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Intro to The Geek’s Daily Fantasy Football 2016 Weekly Player Picks and Vegas Lines Analysis For Fanduel and Draftkings DFS

Intro to The Geek’s Daily Fantasy Football 2016 Weekly Player Picks and Vegas Lines Analysis For Fanduel and Draftkings DFS 

Welcome to the 2016 Daily Fantasy Football season! Here’s the deal. Some of you have been reading this blog for the past few seasons. Others are stumbling on to it through a random google search. Some of you may be reading this via our Droid APP. Either way welcome to the site. This post is all about explaining who I am and what we are doing here.

If you have a moment click here to check out my in-depth post about the DFS Army and how this group came together
Who am I?

My name is Kevin, some of you know me as “The Fantasy Football Geek” or by my DFS handle, ChiefST. Outside of this blog my work background includes a B.S. in Finance as well as 8 years working as a  successful proprietary high-frequency day trader. Being a successful day trader requires a similar skill set to becoming a successful DFS’er. As a trader I watched plenty of people fail because they lacked a system and more importantly the discipline to stick with a system. When I started this blog back in 2012 DFS was a fairly new thing. I’ve always been an early adapter and I had actually started on Fanduel back in 2011. During the early days of DFS. I quickly developed a bankroll allocation strategy that allowed me to maintain my roll while taking shots at the GPP contests that make DFS so exciting. I cover that in our Fanduel Winning Strategies article. The point being that I’ve been successful at DFS because I use a system that works for me and adhere to strict discipline.

The best way to really know if the DFS writer you are taking advice from is legit is to check their profile on Rotogrinders. Here is the link to my profile on RotoGrinders

chiefstgrindersranking

 

I finished the 2015 NFL Season ranked 88th overall for NFL DFS players. If you browse my profile you can actually check out some of my biggest wins. I’m sharing this because there are plenty of writers and websites out there dispensing advice that have no clue what they are doing. I don’t just talk the talk here. I walk the walk.

The Goal

“My goal in DFS is to play to win tournaments while maintaining a steady bankroll.”  – The Geek

Most people playing Daily Fantasy Football are undisciplined. They see big GPP contests and dream of the big prizes. So they spend all of their money entering GPP’s and over time churn their accounts down to nothing. Then they either get frustrated and quit or put in more money to feed the beast. We want to avoid both of those outcomes. Winning GPP’s generally means you need to Multi-Enter many different and diversified lineups based around a core of “All In” plays. I’ve covered all of this in previous strategy articles here which I encourage you to browse.

The issue is that entering a bunch of lineups exclusively in  GPP’s is a recipe for volatility and losses. To mitigate the risk and smooth over the bankroll we suggest mixing each lineup in a variety of contest types including Head to Head, Triple and Quadrouple Ups as well as the top heavy GPP’s. I look for a mix of contests because we want to be rewarded significantly for lineups that are well above the mean score. A minimum of a $5 to $1 ratio of low risk to high risk entries is a good rule of thumb when considering how to allocate your bankroll around each lineup made.

DFS School

This column isn’t your typical “here are the players I like this week” format. I believe the key to long term success in daily fantasy sports is an in depth understanding of bankroll management and lineup construction methodology. Our VIP Membership plan includes two books, each with over 200 pages of strategies and tips from the Pros backed by Monte-Carlo style statistical data analysis. I’ve also posted many articles on those topics here on the blog which you can browse free. In the interest of not having to retype the same shit over and over here are links to some of our most important strategy articles:

Wisdom From The Geek

 

  1. Daily Fantasy Football Winning Strategy Guide
  2. DFS Strategies – Reducing Risk while Increasing Reward
  3. Multi-Entry GPP Lineup Strategies in Daily Fantasy Sports
  4. Can Daily Fantasy Sports Become a Full Time Job
  5. How to Use The Vegas Lines When Constructing Daily Fantasy Football Lineups
  6. The Geek’s Fundamental Rules of Daily Fantasy Football 
  7. Taking Advantage of the Salary Cap Algorithm 
  8. You’re Not That Good At Making Daily Fantasy Football Lineups
  9. The Science Behind Successful GPP Lineup Construction



What To Expect This Season and Whats New?

