look at some of the rules I’ll be applying in the Bink Machine this week.

Hmmmm…

So far, I’m not seeing any super unique rules to hit on this week. If I spot anything deeper into the weekend, I’ll drop it into my Sunday Morning Update!

Bonuses

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If Building For Single-Entry // Three-Entry Max

This is my narrowest pool, which means it’s the pool likeliest to change a bit as I move deeper into builds. If it changes throughout Saturday night, I’ll add an update in this space.

If I were building for single-entry // three-entry Max, my tightened-up player pool would be:

QB ::

C.J. Stroud || Baker Mayfield || Justin Herbert || Anthony Richardson || Drake Maye || Lamar Jackson || Jalen Hurts

RB ::

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A Wrap ::

I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!

-JM

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

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Welcome back to my (Mjohnson86) Player Grid. I am changing up the format of my Player Grid this year to be more direct about the players I like at each position and keep myself from casting too wide of a net. We have plenty of strategy talk and full game write-ups on every game here at OWS, this year I’m going to use this article to give direct answers on who I think the best tournament plays are each week. Also, note that just because a player isn’t on here doesn’t mean they are a bad play, I’m just intentionally trying to limit the players I list to about 3 QBs, 5 to 7 RBs, 6 to 8 WRs, and 2 or 3 TEs and that means that some plays don’t make the cut – we can’t play everyone. Feel free to drop me feedback in Discord or on Twitter about the new format and if you like this better or last year’s. Enjoy!!

This is a list of players that stand out to me at each position from using my “Checking the Boxes” criteria outlined in my course you can find in our Marketplace. This list is a starting point, from which I build out lineups using game theory and roster construction concepts with the mindset being to find the best plays with big ceilings. Low ownership is a bonus, but not a must. 

(Side note:: You’ll notice at the bottom of this article that Fanduel will have its own Player Grid this year)

Draftkings Player Grid

Quarterback ::

• C.J. Stroud – Stroud’s best game of the season came against the Jaguars and he is in desperate need of a confidence-building game after last week’s debacle against the Titans.
• Kyler Murray – A week after letting everyone down, Murray’s salary has dropped and his ownership should be very low. He is set to play in a dome against a defense that is likely to shut down their running game and has clear and affordable stacking partners and bring backs. 
• Justin Herbert – Herbert is in a great matchup against the Falcons poor pass defense and the Chargers will be without J.K. Dobbins, likely forcing them to lean more heavily on Herbert to carry the offense.
• Salary Savers: Anthony Richardson, Matthew Stafford, Drake Maye

Running Back :: 

• Joe Mixon – Mixon checks every box this week, as a talented, high-volume workhorse whose team should score a lot of points. Mixon has faced two top-5 run defenses this season. In the other six games, he has rushed for over 100 yards in every game.
• Alvin Kamara – We all saw what Saquon Barkley did to the Rams and Kamara has a massive rushing and receiving role.
• Kyren Williams – The Rams haven’t been able to get their running game going recently but a matchup with the league’s 31st-ranked run defense should get Kyren back on track.
• Bucky Irving – Talented rookies who start to separate from their competition later in the season are guys we want to be ahead on. Great matchup and a potential blow-up game environment.
• Chase Brown – Brown’s role may get scaled back a bit, but he should still be the man in passing situations and near the goal line. This is a massive game for the Bengals and I expect them to use Brown liberally as a pass catcher.
• Salary Savers: Gus Edwards, Jaylen Warren, Rachaad White, Kimani Vidal

Wide Receiver :: 

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Sonic is a Milly Maker winner and large-field tournament mastermind who focuses on mass-multi-entry play

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

This week was a tryptophan-ridden nightmare for some of us, but that’s behind us now. Deep breaths. Let’s find solace in sweating Sunday’s tournament rosters. Onto the Week 13 main slate.

These are contrarian moves I’ll be mixing into my rosters to differentiate from the masses. Sometimes we’ll miss, but the ones that do hit will help us lap the field.

