Daily Fantasy Sports

I am cofounding a fantasy sports startup that will hopefully be launching sooner than later, so anything you post I personally would be very interested in reading.

Damn I wish you were into hockey. NBA? garbleldflkjdfalgarblefldajfdlagarble

I can see this being very interesting to a lot of americans who love that african handball sport though.

yea i play DFS every day. mostly DK because i prefer their software, but a little on FD/DD/DS sometimes as well. i dont know much about the NBA but it doesnt seem to take much skill to beat the low stakes guys im playing against in it. playing golf this weekend as well

Daily DFS grinder here. I mostly stick to NBA games as well so I'd love to talk strategy. Just got started about 3 weeks ago and I grind the $1-5 50/50s. Main sites are FD and DK. I've had some swings, but I'm just assuming this is me being a fish.

Would appreciate some thoughts on your drafting, but also general bankroll and game selection principles. Also, how many lineups do you guys usually prepare a day? I started off with 2-3 lineups per day, did decently. I upped it' to 5-6 and started breaking even/losing. Now I'm back down to around 3.

jdmk: Good luck with that. It seems like a pretty competitive industry but it is definitely growing rapidly.

devon: I'm into football and basketball by nature, and they also tend to be the most popular fantasy sports, which means more novice players, but I would consider picking up any sport that I can make money at. NHL tends to be less popular and I would imagine harder to predict. In my opinion Basketball is the perfect balance of being pretty popular and being highly predictable.

daut: Great to hear from you, I've been reading your stuff on here for like 5 years. I play only on FD/DK. I like FD because it seems to have the highest number of bad players. I started on both sites thinking I would just play NFL, but I quickly realized that NBA is much lower variance. I was thinking about playing golf but I didn't get around to doing any research on it, so I skipped it. I'll be testing that out in the coming weeks, let me know how it goes.

sanai: My first advice would be for you to stop playing 50/50's and start playing H2H's. 50/50's tend to have 6-12 "sharks" in every single contest, which will reduce your ROI pretty substantially. I will go into all the stuff you asked in my next post, probably on Monday. I'm not an expert or anything, I just know what has been working for me so far.

I deposited 600 and fired a couple of times of DK focusing on NBA only. Lost about 50...whatever. I stopped tho as I found its pretty mind and time consuming. I'd be interested in staking or mirroring picks tho.

Yes it can be somewhat time consuming. I'm putting in about 3 hours a day right now, although I'm able to do a lot of it at work since I have a computer job. I'm working on automating a large amount of my research process to cut my total time down to an hour or so. I enjoy following the NBA though, so I don't necessarily consider it to be "work".

I'll post some picks for today. One of the major keys to being successful is to make sure you're following the late breaking news right before tip off.

Yes at picks. lazy life ftw. I'd love for there to be a dfs thread on lp if people are up for it. Might be fun and useful even with there being at of forums up at this point.

ill post my DK lineups later today as well to compare. ive been playing mostly $1 and $3 50/50s and toss in 2-3 lineups in the big $2 tourney. should play H2H instead but the 50/50s seem so soft. if i was playing slightly higher I definitely would play HU instead. have had some large swings in NBA, but overall feel like i have a massive edge in it even though i know nothing because like you said its a skill sport whereas NFL is very close to complete luck (small edge but huge variance). definitely notice that the better players (i.e. condia obv) consistently make really great picks.

re: golf, massive tilt. made 4 lineups, 2 included matt every (rotogrinders posted some projections and i used those along with pinny odds+course history to make picks) who pulled out of the event. late wednesday night i jokingly asked my friends if there was anyone questionable and we all had a good laugh about it, then we all got fucked because we dont know shit about golf lol

took an early look at slate today. obviously toronto and lakers vs magic pop out. thoughts on lowry? does he get too many minutes taken from him by vasquez to start tonight or he still worth playing?

I do eveything in fanduel prices/scoring when I'm researching so you will have to do a little estimating to figure out DK stats. Basically a player thats 7k on FD will be equivalently priced if he's slightly less on DK, around 6600. 50 fantasy points on FD tends to be about 55-57 on DK.

I think Vasquez is taking Ross's minutes, saw him playing a lot of SG vs the Mavs. I really like Vasquez tonight and wouldn't be against going with Vasquez and Lowry as your 2 PG's on FD.

Lowry averaging 37 over his last 10. Philly gives a 15% boost to pg's. So for 7900 you gotta think Lowry will get you 40+ more times than not.

Vasquez averaging 34 over the last 3. Throw in a ~12% boost since he splits time at pg/sg. You don't know what you're getting with his minutes, but he's been playing great lately so I think he gets 30 tonight. Even if he gets 20, which is the lowest I could imagine he will get you 20 points, which isn't a disaster for 4500 on FD.

The other guys that really stand out to me are Oladipo, Nelson, and maybe DeRozan. I'm still trying to figure out DeRozan, I think he could be a good fade tonight though.

Also, Vegas thinks the Raptors will score 106 and Magic will score 104 tonight. They average 98 and 96 on the season.