In 2015 I launched the DFS Army VIP Membership concept. It was originally about adding a second tier where fans of the column would get access to some additional tools and information including my actual weekly player picks and all in plays alongside access to direct coaching from myself. Over the past season we have grown in to a full scale DFS team with multiple experts covering virtually every sport with cheat sheets, player picks and coaching. No one has a crystal ball out there and despite what people may think no one wins all the time. My goal in DFS has always been to minimize risk while maximizing return. Over the past few seasons I’ve noticed that my readers and our DFS Army members tend to have their best weeks when I have my best weeks. We are embarking on a season long DFS journey together. There will be some winning weeks and some losing weeks. The key will be maximizing those winning lineups while mitigating losses in the losing weeks. Last season our VIP members did incredibly well during the NFL season. You can read about some of those wins and check out some screenshots on our TESTIMONIALS page. The results surpassed my wildest expectations. Last NFL season three seperate DFS Army VIP members took home prizes of over $100,000. Our top performing member, Jayblaze took down $380,000 and a trip of a lifetime to the Draftkings Fantasy Football Championships last season! (Jay will be joining me on some podcasts and other projects this season)

jayblaze380k

I’d like to take full credit but realistically what I’m doing here is providing the tools and strategies which you as a player can use to find success. It’s up to you to maintain your discipline and apply the techniques we discuss in the column and here on the site.

How This Column Works

Each week of the season I will post my weekly cheat sheet. It starts with an analysis of the Vegas Lines. Basically, we look at the lines for every game and try to decipher what the Vegas sharps think will happen. It starts with the most basic and important number which is the Over/Under. Obviously, we want to target fantasy players from the games with the highest O/U’s. Looking at the spreads is helpful as well in that it helps us see which teams will be doing the most scoring. If a game has an O/U of 50 and the home team is a 14 point favorite, it means the Vegas sharps believe the home team will score 32 and the away team will score 18.

Having an idea of how many points the oddsmakers believe each team will score in a given game is a solid start. We can use this information to come up with expected points totals for players within that game by applying metrics for that particular team and where it’s scoring comes from.

Later I will email a list every player that week that I either like or will be targeting in my DFS lineups to our VIP Members. The list is comprehensive and offers players I like at every position at every price level. Then it’s up to you to put together lineups you like based off the player picks I provide. I don’t do projections or points per dollar analysis. I go on gut for the most part. I look for players that I believe have a chance to pay off compared to their salary. In Draftkings I’m looking for players capable of putting up 4 points per Dollar of salary. On Fanduel I’m looking for 3 Points Per Dollar. It’s relatively simple. When it comes to studs I lean toward players participating in competitive high O/U games that have a chance to become shootouts.

Constructing Lineups

Every week of the season will have it’s own unique flavor. I tend to look for a mix of cheap players with excellent opportunities to shine as well as sure thing studs. I tend to save salary at the RB and QB positions while spending on the WR’s and TE’s. That is just a guideline however and can change based on the circumstances each week. In a more general sense, I use the odds lines to envision how I think each game will go down. If I see a defensive slugfest and a low O/U game I will fade a game completely and write off all the offensive players in said game. Am I wrong sometimes? Of course, but over time the goal is to be right more often than being wrong.

Game Theory In GPP Tournaments

Next, we apply the game theory of branching out and diversifying our lineups. It would be easy to simply take the two games with the highest O/U each week and simply grab as many players as possible from those few games. The problem is that we aren’t the only ones that look at the O/U to determine which games to target. Winning GPP’s often means going a bit against the grain. I wouldn’t go crazy and target the players in the worst matchups but there is value, when competing in a massive GPP contest, to going against the grain. The key is to know when to do it. My rule of thumb is that I’m generally more comfortable fading the top priced chalk plays rather than fading the extreme value plays. Realistically I’m a sucker for a bargain in my real life and in DFS. I love buying stocks that are sitting at what I consider depressed valuations. In DFS I look at players salaries in a similar context. When an RB is thrust into a starting role due to an injury and the salary algorithm hasn’t priced in that level of production I will always pounce.

