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King of the Beach Aftermath thoughts & tips

I spent a weekend tangling with many of the best in the industry at the King of the Beach live final hosted by Draft Kings and came to many conclusions that I wanted to share with the Army. It should give you a perspective on how the pros you see in the nose bleeds play as well as the common player like you and me. A couple quick notes about myself for some perspective;

I’m not a professional DFS player by any stretch of imagination. I’m happily married and a father first to my 18 month old son. I spend a lot of nights cooking dinner, taking care of bath time, and doing laundry. I spend my weekdays grinding it out at my day job in a cubicle farm and weekends doing odd projects around the house or going to the park with the family. In what free time I do have, I’m buried in spreadsheets, articles, and Slack Chat just like you.

Now as a whole, we preach a lot of things in the DFS Army. Many of you might think a lot of it is garbage or you roll your eyes when one of the staff preaches bankroll management or the ladder system and refining your research process whether it’s rolling out the optimal from the Domination Station or making the gut call. What you might find unbelievable is that the nose bleed pros follow this same methodology we talk about every day. Not joking! I heard it straight from the source. Here’s the methodologies that I found to be the most profound this past weekend.

  1. Results don’t matter, it’s your process.

I sat with the KOTB winner for more than a few hours and grabbed drinks with him the next day. He won a lot more than just the KOTB this weekend and he was unfazed. My wife drunkenly said to him “You just won $100,000 and you’re acting like you don’t care!” He shrugged his shoulders and said with a straight face (even after 5-6 drinks) “It doesn’t matter. Everyone had the same 2% chance to win tonight. My process ended up working tonight and it could have just as easily not worked.” My wife proceed to berate him until he called his wife about it at the very least.

This struck a chord with me and showed a flaw in my own research process I hadn’t considered when we briefly were talking about players. That aside, he wasn’t the only one that talked about it. Some other pros just shrugged off their poor showings with comments of checking and refining their line up process when comparing line ups and results in the morning. Now speaking about results not mattering;

  1. Bankroll Management is crucial at all levels of the game

“I’ll enter $50,000 to $100,000 a week and I’ll end up making maybe $10,000 profit. It’s the goal.” This is our ladder system in a nut shell. Here’s a statement for you and me about this concept. “I’ll enter $50 to $100 a week and hope to clear a full ladder 2-3 times.” You don’t have to be entering millions a year into contests to be profitable, you have to be consistent and steadfast with your BRM. Losing and hot streaks happen in every sport and to every player. I heard battle stores of losing more money in a week than I’ll make in the next decade, but every story had a common theme of adjusting their entry fees and contest selections to accommodate the bad times with the good times though, which is exactly what a reactionary bankroll management system is. Staff members talk about it all the time and while many might think we’re joking, it’s serious business and a cornerstone of not going broke or out of your mind.

  1. DFS pros for the most part are just like you and me

My wife got a little confused on the timing of the event. Regardless of how many times I told her, we weren’t staying for the first games. It was an all-day affair from noon to ten or later. It didn’t stop her from having a great time and being half in the bag by the 4th quarter of the first set of games. By then it was over for me, but just getting started for a lot of people in the contest. She struck up a conversation with anyone in ear shot. To just about everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t about the games or the sweat going on, it was about our kids, families, day jobs, and embarrassing the crap out of me.

Turns out, these top tier pros aren’t any different than you or I. We spent the majority of the afternoon games trading war stories about our kids, travel demands, and trying to pick out the right schools for our kids future. We joked about pushing our kids into sports, where we traveled, parenting tips on how to deal with teething, and the best place to stay when you go to Disney world. So what’s the difference between them and us and how do you get to the next level?

  1. Being in the top of any industry requires sacrifice.

Off the top of your head, what’s your top three favorite TV shows you’re watching right now? What’s your favorite restaurant/bar and when was the last time you went there with your friends? What movies are out right now or are coming out you’re excited about? If you have answers to any of these questions, you’re not ready to take it to the next level.

The welcome party for King of the Beach was amazing. Open bar and all you could eat food on the beach with a clear night in paradise. Cubans were available as well if cigars were your thing. Oddly enough though, there definitely wasn’t 100+ people there. I found out later that some of the pros didn’t make it to the party. It wasn’t because of flight delays, or being sick, or anything else other than they were boarded up in their room working on their strategy for the contest this weekend. “I didn’t leave my room from Thursday until lock. We all had a 2% chance to win and putting in effort over the weekend gave me maybe an extra 0.5% chance to win.” Said the guy who won the contest.

He and other pros sacrificed the excursions, the beach, and the very attractive women on the beach in lieu of studying trends, predicting ownership percentages, and scouring the news for any edge they could get. I had a great time in paradise with my wife by the way and took 46th for min cash (with no regrets).

If you really want to take your game to the next level, it means leveraging your free time. Us 9 to 5ers are already behind the 8 ball as it is. It means breaking down line ups instead of watching TV. It means refining your process instead of going out with friends. It means listening to a pod casts and taking notes instead of seeing a movie. I’m not a pro DFS player by any means, but I do spend every free second I have working on my process to help get to the next level. This year it meant winning a qualifier and giving my wife a once in a life time vacation during a very stressful time in our lives. Next time it might be million dollars. You’re the captain of your own destiny in life and here in the Army, you have a unique experience other sites don’t offer: Unfiltered access to a passionate staff that is always trying to get to the next level, one $10 ladder at a time.