Secondary Core-Relations

We’re always hunting for those high-ceiling combinations to add to our existing game stacks. It’s better to aim at getting four things right instead of trying to hit a nine-way parlay. I’ll lean on a handful of core secondary stacks that will be finessed into lineups whenever feasible.

Ja’Marr Chase/Calvin Austin

Ja’Marr Chase is doing Ja’Marr Chase things — leading all wide receivers in fantasy points this season. The Steelers are no cupcake matchup, but elite players are matchup-proof, and Chase is sitting at a juicy 6% pOWN. Added bonus is the leverage created off the slate’s chalkiest play, teammate Chase Brown.

Need a salary saver with real upside? Enter Calvin Austin. At just $3,300, he has the kind of game-breaking speed to deliver on his price tag in one play. He’s boom/bust but at 1% pOWN, he’s the kind of dart throw that can swing a tournament if things break your way.

Noah Brown/Nick Westbrook-Ikhine

Scoring in six of his last seven games isn’t variance—it’s a trend. We have to accept the reality: NWI is simply a guy who finds the end zone. At 2.3% pOWN, I can get 4x the field exposure and still have around 135 rosters without him if he whiffs. That’s a risk-reward balance I’m happy to exploit.

Meanwhile, Noah Brown (7.6% pOWN) has been quietly commanding 6.5 targets per game over his last five outings, and they’re not empty looks. His aDOT (average depth of target) lives in the same neighborhood as Nico Collins, Tee Higgins, and Mike Evans. At $4,400, on a slate starving for cheap value, that kind of upside becomes tough to ignore.

Derek Carr/Marquez Valdes-Scantling/Juwan Johnson

If you think the Saints offense can get the job done against the Rams, it’s time to embrace variance. Instead of riding the wave with chalky Alvin Kamara and Taysom Hill—both projected at over 20% ownership—consider this pivot: an inexpensive Carr stack that should combine for just 8% ownership, giving you access to upside from the same offense without diving into the crowded chalk pool.

Is this stack likely to outperform Kamara or Hill? Hell no. But if the touchdowns happen to flow through this stack, the leverage is absurd. Carr isn’t the flashiest QB, but he has enough juice to make this work. MVS has the game-breaking speed to flip a slate, and Juwan Johnson is always lurking as a red-zone assassin. By leveraging these low-owned options, you’re not just playing the Saints — you’re flipping the script.

LOWER-OWNED TREASURES

Running Back

Papy is a full-time DFS player, with a focus on high-stakes tourneys, and with hundreds of thousands in lifetime profit

The Board

• The top of the slate has two expected high scoring games. PHL/BAL (51) will be the game of the week for many DFS players and LAR/NO (49.5) isn’t far behind. Both games are also expected to be competitive, with a field goal or less spread. 
• The middle tier holds most of the slate with seven games. Many of the middle-tier games are “upper” middle-tier. LAC/ATL (47.5), PIT/CIN (47), TB/CAR (46.5), AZ/MIN (45), TEN/WAS (44.5), HOU/JAZ (44), and IND/NE (42.5) make this an appealing middle group of games to consider.
• The bottom tier almost didn’t exist. SEA/NYJ (42) is the only lower-tier game, and if the total was any higher it would qualify for the bottom of the middle tier. This slate has zero games with a total below 42.

Pawn – WR David Moore ($3,500)

Jalen Coker has been ruled out which means it’s likely that the Panthers will deploy their WRs the same way they did last week. In that game, Moore played 94% of the snaps and saw 10 targets. He turned those targets into a 6/81/1 line and gave the Panthers every reason to keep using him. The Bucs are below average (21^st in DVOA) against the pass and the Panthers seem to have taken a “screw it” approach with Bryce Young since he returned from a mid-season benching. The coaching staff started the year trying to hide Young. That changed when he came off the bench. Young has been allowed to throw over 35 times in two of the Panthers last four games. The Bucs are probably going to score against the Panthers (everyone does) and that will force the Panthers to respond with aggression. Expect another 35 plus passing attempts from Young, with a target expectation of 7-9 for Moore. I’m going to use Moore throughout my rosters as a classic salary-saving one-off player who has a heightened role because of injury.

