Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries
I typically write this article on Thursday nights. I do this for a few reasons. First, because I don’t enjoy overthinking and being bombarded with information. I’d likely write with more conviction if this piece didn’t hit The Scroll until late Saturday nights but I would have changed my mind too many times during the week to make much sense in my lineups. This way, by writing this article earlier in the week, once it’s published, I mostly build lineups that are in line with the strategies called out. It keeps me grounded to a core no matter the thoughts I have on Friday and Saturday, and at the very least, if these have a great week, at least I know I’ll be celebrating with y’all.
The second reason I write these on Thursdays is because sometimes simply watching football gives me some inspiration for what direction to take the article in this week. So, as I was watching the Bills/Dolphins this week, I couldn’t help but think about Malcolm Gladwell. Why, do you ask? Because for whatever reason, every time they showed Mike McDaniel on the sideline, I couldn’t help but think that he somewhat resembled a young Gladwell. They are both geniuses in different ways, wizards of their crafts, so it kind of makes sense. But regardless, in thinking about Gladwell and McDaniel, it clicked: the blink test.
Gladwell’s book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, was published back in 2005 nearly 20 years ago and it gets even better with age. At that time (imagine this), Gladwell wrote about how people were living in the age of…wait for it…information overload! This is 2005, before the relative explosion of the smartphone and social media. And yet, here we were with an author such as Gladwell talking about just how suffocating it can be to be able to access anything you want on the internet and to get so completely bogged down by information and data that it could cause analysis paralysis. Just amazing.
To take this one step further, he talks about the blink test, which is essentially saying that in some fields, and at some times (more than we think), we are all capable of making better quick decisions (snap judgment) than we can make with loads and loads of data and analysis. If this doesn’t sound like the feeling of building a perfect DFS lineup, I don’t know what does. It’s why I always prefer to get my thoughts out early, to build lineups early in the week without deep preparation of a given slate. I am going to be influenced by the voices of people in the industry I trust, sometimes it’s for the better. But, if it 1) takes me away from my original thoughts, or 2) there’s little to too much justification as to why I’m making this change in strategy, then this is a detrimental endeavor. Instead of leaving this test here, let’s carry it forward. Where are we going to blink test this week?