Here is sort of what I have my list narrowed down to as of now:

PG:
Lowry (7900)
Knight (6500)
Nelson (6400)
Vasquez (4500)

SG:
DeRozan (8600)
Oladipo (6800)
J Johnson (6400)
Meeks (5900)

SF:
Durant (12100)
Pierce (5900)
Kelly (4200)

PF:
Love (10800)
Randolph (8200)
Sullinger (6000)
T Thompson (6000)
Blatche (5700)
Williams (4200)
Scott (4200)

C:
Jordan (7900)
Varejao (7900)
Drummond (7800)

a couple first look lineups i threw together on DK:

PG Shelvin Mack SA@Atl $3,400 swap out
SG Greivis Vasquez Tor@Phi $5,200 swap out
SF Marco Belinelli SA@Atl $4,200 swap out
PF Anthony Davis NO@Det $9,600 swap out
C Glen Davis LAL@Orl $5,500 swap out
G DeMar DeRozan Tor@Phi $7,800 swap out
F Zach Randolph Mem@Hou $7,400 swap out
UTIL Anderson Varejao Mil@Cle $6,900 swap out


PG Shelvin Mack SA@Atl $3,400 swap out
SG Stephen Curry Min@GS $9,800 swap out
SF Marco Belinelli SA@Atl $4,200 swap out
PF Ryan Kelly LAL@Orl $3,500 swap out
C Anthony Davis NO@Det $9,600 swap out
G Reggie Jackson OKC@Bos $6,100 swap out
F Glen Davis LAL@Orl $5,500 swap out
UTIL DeMar DeRozan Tor@Phi $7,800 swap out


gonna listen to the fantasy insiders podcast and make some adjustments. DK obviously a bit different than FD, harder to grab durant/love due to the much smaller salary cap

For H2H's, I'd imagine you are seeking out the guys with single entries? I figured that would be the closest thing to "bumhunting" since most of the most experienced players will load up with multiple entries for their H2H's at every stake.

On FD:

Gadget, my picks are overlap a lot with yours, I think where we're differing tonight is where we're trying to find value/bargains.

PG:
-Lowry is a top pick for me. They hid the illness quite well, no reason to believe now that he's fit, he won't rape the 6ers.
-I am taking Pressey as a punt option as long as Rondo is getting inconsistent minutes.

SG:
-K. Thompson is one I'm considering. The O/U on the GS-Min game is sitting at like 210.5 (2nd highest of all the games today on Sportsbook) and Minnesota's defense vs SGs has been abysmal.
-Really like Bellinelli with Green and Leonard both out.
-C. Lee might be decent bet. Rockets have been pretty horrific against SGs all season and he is getting the minutes.

SF:
-Really want P. George, but I think the game will be a blowout so I'm probably avoiding him. Same goes for Stephenson in SG.

PF:
-Think K.D. is just too overpriced for my taste. One metric I've been applying is that I'll set a target score range (about 300 to consistently cash in the games I play). That means a point is worth about $200 for me on FD and for K.D. to come through on his price tag, he needs to score 60. Totally feasible of course since he is a monster and matchup-proof, but my innate bargain-hunter mentality shies away from this, especially with so many games and other potential picks tonight.
-G. Davis or T. Harris are decent value options for me at PF if I want to spend elsewhere. Lakers frontcourt defense has been horrific (along with their backcourt defense obv). I think either of those 2 will make back cost.
-I think Randolph is almost a must-play if T. Jones is sitting out. Anyone have any news on this? Seems like it'll be iffy until gametime.

C:
-Don't think this is the night to go cheap on Center, but if you want to spend elsewhere I think Chandler is a decent option. No Amare/Kmart means he gets huge minutes and the Bobcats interior d has sucked for some time now.

Do you guys find the rake to be prohibitive? I play on DK.

Just looking at the H2H's vs player xx, they're $2 for a prize pool of $3.6, $5 for $9, etc. That's quite high. You need to be quite dominant to make any real money it seems.

Pressey is interesting. I feel more comfortable paying for Vasquez though. I'm nervous that he gets less minutes at PG with rondo back and already doesn't get a lot of assists. Don't hate it though.

As far as the GS/Minn game goes, it's important to look at the projected total vs the normal totals of the 2 teams. These teams always play in games with high totals, so the high total in this game doesn't necessarily add value. Thompson could be ok, he's too up and down for me personally.

SF's are tough tonight.

I agree with your Durant point. It makes sense if you like a lot of value guys to overachieve. Also, there is something to be said for the guaranteed points you get with Durant.

Daut: I like Mack a bit as well. I like a lot of guards tonight though.

The rake is a bit high, but it's definitely beatable. Also, the sites put just about every $ they make back into new customer acquisition, so you can't be too mad about it.

So you're playing these h2h's vs randoms (or do you play the multi-match h2h which I still don't fully comprehend) and you've made that much of a profit. Don't share exact numbers if you don't want to but you've gotta be winning what, 75%?