Welcome to the 2016 version of The Daily Grind, a look at Daily Fantasy Football from several vantage points. Together we will look at many different topics this season – from managing expectations and bankroll to what Footballguys has in store for 2016 and how to best use what this site has to offer to maximize both your enjoyment and your bankroll by Super Bowl LI. So let’s jump right in with some thoughts on both expectations for playing this year and also a first take at a guided tour for Footballguys’ DFS coverage this season:
Free DFS ConteNt This Week
In case you haven’t heard (how could you not?), Footballguys is opening up the doors this week to highlight all of the great DFS content we have for 2016 – so be sure to use the guided tour at the bottom of this article to find what you need, when you need it, and build some great, winning lineups for Week 3!
Ownership Percentages and Predicting Uniqueness
Last week I talked about ownership percentages and how FanDuel had changed their policy about releasing that information before each game kicks off. Now, instead of knowing the exact ownership of each player (and also who you might be facing in your lineups each week), you have to wait until each game starts. Many casual DFS players rarely cared about this information, but as I pointed out last week, both cash and tournament players can benefit from knowing relative ownership, even if the exact numbers are not available. That is why Footballguys is still forecasting ownership levels for the NFL players each week so that more intelligent lineup decisions can be made. This week I want to focus on tournaments and ownership, and how big of a factor this information is to finishing at the top of a GPP leaderboard.
Note – for more information about DFS and tournaments, please read our fabulous e-books, Cracking FanDuel and Cracking DraftKings, where you can find tons more great information about tournaments and uniqueness among many other great topics.
The first question you have to ask is just how useful is it to know ownership percentages? Going back to the goal of winning a tournament, it would be nice to have some idea of how unique your lineup is for that particular contest. After all, the goal is not only to finish at the top of the leaderboard, but also to not share the top prize. If you are entering a 10,000 entry tournament and 99 other teams have the same exact lineup as you do, then finishing first in a 100-way tie means that the Top 100 prizes are all shared. A win is still a win, but splitting that win 100 ways is not what you had in mind (and yes, not only have I seen this happen, but I have been in that big of a tie - more on that later).
So what can we do to make our lineups more unique? This is a tricky question, because seeking out uniqueness is NOT our primary goal. Building the best lineup that will score the most points is – but having an idea of how unique that lineup will be for a given tournament would be useful information. The best way to estimate this is to determine the likely ownership of each of your lineup selections. Since we no longer know the exact ownership for players after Thursday Night Football, the best way to estimate is to put your players into 4-5 categories of ownership. I like to use the following categories for my calculations:
| Ownership Category | Ownership Range % |
|---|---|
| Very High | 40-60% |
| High | 20-40% |
| Medium | 10-20% |
| Low | 5-10% |
| Very Low | 1-5% |
Table 1: Ownership Categories
After building your GPP lineup, assign an ownership category for each of your selections on your roster. As an example, let’s say that you have read up on the DFS information at Footballguys and decided to take three players that are going to be very highly owned, three highly owned, and three medium owned – which sounds reasonable, but you are probably concerned that this may not be very unique. How can we figure out just how unique this lineup is? Time for some math. Assign each roster spot the average ownership percentage for the category you have chosen for each player, and then multiply them all against one another. In this example, I would assign the three “very high” players a 50% number, then the “high” players 30%, and finally the three medium players 15%, and then find the product of all nine numbers:
[(50%)*(50%)*(50%)] * [(30%)*(30%)*(30%)] * [(15%)*(15%)*(15%)] = 0.000011391
Great, we have a very small number, but what then? Take that number and then multiply it by the number of entries in your tournament, and you will get an approximate number of teams that will have this lineup. Or, as I prefer, just “flip” this small number (divide it into one) and see what the result is. In this case:
1 / 0.000011391 = 87,791
That result (87,791) gives you an idea of how big of a contest you can enter and still be reasonably unique. Looking at some of the biggest contest I can find this week on FanDuel, I only see a handful that are on this rough order of magnitude (The $200K Sunday NFL Snap has 117,647 entries, for example) and DraftKings is similar (the $4.44M Millionaire contest has 256,900 entries). Using this lineup in smaller and smaller tournaments would increase the likelihood that this particular entry would be more and more unique. This is why uniqueness matters less in medium-sized GPPs and hardly at all in small ones. Putting this lineup in a tournament with only 10,000 entries would equate to about a 5-10% chance that someone else has this same lineup, which nearly ensures that if this roster does well it will be alone in first place.
