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The Science of Daily Fantasy Football Lineup Construction – Fanduel & Draftkings Strategy – 6 Advanced Rules of Thumb

 

I recently watched an interview with Pro DFS’er “Beepimajeep” where he discusses how he plans to attack this season’s live Draftkings Daily Fantasy Baseball Championships. An event with millions in prizes in which he has already won 5 entries. Qualifying for a live championship event in DFS generally involves finishing in first place in a large scale GPP Qualifier tournament. If you consider that these contests often have between 10,000 to 25,000  entrants you can imagine the astronomically long odds it takes to qualify for even one seat. This guy won five seats!! At this point you may be wondering what this has to do with anything. I’m getting there so bear with me.

What is it about some of the DFS Pros that allows them to qualify for these live championship contests season after season? Big bankrolls? Perhaps. But there is more to it then that. Players that rise to the top in the DFS world aren’t simply lucky. They understand how to construct lineups and the positive or negative correlations between particular players at particular positions relative to both each other and outside factors like Vegas projected points totals.
Editors NoteThe books we give FREE in our eBook and VIP Membership Promotions cover these topics with extreme detail and include charts and statics to back it up – Learn More Here
Home vs Away
Lets dive in with some basic fundamentals. When bookmakers assign points spreads to games they automatically give home teams a 3 point advantage. On average, NFL teams score around 21 points per game. This tells us that as a general rule of thumb we should expect 15% more fantasy points output from teams playing at home. In my “Taking Advantage of the Salary Cap Algorithm” column we focused on external items like mid-week injuries or last minute changes at starting positions. Here we have a more basic way to take advantage of the fact that for daily fantasy football most of the DFS sites don’t change player salaries based on opponent or whether the game is being played at home vs away.
Rule of Thumb #1 – Targeting players playing at home gives us a 15% bounce in expected fantasy scoring output and represents a value because the DFS sites generally do not adjust salaries to account for this difference.  
The effect of playing at home with regards to Team Defense is even more dramatic. When choosing a fantasy defense statistically you should always take a home team that is favored by Vegas. On top of playing at home and favored it is important to look for teams that get QB pressures. Furthermore you want to target Defenses that are facing turnover prone offenses.
 
Rule of Thumb #2 Choose a Defense that has shown the ability to pressure the QB, is playing at home against a turnover prone team. 
 
Inverse Relationships
 
The next step in understanding advanced lineup construction is to get a better grasp on the relationships between the positions on teams and how they can effect your overall Daily Fantasy Football lineup. If you are trying to win a GPP contest on a site that includes Kickers like Fanduel, you should avoid taking the Kicker alongside offensive players from that same team. Statistics and logic show that when the kicker is doing a ton of scoring, chances are the skill position players on said team are scoring less then they normally do.
Rule of Thumb #3 Avoid taking Kickers from the teams you are targeting skill position players on
 
Team Defense is similar to Kickers in that when a Defense is scoring points, chances are that teams offense is scoring fewer points. Defensive TD’s are what drives the points totals for fantasy defenses. It’s what we are looking for. Every lineup should be constructed around the belief that you are right with your picks. Therefore when we select a Defense we are doing so because we believe that Defense will score.
Rule of Thumb #4  Avoid taking skill position players from the team you are using as your Defense for a given lineup. 
 
Positive Relationships 
 
When constructing Daily Fantasy Football lineups it’s important to understand where the positive relationships are as well as the inverse relationships. One major correlation is between a particular teams QB and Wide Receiver. This one is fairly obvious but often overlooked in lineup construction. Remember that the idea here is to build lineups with GPP winning potential. Winning a GPP generally means that you hit with virtually every player you put in to your lineup. Lets assume that there is a punt play you like at WR in a given week. For the purposes of this example lets say you think Eric Decker of the New York Jets will have a big week at a cheap salary. You decide to make a lineup with Decker. At that point it makes sense to include Jets QB Geno Smith in that lineup as well. The idea being that since Decker will need to have a big day in order to propel your lineup to top dog status, logic dictates that Geno Smith would also have a good day. Those of you that follow this blog know that I loves me some cheap QB’s in DFS. The best way to target a cheap QB is to pair him up with one of his WR’s.Rule of Thumb #5 Always stack a QB with one of their pass catchers (mainly WR’s but this works with TE’s as well). If one does well generally the other one will also do well. 


Rule of Thumb #6 It’s generally not a good idea to pair up WR’s with RB’s from that same team. Theoretically if the RB is scoring TD’s the QB probably isn’t throwing as many of them. 


Be Flexible


Rules of thumb are OK to break if the situation presents itself. The best players are ready to adapt their strategies when the situation calls for it. I often use players or defenses going on the road when the matchups are too juicy to ignore. Sometimes I combine an RB with their QB when the value is there for both players. Think of these rules of thumb as a guideline rather then a strict must follow set of rules.Grow Your Roll


The competition in Daily Fantasy Sports is constantly improving. The way to stay ahead of the game is to remain humble and continuously search for knowledge that can help you improve your skill set. The fact that you are reading this article and made it to the end is a really good sign that you have the type of hunger to learn and improve that it takes to be successful. There’s only so much fantasy football lineup help I can squeeze in a blog post however. Now get off your ass and get in on our FREE VIP Membership Program to get two Daily Fantasy Football eBook’s that cover these topics in much greater detail. I promise that your winning percentages and overall profitability will improve dramatically!