Knight – QB Anthony Richardson ($5,500)

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.

Week 13 Topics

1. A Tradition Unlike Any Other

2. Pick-3

3. Low-owned, High-Upside

4. Value Plays

5. “That was so obvious, how did I not see it?”

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1. What makes this particular slate particularly unique?

The Question ::

A weekly staple of The Oracle, what makes this slate particularly unique?

The Answers ::

JM >>

The biggest thing that makes this slate unique is the thing that makes this slate unique each year :: Thanksgiving ends, and most of the field has to suddenly remind themselves that, oh yeah, there’s another slate this weekend!

DFS content providers are true grinders, but Thanksgiving is a family day for them as well, so most sites are getting up content late this week (and I can tell you from looking around the industry in the past that most sites are putting out sub-par content for the weekend on this week as well!). Players who are usually thinking about the slate by Wednesday or Thursday were probably just starting to think about the slate on Friday this week. All of which comes together to mean that the field is just simply not as sharp on this week as they might typically be.

Of course, we also have the shape of the slate (five teams implied to score 25-27 points, and most of these offenses priced up with clear bumps in the way to ascending to tourney-winning status — all to go with several lower-priced teams/games with potential to take off); but truly, the biggest edge of all on this week is just simply finding a way to execute your normal process, and finding a way to dedicate your normal level of focus by the time you start building rosters.

Xandamere >>

Well to start with it’s relatively small – only 10 games because of 3 games on Thanksgiving plus another on Friday. But there’s another bit of weirdness on this slate, which is close spreads. As I write this on Friday just 2 games (TEN/WAS and TB/CAR) have spreads larger than 3.5 points. That makes this slate look very attractive for game stacking…if you can find the right game! There are a lot of games with totals ranging from “reasonable” to “high” that Vegas projects to be close, and those are the best kind of games to target for game stacks – the kind of games where, if things break right, they can very easily turn into back-and-forth shootouts. I think PHI/BAL and LAR/NO stand out the most due to their totals, but LAC/ATL and PIT/CIN aren’t far behind and then there are several others that could surprise to the upside. It should be really easy to find interesting game stack opportunities this week. 

Hilow >>

This slate is a stark departure from what we have grown to know this season. We have numerous quarterbacks that are capable of putting the slate out of reach, median game totals are up, and there are numerous game environments that can develop into something you had to have. All of these things combine to push back against the tight player pricing, meaning we’re likely to require 205-215 points to ship major GPPs this week. That should fundamentally alter how we go about constructive rosters for this slate.

Mike >>

I see some things at each position that feel unique this week::

QB – There are about 8 QBs priced at $6,100 or below who seem like they have very viable paths to being tournament winners. Each of them has some combination of potentially explosive scoring environments, stud pass catchers to carry them, rushing ability, or relatively cheap for their ceiling pass catchers to stack them with.

RB – Feels harder this week than it has in many weeks. Chase Brown is underpriced, but in a really tough matchup and should be extremely highly owned. Alvin Kamara’s spot is good, but he’s very expensive and we just saw him get yanked by Taysom. The rest of the RBs with clear lead back roles seem to have iffy situations this week and/or have struggled in recent weeks.

WR – I think the top-5 WRs by salary are in spots where a massive spike week would not be surprising at all. Given how the NFL season has gone with passing and scoring, two or three 35-point games from the WR position would be very unique.

TE – Only one tight end over $5,000 (Trey McBride) and that player is coming off his best game of the season. Minnesota’s blitz-happy defense should force the ball out quickly and it wouldn’t surprise if McBride has a similar game to last week. If he can just find the end zone, he could lap the position by 10+ points.