The big takeaway from the above example is this: Unless you are in the biggest tournaments around, you do not have to make extreme moves to be unique. In fact, in tournaments of more reasonable size (under 50,000 entries), striving to be unique can actually be detrimental to your lineup. As the example above shows, none of the players selected had less than 15% ownership, yet it still was nearly one in 100,000 based on the math. For really big tournaments, picking just 1-2 players below 10% is going to make your lineup unique enough such that if all of the players exceed value you could be standing alone at the top of the leaderboard on Monday. Of course, each lineup is different – but not necessarily unique. Some combinations are going to go together more often than not (such as a stack), so it would not be fair to say that just because Andrew Luck is 10% owned and so is T.Y. Hilton that only 1% of rosters are going to have both. In actuality, most of the Luck rosters are going to have an Indianapolis receiver because GPP lineup builders tend to put together stacked rosters.
In my humble opinion (okay, maybe not so humble, if you see my man-crush on Dennis Pitta in the Power Grid show this week), projected ownership percentages is a secondary deciding factor in picking players for a tournament lineup. If I have two players that I think will perform about the same on Sunday, one of the tiebreakers is going to be how widely owned he will be in the tournament. This helps when rounding out your roster after you have picked most of your lineup and are filling in the last few spots with remaining cap dollars.
One more very important point when it comes to uniqueness and GPPs - using a published lineup in a tournament has almost ZERO chance of being unique. As I mentioned earlier, I finished tied for first with >100 people once in a basketball tournament, and I first thought it was due to the fact that the slate was relatively small (under eight games). While that played a part, I later heard that the same lineup was the top recommended roster from another site’s lineup generation tool, and that was probably the biggest factor. Was I happy that I tied with over 100 people for first place? Not exactly, but I wasn’t upset because I built my roster on my own and it was the best roster I could have created. Sure, I would have rather been in first all by myself, but I won money that day and that is the ultimate goal. I learned that my ability was solid to take down a tournament and that, with good bankroll management and good processes that I used, I would be atop again in the future. My point here though is to NOT use published rosters for GPPs, because odds are others have that lineup, no matter what the math says.
Best of luck with your tournaments and all your contests this week.
Mega-Tournaments Drop Monday Night Football
Another change made by FanDuel this week was the exclusion of Monday Night Football from the main NFL slate. That means the $2M Sunday NFL Million contest will not have the Falcons – Saints game this week. DraftKings did the same thing last week, so now both major sites are not utilizing Monday Night Football for big weekend contests. That is unfortunate, since you will have weeks like this one where the Monday game looks to have lots of valuable players that could have been in your lineup. It helps to understand why they did it though, as both FanDuel and DraftKings are running a business. Both sites decided to apply the concept called the “Velocity of Money”, which means that they want money in play as quickly and as often as possible on their sites. The longer it takes for a DFS contest to finish, the longer it takes for both sites to get DFS players to reinvest that money into the next contest. All DFS sites make their money by taking a percentage of entry fees in each game, but if the games take too long then the money does not get reinvested, and sites get less income. This is why the NBA is quickly becoming their favorite sport, as every contest ends that day (until the very end of the NBA postseason).
So what can you do as a player? First, the Thursday-Monday slate remains intact, so if you want to play Monday Night Football players, those are the contests to target. Other slates also remain, as the change only applies to the main slate. Aside from that, all you can really do is plan accordingly and know that Monday games are not in play for the main slate – so moving your play to other slates on weeks where you love the matchups on Monday is probably the best plan each week.
