Beer Money Bets | Creating a Process for NFL DFS

After years of playing seasonal fantasy football, I have always wanted to try my hand at NFL DFS, but I have resisted the urge every season because I am extremely process-oriented.  I cannot just casually dive into something without first having a laid out logical plan that I can tinker and improve with every new piece of data I have (especially with money involved). The goal of this series of articles is to help the casual fantasy fan create a betting process by explaining mine and hopefully make some beer money along the way. Follow along as every week I dive into different parts of the DFS community and begin to nail down a solid process for playing DFS competitions. 

I want to stress that I am not proclaiming myself as a big DFS tout that you must follow my ways to glory, but that I’m someone that has put in the work to feel strong enough to write this series and feel good in doing so. I have played fantasy football for many years, I am a published scientific researcher and an analytically minded person that has a proven ability to create systems to solve problems. I want these articles to be a way to help develop your thought process and become a better DFS player along with way. Each week will be slightly different as I dive into different types of competitions and create, test, and analyze different processes. The most important part of creating a great pick process is to look back at plays the previous week and analyze what went right, what went wrong, and how to improve for the next week. Follow along as I take this dive into DFS.

Getting Started:

Before we dive into creating our process, I think it is important to identify some of the basic terms found in the DFS community for beginners:

• DFS – Daily Fantasy Sports – Much like how a seasonal league resets every year, DFS lineups are only good for a single week. This can be a whole weekend (includes all Thursday, Sunday, and Monday games), single day, or even less games like single game (ex. Monday Night Football) or Sunday morning/afternoon games. 
• Cash Games – These are head-to-head, double-ups, and 50/50 competitions. In these competitions, the amount of money you can win is severely limited. Usually, you are only doubling your money, but your chance of winning is much higher. These are the medium risk, low reward games of the DFS community. 
• Tournaments – These are also called GPPs (Guaranteed Prize Pool), only a small percent of the number of entries win money, with the winnings being significantly larger than the buy-in. Because of this setup, these games are high risk, high to extremely high reward. 

For a list of other important key terms, here is a great article that provides great and easy to understand definitions of common terms to know in the DFS community.

Week 1 Strategy: Showdown Double Up 

Just like it is in investing, to be profitable at gambling it is all about minimizing risk. Cash games are less risky than tournaments and so as I begin building my process, I start with cash games and move on into Tournaments and GPPs. With cash games, you only need to be in the top half of all lineups, or slightly higher based on competition, to win money. To win at cash games, we are not trying to score the most points, but rather trying to beat most of our opponents. Think of cash games as the old joke about a pair of joggers coming across a bear in the woods- you don’t need to be faster than the bear, you just need to be faster than the other guy. This week I will be looking at Showdown Double Up competitions.

So, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty! On DraftKings this Sunday, there is an NFL Showdown Single Entry $5 Double Up for the Seattle vs Atlanta game. Out of 689 entries, 300 will be paid out. This means you need to be in the top 44%, which means you are beating out 56% of all other entries. Sounds easy enough, right? Well that is where ownership, salaries, and game theory come in to play. Again, with these games it’s important to remind yourself throughout this process that you are not trying to get the highest score, but solely looking to be better than average. To start creating our process, I want to have some data to base my thinking on. In this article by Kevin Cole from RotoGrinders, Cole presents the following table based on the percentage of time a specific position was in an optimal lineup (top 5 lineup). He split the data up by shootouts (50+ total points), slugfests (40 total points or less), and blowouts (15 point margin of victory). This data tells us that we can’t treat every game the same and that it is important to look at the betting lines and the implied totals before creating a lineup in a showdown competition. To be clear, this data is for the optimal lineup and we are not necessarily trying to get the most optimal lineup, but instead a safer, better than the average lineup.

The Process

For our first process, I will be heavily leaning on the table above to see if it provides a viable option moving forward. Here is my first proposed process:

1. Use Vegas lines to identify match-ups that I think can be exploited. I will try and avoid games with no clear favorites and mid-level over/unders (between 40-50). Do not feel like you need to play every game, only play games you feel like you have an advantage. 
2. Use the chart above to select a few players I want to be in my lineup and other players I will consider. For example, in a shootout, I will most likely want to include the favored QB. Also, for a slugfest, I will consider the defenses and kickers more than I would in any other type of competition.
3. Fill out the rest of the roster using personal analysis. It would be hard to be great at DFS without some background information on what you’re doing. I am going to be looking at injury reports, historical positional defense rankings, and recent match-ups between the teams. I am not worried about start % for these cash games so it is not a part of my process.
4. Make sure to stay up to date with game-time news in case of a late scratch. 

The Process in Action

For my first week of DFS showdown contests, this is an example of my process:

1. I like the MIA @ NE game because of the low implied total and clear favorite(42 O/U, NE -6.5).
2. This game looks to fit the slugfest framework. Although NE is a fairly heavy favorite and there might be some good trash time QB production, my first reaction is to fade Ryan Fitzpatrick. Slugfests produce winners out of QBs by far the lowest out of any of these groupings of games and I think this is an edge to exploit, especially with Fitzpatrick being suggested by many analysts as a good tournament play. Remember cash games are different than tournaments and so our process should be different too. Julian Edelman seems to be a smash play, especially at the Captain position. In another article by Kevin Cole, he outlines the history of who to captain, and WR1 are by far the highest proportion of winning captains in slugfests. Also, the wide receiver corp for the Patriots is rough behind Edelman, which should help solidify that he has a strong chance to be a large part of the New England game plan. Next, I think the New England D/ST is another must play here. Though I do not expect the Patriots defense to be as elite as it was last season, their Secondary is still almost entirely intact and still very elite. With Ryan Fitzpatrick starting and most likely playing from behind, I am expecting a few interceptions and hopefully a few sacks. This, combined with the low implied total for the Dolphins, suggests the Patriots D/ST is another great play this week. 
3. Finally, I fill out the rest of my team with some of the analysis I have been noticing around the off-season. I think Rex Burkhead and James White are good flex plays, especially James White because of the lack of WR depth in New England, and runningback usage history from Cam Newton. Next, I will also most likely be playing Gesicki if he’s healthy, which reports are looking like he is good to go. His high target share and TD upside is something I really love, but will pivot to Preston Williams if Gesicki is not healthy to satisfy the requirement of one player from Miami on my roster. 

I will be applying this process to several more games this weekend. Check back next week as I go back and review my process, hopefully with some extra beer money!