Back Testing Cash Games

At DFS Army, we’ve been in the Lab back testing the 2023 Season so that we can Dominate the field using the Domination Station – DFS Army’s Optimizer. 

We’ve been back testing the Optimizer to crush GPP’s for years, and it’s been pivotal for finding a repeatable process to have so many Takedowns each season. It got us to question if it was possible to be profitable in Cash Games as well by exclusively using the Optimizer, so we tested it out…

The good news is if you just want be able to click optimize and be profitable in cash games, you can. You can eke out a small profit with the click of a button, BUT we can do a lot better than a small profit in Cash games with just a few tweaks of the Optimizer. No more agonizing over who to play in your Cash Lineup. Save that energy for your Tournament entries!

I’ve found a repeatable process for using the Optimizer to Cash in roughly 76% of your Double ups throughout the Season. For Example, each week of the NFL Season, if you played $25 in the $25 Double Up Contest on Draft Kings, you would’ve hit the $50 Double Up Line 13 out of 17 weeks in 2023 – that’s $225 profit. 

13 out of 17 weeks, you would’ve walked away with $50 on your $25 entry fee.

Let’s break down the Math:

17 Weeks multiplied by $25 = $425 in Entry Fees.

13 Weeks multiplied by $50 = $650 in Returns

Returns – Entry Fees = Profit. $650-$425 = $225 in winnings and a 52.9% ROI.

Now if you’re playing the Same Cash Lineup in Head to Heads spread across a lot of different opponents, you can expect to have similar, great results. (Minus the rake.)

Let’s say you want to spend $50 on head to heads each week:

If you did 50 $1 Head to Heads, and you won 76% of those contests, you would have returned $68.40 on $50. ($18.40 in Profit.)

The Math:

50 x $1 = $50 in Entry Fees

76% of 50 is 38 x $1.80 = $68.40 (Every $1 Head-to-head won pays out $1.80.. the rake is 20 Cents.)

Now you can do more than 50 head to heads, and you can do $2, $3, $5, etc. That’s all up to your risk tolerance. Cash Games are Head to Heads, 50/50s, and Double Ups. You want to mix in Head to Heads in with your 50/50s and Double ups because even when you have a down week in Cash, you can still return money from going against opponents who had a worse week than you.

Realistically, if you had 76%-win rate in cash games, it’s a no brainer to have the bulk of your weekly bank roll allotted to Cash Games. That’s proper bank roll management and it’s recommended to have about 80% of your weekly bank roll in Cash Games. This will lead you to being a profitable DFS Player.

Now how do we win at this high of a rate using the Optimizer? Let’s take a look.

There are a few guidelines that we want to follow in Cash games, and they help us set up the optimizer.

1. We Hate Variance
2. We Love Good Chalk
3. We want High Floor Players
4. Follow the Projections

Okay maybe there were 4. The Optimizer will take care of the Projection Part, so how do we figure out the rest?

1. Variance is bad for Cash Games. The Tight End position has extreme variance which is fine for tournaments… but not cash, so we don’t want a Tight End in the Flex – the optimizer will try to force in a value tight end a lot of weeks, but they may see one target and end up with a Donut. That’s the last thing we want for Cash games. We also don’t want a lot of stacks in cash games, so we’ll want to avoid more than 1 pass catcher without the QB. (We can disallow that in the Optimizer as you see from the picture below.)

2. Chalk is good in Cash games. We’re only trying to beat half the field, so we don’t need to differentiate ourselves much at all. Eat all the good chalk you can – It provides a safety net if a player fails. You want to leverage that in tournaments but eat it in Cash. Where is the good Chalk? Is Tyreek Hill facing the 32nd ranked pass Defense in the league? Is a Back-up RB suddenly the starter this week due to injury and priced at $5,000 in a good matchup? These are spots where we’ll smash an Adore on a Player, so they end up in the Lineup. (If they don’t naturally… Which they often do.)

 

3. High Floor Players offer the consistency we need. High Floor players consistently put up high average scores relative to the field. Think CMC. Think Josh Allen & Jalen Hurts. Some QBs may put up 10 Fantasy Points in a bad game and do it at a higher percentage than say Allen or Hurts who may only have 1 of those games a year but score 20+ most weeks. For example, Allen had 15 games of over 20 points and 6 games over 30 points. (Averaged 26 FPPG in 2023.) You want to lock in points to your cash lineup by playing guys like Hurts, CMC, and Allen – specifically at the QB position.

 

4. Trust the Projections in Cash Games. The Domination Station will naturally spit out a lineup with highly projected players that week when you Click Optimize. So we’re trusting the projections but also putting in a few rules to smooth out variance.

 

 

Knowing these rules, how do we set up the optimizer? This is where I went back and looked at the content for each slate to know who the players were that week. Did Allen or Hurts Project better? Let’s put a lock button on which high floor QB projected the best and a good amount of the field was playing that week. Let’s put 0% Tight End in the Flex to have the least amount of variance when we click optimize. Let’s also disallow more than one pass catcher without the QB in the lineup. Let’s smash an adore on a chalk player who projects well that week. I.E. David Montgomery in Week 5 of 2023 with Gibbs hurt that week. For example, in Week 5 we followed these guidelines and set-up the Optimizer accordingly to get a Score of 192.52. The Cash Line was 150 that week. 

WEEK 5 CASH LINE 150

 

Week 5 was just one of the 13 weeks that I would’ve profited when back testing this process. The reason I know this is so effective is it’s the same process that we’ve used for years to be profitable in Cash Games – I cashed about 14 weeks hand building my Cash Lineup in 2023 using these rules that we’re setting up the optimizer to incorporate. We want to lock in points and do that by playing high floor players who project well, eating all the good chalk that we can, while avoiding roster constructions with high variance like heavy stacks & lineups with double Tight Ends. 

By the Numbers:

Across 17 weeks, the average score of the Cash Line in the $25 Double Up on DK was 144.2.

Across 17 weeks, the Average score of Domination Station Back Test was 151.9.

This is a repeatable process that will help you crush cash games in 2024. Watch the full breakdown video below or CLICK HERE to watch on Youtube.

Football is Back & there’s no better time to take advantage of this Promotion to get $75 off a full year of NFL Content; NFL Preseason, NFL Regular Season/Playoffs, Best Ball & UFL Content is all included in this package. Click HERE  to become a DFS ARMY VIP and use PROMO CODE NFL2024 at Checkout!