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2. Pick-3

The Question ::

In my “Morning GPP Thoughts” in the Inner-Circle Discord channel on Thanksgiving, I mentioned how condensing your player pool is, in my opinion, the biggest struggle for most DFS players. Yet, on a three game slate we are forced to condense our player pool to only six teams and things naturally get pretty condensed. Obviously this is reflected in ownership on those slates, but my point was that you can put together a winning GPP score for a main slate from a smaller sample of games and trying to “cover every base” is generally a losing strategy. Sure enough, the winning GPP scores in the big Draftkings tournaments were over 200 points and on Fanduel it was around 180 points – both roughly in the range of what winning scores have been on a lot of main slates this season. There were only 3 games. DFS slates are just accumulations of games. What I am getting at here is there are a lot of weeks where if you just built lineups for main slates from 3 games it would feel uncomfortable but you could definitely still compete assuming you pick the games well and you probably gain an advantage and are unique just by doing so. So lose the FOMO on the main slates and narrow your player pool, one way or the other. This happened without shootouts (all three games had total points of more than 40, but less than 50 points) and without huge individual performances (no QB got to 30 points and no RB/WR/TE got to 25). This wasn’t an anomaly, either. The Afternoon Only slate last Sunday had winning scores at or just under 200 points with only one player reaching 30 points and game point totals of 22, 48, and 48. 

With all of that in mind, I thought a fun exercise would be for each of us to pick the three games we would choose to build exclusively from that we think would give us the greatest chance of finishing near the top of the leaderboards on this slate. Fire away!

The Answers ::

Thanks for hanging out with us in The Oracle this week

We’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

Strategy Ideas and Things To Consider

Finding An Edge

The whole idea behind this piece of content is that it is unique. Specific content and strategies for the “non-main slate” contests are very rare in the DFS industry, and most players who enter them are casual players or doing so on a whim after their main slate entries have had things go wrong and they want something to root for or to chase their losses during the late games. Edges are getting harder and harder to find in DFS as information gets better, projections get sharper, and the field gets more experienced. These smaller slates present a clear opportunity for an advantage for those that focus on them, as most players will just take their thoughts from the main slate and approach these lineups the same way – without considering how much having seven to nine fewer games (depending on the week) changes the strategy. The biggest win of my career came on an “Afternoon Only” slate in January of 2021 and I hope to share some of my insights on the format to help you attack this niche corner of NFL DFS.

Ownership Strategy

• Ownership will be higher for pretty much every player on “short slates” just because there are fewer players to choose from. This will be especially true for “chalky” players from the main slate.
• This means getting these players right is even more vital than on a main slate. There are fewer alternatives to choose from, so if they have a big game and you aren’t on them, it is much harder to find other ways to make up those points.
• This also means it is easier for lower owned players to pay off, as there are fewer players at their position that they need to have “fail” for them to be worth the risk.
• Correlation is even more important than on the main slate because the useful fantasy games that pay off for the slate are likely to be clumped up from the same games. I always make lineups with a game stack (QB + at least one pass catcher + at least one opponent) and then one or two “mini-correlations” from other games.

Week 13 Overview

A three game afternoon slate for the third straight week as the main slate itself is smaller with only 10 games. Once again, in large field tournaments, we need to find ways to differentiate our lineups to have any sort of win equity. The best ways that I have found to do this are:

1. Choosing a very low-owned play to start your lineup and then building backward from there. The players I am seeing on this slate who could fit that bill are Justice Hill or Isaiah Likely for the Ravens, along with DeVonta Smith for the Eagles if he plays, and Jalen McMillan for the Bucs. All of these players have potentially explosive skill sets. Baltimore could end up throwing more against a tough Philly run defense, Smith has a great matchup against an aggressive Baltimore secondary, and McMillan is talented enough to spike at some point in a full-time role – why not in a great matchup?
2. Leaving salary on the table. There are too many options on a main slate to justify leaving $1,000 to $1,500 of salary on the table, as somewhere in your lineup you are very likely putting yourself at too big of a disadvantage to overcome. On the short slate, it’s much more viable. The best way I’ve found to get there is to build a lineup using most or all of the salary and then look for the player you are least confident in and scroll down from him for a much cheaper player you feel has a similar outlook.
3. Full onslaught in one game – with up to four players (and maybe a defense as well) from one team and a couple from their opponent, or even 3 and 3. The LAR/NO game will be popular and for good reason, as it is so condensed. The PHI/BAL game’s ownership should stay somewhat in check due to the perceptions of the defenses and the salaries of the main players but has the potential to really go nuts. Even TB/CAR has paths to being a game you want to be heavy on. The key here is to really dive into that one game, and not fall into the temptation to cover every base and play someone from each team.