A GUIDED TOUR TO FOOTBALLGUYS’ DFS 2016 COVERAGE (WEEK 3 EDITION)
Last week I brought you a guided tour to all the DFS coverage Footballguys is providing this season. As I mentioned, I questioned whether it would be a good idea to jump right in for Week 1 as some of the articles are not appearing just yet and a few of them would not be live until Saturday, the day after Daily Grind first appears, but given how much great content we had I thought I could jump right in for Week 1 and then add to it in Week 2 (and if need be, Week 3). So, I am going to do two things here. First, I am going to update last week’s guided tour with links to Week 2 articles even if they aren’t published yet so you can have this one-stop shop to find everything you want (in addition to our DFS Landing Page), along with sprinkling in some updates to the latest and greatest content for Week 2 for all of those articles I mentioned last time. Next, am going to add to the tour with a section for Week 2 updates (and possibly again in the future as we add more and more), so that you can continue to use this article and section to help you navigate all of our excellent DFS coverage every week. So let’s start with the refresher of the Week 1 tour:
Updates to our Week 1 Tour:
Going back to where we started last week with our DFS Landing Page in Week 3, we have plenty of great articles to get you on the path of another winning DFS week. Let’s start with some of the articles I mentioned last week about bankroll management. There are not one but two blogs this year on bankrolls, first by Devin Knotts (“Growing the FanDuel Bankroll”) and the always entertaining David Dodds’ thoughts (“The Bestest FanDuel Blog Evah”). Adding to that is a great new column by Steve Buzzard, who is telling us his thoughts every week this year on how to build the best cash game lineups in ”Bankroll Building”.
So what about the games? Where do we start each week? Well, in addition to the Thursday Spotlight game breakdown by Andrew Katz, we have every game from the week broken down by the Las Vegas lines in John Lee’s Vegas Value Charts. Don’t forget to check the latest on injuries too from our Dr. Jene Bramel as he provides the latest medical insights to help make those critical lineup decisions.
But wait – there’s more. There are several additional articles to help find the best value plays for your cash games, starting with David Dodds’ “Cost/Value Chart” for FanDuel and Justin Howe’s “Cost Efficiency” for DraftKings. The Footballguys’ staff is also sharing their collective thoughts in many ways (and formats) this season, highlighted by not just one but two video shows. The “Footballguys’ Daily Fantasy Hour” is a collaboration with Rotogrinders, and it features both Austin Lee and John Lee along with host Dan Back to discuss what to expect in the coming games along with lessons learned from the prior week. Footballguys also has their own version of a DFS show entitled “Power Grid”, which had a soft opening in Week 1 but the Week 2 version starts to show how we are taking advantage of our immense talent pool of DFS staff with five guests along with host Cecil Lammey to direct the traffic in an hour long conversational format for an NFL whip-around that will help you in not just DFS but also with all your fantasy decisions for the week.
Bridging the gap from video shows back to the main site is Phil Alexander, who had some fantastic videos on how to get the best out of the Footballguys’ tools in the preseason (see the videos on “Targets” and “Game Log Dominator”). Phil continues the great tool breakdowns in his series “Exploiting FBG Tools for DFS Success” this season, and it is definitely worth the time to help in your own player research. The Week 2 version highlights how to use one of our best DFS tools, the IVCs. Week 3 is even better with his breakdown on NFL Snap Counts.
The staff adds more thoughts throughout the week with a large question and answer session directed by Alex Miglio in the “Wisdom of the Staff” in both a FanDuel version and one for DraftKings to help with cash game and GPP lineup building. Ryan Hester adds to the mix by hosting the DFS Roundtable each week as well where several staff members share their thoughts on hot DFS topics.
General DFS discussion continues with “Narrative Street” by Will Grant, where he points out the various motivational factors beyond the gridiron for the coming set of games. Aaron Rudnicki, one of our best IDP staff members, adds his own unique viewpoint with “Exposed” where he highlights both good and bad receiver / defender matchups. Justin Howe takes a look at goal line players in “Redzone / Short-Yardage”, while Ryan Hester brings it home with “Trendspotting” for a look at the top recent trends around the league.
So now you have a good foundation of the upcoming week and games. What about some articles that focus on each DFS site? We have two answers for that question. First, we have five features that highlight the best plays for those sites as a marquee piece for each of those contest hosts, so if you want to dig into FanDuel, start with “Cracking FanDuel” by David Dodds. John Lee does an extensive piece for DraftKings called “Tips and Picks”, which is a must read each week. We have added three more similar articles for 2016 for FantasyDraft (“FantasyDraft Dominator” by Dan Hindery), Yahoo! (“Exclamation Point!” by Keith Roberts ) and FantasyAces (“Acing Aces” by Danny Tuccitto). Those features are must reads for anyone playing on those sites each and every week.
