Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries
What is the right amount of contrarian to win a massively large GPP tournament? The right answer… we don’t know. But we do know the formula or the balance required to do this, most of the time. The frustrating part is that most of the time is not all the time, and therefore, since the destination is always a moving target, there is no right answer to the original question. But that’s why we play!
This season, we’ve seen what feels like an inordinate amount of the best plays put up the best scores across major slates. The best players, the underpriced ones, the ones in the best matchups, and it’s almost as if many of us, myself included, just want to go against the grain so badly here in Week 8. Completely normal to feel that way. We know there’s a balance in everything, and we know the best rosters mix and match high ownership with low ownership, tough matchups with easy ones, and sprinkle in a bit of randomness on top. But the truth is, those lineups have not won lately. Instead, the stronger combination of lineups an optimizer keeps teeing up, with the data so robust and the projections so clean, that many of us are now feeling like we should either follow the crowd or swim completely upstream against the current. I’m in the latter category. It’s just been too predictable lately. There’s no hard and fast explanation as to why, nor do I have or want to dig into the data to understand if this feeling is right, but many of the best performances over the past month have come from the players we were expecting. The expensive Jonathan Taylor, underpriced and returning Rashee Rice, the Quinshon Judkins and Rico Dowdle weeks, and so on.
This week, we’re getting into a window where randomness is due. It’s not quite regression, but it’s along the same lines. Unexpected outcomes should be more expected here, and the challenge in large-field tournaments is identifying where those performances will come from. With the obvious spots for the high-priced RBs (JT, CMC, Bijan), they are almost too rich to ignore, so building alongside or around those backs seems like a good place to land.