QB Strategy

Quarterback is always an important position but that importance goes to another level on these small slates. There are two main reasons for this. First, on average, quarterbacks obviously score the most points of any position and we can only start one of them. Second, as noted above, correlation is even more important as the slates get smaller and there are fewer scoring opportunities to go around. By choosing the right quarterback, you are also increasing the chances that you are right at two other positions. Again, the shorter slate condenses the scoring across all lineups, making each position more vital to separating and giving yourself a chance to win. This is why quarterback strategy has its own section:

The Props Insider team has helped the OWS Fam profit over $35,000 the last 2 years!! And the best part…

WE ALL GET TO WIN AT THE SAME TIME!

To get all the bets each week, subscribe with a Week, Month, or Year long Subscription

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Within the Scroll each week, we will share our early week bets and the thesis behind them. Our hopes are that this article will help the OWS Fam become better prop bettors as we teach you to fish.

Caution: Odds in the prop’s streets move fast, and it is likely these odds will have changed by the time you read this. With that in mind, we have left a “good to” mark to help you decide if the bet is for you.

(Feel free to DM Xandamere or JReasy on Discord with any feedback)

Bo Nix (DEN) OVER 220.5 Passing Yards

Nix gets the Browns this week. The Cleveland Browns have given up just 230 yards passing per game on the year (league average) but things have escalated since Jameis took over the reins. In the 4 games with Jameis as the starter, the Browns have given up 289, 282, 248, and 270 passing yards. That’s good for an average of 272 yards per game, well over this line.

The bet is good to: -125

Jordan Addison (MIN) UNDER 3.5 receptions

Addison has only caught more than 3 passes in two games this season. Now TJ Hockenson is back to help draw away more volume. Last week feels fluky – the Vikings left Jefferson on Chicago’s one really good corner (whose name I can never remember), which pushed more volume to Addison/Hockenson.

The bet is good to: -120

Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries

This is a unique week, a week where I will be honest in saying I am turning the page on it relatively late based on how I’ve typically tackled each week here at OWS in 2024. Most of my own approach to this Week 13 main slate is feeling different since I had a “bye” week from the Angles email with JM properly taking the reins for the massive Thanksgiving slate we all just put behind us. Additionally, like many of you, I am traveling and have been spending time with family around the holiday. So as much as I love my kids, it’s just a different rhythm this week and I wanted you all to know that. What’s going to follow here is going to read more like a typical “Tuesday thoughts” rather than a late week, I’ve-poured-over-every-angle type of assessment that you should get in this space. My hope, however, is that you could walk away from this piece this week with a foundational attack that will be unique in its own right because often I adjust my approach after noting my early thoughts and then weaving my way through my research in the days that follow. All of this is to say that I’m not positive I’ll be playing DFS in Week 13, but I am positive that you’ll get some content that reads as the opposite of overthinking. 

If you aren’t already, you should be taking in Matt Petrich’s Biases article, because he discusses this idea and I’ve mentioned it as well over the years, that almost every DFS article should come with a disclaimer. The disclaimer should state something about where this DFS content provider is coming from in a given week. For instance, has this expert won money on a certain player before? Have they deployed a strategy to success before and are they being stubborn in using it? (Full disclosure: I’ve been a victim of overstacking in this category over the years). Similarly, as I am this week, are they just coming up for air after a mid-week holiday, and how would that affect what you are reading if you knew that? Reading and listening to DFS content should always shape your strategy, and I am firmly confident in saying OWS is the number one site that cares about transparency in the process and results.

What other site gives you the range of content found on The Scroll each week, from the best plays to exploitative leverage and from single entry to MME (and also that lunatic who tells you to be cool if you lose every week)? What other site responds to real-time feedback and incorporates changes in the structure and schedule every season? What other site has a tab devoted to “our users win”? And what other site can do this with the relatively small circle of contributors week in and week out who work their butts off to make this experience top-notch? 