I promised a second answer to that question, and it is from Maurile Tremblay’s Interactive Value Charts, or “IVCs” as we have come to know and love these tools. The IVCs allow you to click on players and build lineups right on the site, where you can sort players by price, value, H-value, stacks and many other ways. You can even use one of three sets of projections to fill out the blanks in your lineup, or the average of all three sets. The IVCs are all linked from one page to the other on the right side of the page – here is the FanDuel IVC as an example. All of the five sites that are featured are represented, and as more sites come online for NFL play more and more IVCs will be added.
Last but certainly not least, we have tournaments to consider. That’s right, chasing the big money. As I mentioned about bankrolls, play, but don’t go crazy. The articles that will help you here start with “The Chalk” by Chris Feery and “Projecting Ownership” by Chad Parsons. FanDuel has recently changed their publication of ownership for Thursday night contests, so projecting which players will be high or low owned is much trickier, so you need to read up on this and find those diamonds in the rough.
Tournament talk continues with three stack articles for 2016 – one for FanDuel (“Starting Stacks” - FanDuel) by Scott Bischoff and one for DraftKings (“Starting Stacks” – DraftKings) by John Mamula. James Brimacombe throws in a third opinion with “The Other Stack” for a look at some different approaches to stacking players each week. More GPP pivot plays are offered by both Chris Feery and Justin Bonnema in a version of “The Contrarian” for both major sites (“The Contrarian” - FanDuel, “The Contrarian” - DraftKings). Justin goes further with “The Fade” for players on FanDuel, highlighting highly owned players for both cash games and tournaments and what decisions to make based on those ownership levels.
One last article on tournaments wraps up the week with “Bink, Inc.” by BJ Vanderwoude. For those not familiar with the term “bink”, it means to take down a GPP – so if you are looking to win a tournament this week, especially on DraftKings, give this one a good read.
NEW FOR WEEK 2:
This week debuts a few new items for DFS from Footballguys. Wait, did you think we had enough already? Well, you should really enjoy these new pieces of content. One of my favorites this year is a new article (actually two, but who's counting) called Consensus Rankings where 10 Footballguys' staff members submitted their value play rankings for both DraftKings and FanDuel this week. That would be great content by itself, but we went one step further. Both Jeff Haseley and Will Grant will be adding their own comments on the rankings each week such as who is popular and who is not, plus they will be pulling in comments from the staff to explain why one or more of their individual choices are in the unique category. If you ever wanted to pick the staff's collective minds on DFS, this is a great insight to just that and will go a long way towards your own rankings and lineups for the week.
Also new in Week 2 is a look back at the Sunday Millionaire contest from FanDuel. Here James Brimacombe breaks down the top teams from one of the biggest weekly DFS tournaments in fantasy football and how the winning rosters were constructed. This is one of the best ways to learn how to build winning tournament lineups and is a must read for all GPP players. The "Trust or Fade" writeup by Jeff Haseley also debuts this week, where he breaks down Dr. Jene Bramel's injury video to give insight on all the medical issues around the NFL and how they will impact the DFS lineups for the week.
NEW FOR WEEK 3:
I may have saved the best for last. We have a new tool for you (yes, ANOTHER tool!) called "eVALUEator". This one is great for those of you who play DFS on more than one site. It gives you a relative comparison of player salaries between all five major sites (FanDuel, DraftKings, FantasyAces, Yahoo! and FantasyDraft) and points out where to use players between the sites. For example, this week Aaron Rodgers has a bright green box that screams "87" on Yahoo, while he is a negative number on the other four sites. That means if you really love Rodgers this week, you should be using him a lot on Yahoo, and certainly more there than on any other site because, relatively speaking, his salary is much cheaper when it comes to quarterbacks than on the other four. This comparison can be done for any player you like, so give it a spin and let Austin Lee and Maurile Tremblay know how much you love it! I know I do as I play on all five of those sites and I cannot wait to dig in with this new tool this week and for the rest of the season.
Now start reading (and watching), go build some lineups and enjoy NFL Week 3!
Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.
