The idea behind my process is simple, “more lineups are better than fewer lineups”. Lower entry fee contests generally have weaker competition and I believe that, over time, with more lineups, we can reduce our variance and actually see very consistent gains while still having opportunities for massive upside nights.
As you can see from my results from last year, “cash games” were not my cash game results were not great. Early on in 2019 I decided to go with a predominantly GPP approach to DFS as I’ve never been a great “cash game grinder” and that decision helped me have the best DFS year of my career.
I like to use 401k investing as an example. You would never put all of your retirement savings on the back of 1 stock, or 1 lineup. You would be much better served to spread out your risk and diversify your portfolio as much as possible. For example, If we’re playing $20 dollars, it’s better to play 20 lineups in the $1.00 dollar 20 max contest rather than playing one entry in a $20 single entry tourney.
Contest Selection is Key
Bankroll Management and Contest Selection are even more important than picking the “right players” each day. Kevin aka “The Geek” has a great article discussing this even further so make sure you check out the Geek’s Bankroll Management and Contest Selection Article here.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get into the process I use each day.
My MME Process from start to finish
I wrote a more elaborate MME Process Article <— click here, where I explain more and show screenshots of the DS. For each day, I’ll post the cliff notes version below but make sure you read over the other article as well so you understand the process.
Step 1 – Sort the RS or DS by highest-rated AND1 rating
Step 2 – By using the ADORE 😍 feature I Increase the projection for the Top5 players at each Position by 15%
Step 3 – DS Settings
— 150 lineups
— 3 unique players
— 70% global max exposure on all players
— 5% randomness
— Tournament Mode (not optimal mode)
Step 4 – Run and Review
Step 5 – Make final edits to your pool (edit likes and dislikes to get the exposures you want)
Repeat Steps 4 and 5 until you are happy with your exposures and let it rip!
Quick slate overview 2-24-20
Solid Monday slate here to tip off the week. The injury situation in Philly will shape this slate as Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris are both out tonight. That will lead to some very highly owned Sixers on the slate and plenty of opportunities for us to get unique in our roster construction.
Where’s the chalk?
It’s early in the afternoon so Ownership Projections are just now starting to roll in. I’ll go over a few positions below, and highlight who we’re seeing as the chalkiest options at those positions, and then I’ll look to see where we can get off those players in order to make our lineups and roster construction unique to the field.
Point Guard
Luka Doncic will be the highest owned point guard tonight against the T’Wolves. His sub 10k price tag on Fanduel is simply ridiculous so he’s where you should start the majority of your lineups tonight.
Spencer Dinwiddie will likely have the 2nd highest ownership at the position and he is where I will likely start to get my leverage vs the field. He’s been great with Kyrie Irving out but with higher ownership and plenty of other, less expensive point guards in smash spots I’ll be looking to pivot here.
Russell Westbrook will be 3rd on the list and his price will cause him to be around 1/2 the ownership of Luka Doncic. The matchup vs the Knicks is juicy and he’s a great tourney play over Luka if you can stomach going underweight on Luka.
Trae Young will be the lowest owned “stud” at this position and he’s always got slate breaking upside. On Fanduel he’s $200 cheaper than Luka and he’ll have 1/5 the ownership!!!
Pivots
Kendrick Nunn and Gordan Dragic are my two favorite pivots today. Their chances of success far outweigh their chances of failure today considering Tyler Herro and Jimmy Butler will be out for the Heat. The matchup vs the Cavs is as good as it gets for point guards also.
Most people will likely pair Luka Doncic with one of these two, so you could get a unique roster construction by playing them both in the same lineup if you’d like. Similar to GPP winners last night, who use the Bulls point guards of Thomas Satoransky and Coby White in the same lineups together. If you’re not crazy about paying down at both point guard spots, you could simply swap out Luka for Trae Young and move on from there as well.
Shooting Guard
James Harden will be the highest owned at this position tonight, but, I don’t think he be as highly owned as the other studs on the slate. I believe Luka, Embid and Giannis will all be higher owned than he will. Next up at SG Dillon Brooks, Khris Middleton, Josh Richardson, and Donovan Mitchell. The ownership gap between them and Harden is not even close to the ownership gap we see at Point guard. If you’re looking for leverage here, you can look at Furkan Korkmaz for some value, Malik Beasley and RJ Barrett.
Small Forward
Giannis Antetokounmpo will be the highest owned Small Forward, but, like the Shooting Guard position, we don’t see a huge ownership gap between him and Bojan Bogdanovic and Kelly Oubre. They should all be around 20-30% owned tonight. The leverage plays here are going to be Glenn Robinson, Derrick Jones, and Josh Jackson as they should all see some increased minutes because of their team’s injuries tonight.
Power Forward
The chalk here is going to be Al Horford and Brandon Clarke. This will likely be the most used combination on Fanduel as you can roster both of them for just $10,100 and the chances of them failing are relatively small today. “This is a great spot to spend up when others are spending down” and two guys that I really love tonight are Bam Adebayo and Julius Randle. Both of them are more expensive so their ownership will be lower on this slate. Jarrett Allen is a guy that is in the same price range as Clarke and Horford and he’s been playing very well as of late so he should be sneaky as well.
Center
With Tobias Harris and Ben Simmons out, most people will simply plug in Joel Embid and move along. There is nothing wrong with that strategy as we know Embid will see an increased usage rate and increased opportunities today. However, if we want to be unique in tournaments tonight we could make a simple pivot down to Nikola Vucevic vs the Brooklyn Nets. We’re projecting him to be about 1/5th the ownership of Embid with just as much upside vs the Nets. If you’d like to pay down a little more you could plug in Rudy Gobert vs the Suns and DeAndre Ayton. Gobert should has his way with the Suns frontcourt, but his upside is lower than Embid and Vucevic.
If you want a very unique roster construction you could pay all the way down at Center for Robin Lopez of the Bucks, who will be starting for the injured Brook Lopez tonight against the
Wrap it up
Alex “Awesemo” Baker (the #1 DFS player in the world) had a great quote in a recent article he wrote.
Hopefully that all makes sense. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me in the VIP Chat at any time. I’ll leave you with the Top3 And1 players below at each position. Be sure to check on these closer to lock as well, as these change when news breaks later in the day.
AND 1 Top 3’s today
The AND 1 rating was developed by Ben Jammin @xBenJamminx and is apart of our NBA Research Station.The rating is an all-encompassing metric that will lead you to the best plays on each slate each day. One of my favorite things to do is use the ADORE 😍 feature in the Domination Station on all of these players so that I’m sure to get heavy exposure to them across my lineups.
Luka Doncic leads the slate today with a 25.7 AND1 Rating in his matchups against the T’Wolves. Check out the Rest of the Top 3 at each position below.
PG – Luka Doncic
Trae Young
Russell Westbrook
SG – Lou Williams
James Harden
Donovan Mitchell
SF – Giannis Antetokounmpo
Bojan Bogdanovic
Marcus Morris
PF – Kawhi Leonard
Kristaps Porzingis
Julius Randle
C – Joel Embiid
Nikola Vucevic
Montrezl Harrell