I started writing the previous paragraph with the intent that we’re committed to the subs on this site winning, and winning big. And it looks like I ended up expressing my sincere gratitude to this community for all it’s done for me over the years. Thanks for reading, commenting, and supporting me through these last four seasons. If you ever think that you may owe me, just know that it’s really me who owes you! Now onto the plays…

Adam Thielen…I can’t describe!

Prich has won over $300k the past 3 years and has found an edge in understanding the field biases and more importantly his own biases when building rosters.

I got into studying bias as a theology teacher and a campus minister. A friend of mine, Fr. Jack was a retired Catholic priest with a bit of a flair for the dramatic. He had an alter ego, Fitz, who sometimes showed up in his ministry to young people. He would dress up in a glittery jacket with a wig of long hair, and no one thought he was pulling off an aging rock star, but he was a musician and used music as a way to cut through bias and get to people’s hearts. Ultimately, he wanted people to experience the power of gratitude. Fr. Jack studied positive psychology in his retirement. He attended workshops and achieved certifications. He shared everything that amazed him about gratitude with the kids at our school and it had amazing effects. 

Our brains are basically plastic and therefore able to be molded, but we often get very set in our thoughts. These biases are often pathways in our brains that transmit negative thoughts. Maybe these negative thoughts are meant to keep us feeling safe, but they can also lead to depression in a world where we are more and more isolated from each other. An experience could trigger a thought in our brain that, no matter where it originates, will follow a similar path in our brain that determines our reaction to the thought. In particular, people who had experienced trauma would have coping mechanisms built into their brains and sometimes these coping mechanisms were not healthy. They were negatively biased, causing people to drink to numb the pain or to practice self-harm. Gratitude was sort of a magical manipulator of the brain. Kids who practiced sharing gratitude could develop more positive outlooks by creating pathways in their brains that were looking for blessings, rather than curses. A normal experience was more likely to trigger positive emotions in the brain just by keeping a normal daily gratitude journal and sharing that with another person. Gratitude was able to cut through the bias that was entrenched in the brain.

We have a Thanksgiving slate for DFS every year and I know some of you are super excited to spend your day sweating these games. Many of us will be checking in from our phones, enjoying (also dreading, let’s be real here) family and food as well as football. It really is a time to be grateful, but more than that, to commit ourselves to living with an attitude of gratitude. When we do this we can create pathways in our brains that look for the positive and not the negative in our everyday experiences. Negative bias can paralyze us and confuse our abilities to make decisions. Positive bias helps us to be more open, real, and true. This is far more important in the context of our real world, but in DFS this can also help us to be better players. OWS is all about this mentality and I think it’s one reason why OWS subs are more successful in DFS. We know that one week can change our entire season (or life) and that you have to stay positive if you want to keep grinding and eventually hit on that one lineup. Dive into gratitude this holiday. Right now, think of three things you are grateful for and keep doing that every day. It will change your life and just might make you see this slate better.

Bias Around the Industry

Mike Johnson (MJohnson86) has racked up nearly $500,000 in DFS profit as an NFL tournament player with success in all styles of contests

This article is specifically designed to give you some ideas on ways that we can use strategy to jump ahead of the field on Fanduel. Touchdowns play an even bigger role on Fanduel than on Draftkings because receptions are only worth half a point, while on DK receptions are worth a full point. Touchdowns used to be an even bigger deal before (this year, FD added bonuses for yardage totals – more on this below), but it’s still something we need to focus on because of the reception difference and how they price their players. Touchdowns have a high degree of variance and since they carry so much weight on Fanduel, this article will focus on ways each week that we can leverage that variance to jump ahead of the field when things don’t go exactly as expected as far as who crosses the imaginary line while holding the football.

Week 13

Angles – JM

DFS LABS DK – STATATL & Cheeseman

SEARCHING FOR CEILING – HILOW & RICH HRIBAR

DFS LABS FD – Mike Johnson & Maximus

Block Party – JM & Peter Overzet