Should You Join Our Team?

Here’s the deal. If you think that you are going to join our team and win a $100,000 prize this season you are probably wrong. It’s really hard to win GPP tournaments and the odds are stacked against you. If you are looking for a place to purchase premade lineups from some scammer you should look elsewhere. Selling lineups is lame and generally a scam for suckers. We are all about teaching the fundamentals of DFS and providing the tools and research you need to be succesful. It’s still up to you to put it all together. As far as the DFS Army team goes, first and foremost I want members that love fantasy football. Daily Fantasy Football is simply another format that I think makes the game we already love more exciting. Let’s face it, losing can be frustrating. I’ve been winning at daily fantasy football for the past four seasons with a consistent 60% win rate in head to head games. That’s just good enough to churn out enough profit to enter a bunch of GPP tournament entries on a weekly basis and go for the big prize. Each week I spend 50+ hours researching the best plays, coming up with projections and analyzing the minutia of each game. We have a team of experts in the DFS Army doing the same. The very nature of a private group means that we don’t use advertising on the website or anything like that. Your monthly subscription goes towards paying our team to compile the research for you and share it in the most presentable and easy to understand format. Realistically, just sticking to my weekly player picks lists will keep you out of the fish zone and make you competitive. You may get luck and take down a big prize but even getting through an entire season without having to redeposit should be considered a success.

VIP Memberships

Here’s what we have going for the 2016 NFL Season. DFS Army VIP members will get the following:

  • My complete weekly player picks for both Fanduel and Draftkings broken down by Cash, GPP or Both contest types.
  • Access to our PREMIUM slack chat forums where you can ask me questions and get access to my last minute player picks and ALL IN plays. Most of our members consider our Slack Chat forums to be the best part of our membership program. Aside from myself, we have full time DFS Pros there sharing their strategies and plays for the weeks slate of games.
  • NEW FOR 2016 – Access to a members only podcast where I will go in depth in to each weeks slate of games and players. Writing a column has limits as far as how in depth I can go on each individual game. In my DFS Army VIP podcast we will dive deeper in to each slate looking at potential GPP strategies and contrasting those with chalk or cash plays for each slate of games.
  • Links to download two Daily Fantasy Football strategy eBooks that cover bankroll management and in depth lineup construction methodology
  • NEW FOR 2016 – The Geek’s DFS Army – DFS Domination Station – A custom designed optimization tool which will generate anything from a single optimized lineup for cash games to hundreds of lineups for mass GPP entry. The tool will be loaded with my own DFS Army projections which users will be able to customize. This tool is currently in production and I will update things as they progress. 
  • Every sport under one plan. I’ve elliminated the concept of seperate memberships for every sport. This season and going forward our one VIP Membership plan provides access to all of the sports we cover, and we pretty much cover them all.
  • Contests and prizes. We run contests to win DFS Army swag all throughout the season. Those come together in our slack forums as well
  • Access to the latest player updates. We have an army of members posting player status updates all the way up to gametime, with quick access to pivot plays when a player you were using suddenly goes inactive.

 

Summer Special

Get a free month of DFS Army VIP Membership when you register for Fanduel or Draftkings via the following links:

Fantasy Draft – Register for a new Fantasy Draft Account via This Link – Make sure to put CHIEFST in the Refferer Code


Fanduel – Register For Fanduel Via This Link – YOU MUST USE PROMO CODE: CHIEFST

I’ve registered a new account with an initial deposit VIA THE ABOVE LINKS – now what?

Once you’ve registered a new account for one of the three DFS sites above and made your initial deposit you muse email us at [email protected] and let me know the following:
  1. The site you registered for and your screen name for that site

** Bonus Offer** We are currently running a 20% off promotion for our monthly VIP Membership package! The plan is currently priced at $20 per month and it may go up once the DFS Domination Station is officially launched. Now is the chance to lock in at 20% off the normal monthly rate and lock in at $16 a month.

Click here to check out our membership plan and get the code for 20% off.