Welcome to the 2016 version of The Daily Grind, a look at Daily Fantasy Football from several vantage points. Together we will look at many different topics this season – from managing expectations and bankroll to what Footballguys has in store for 2016 and how to best use what this site has to offer to maximize both your enjoyment and your bankroll by Super Bowl LI. So let’s jump right in with some thoughts on both expectations for playing this year and also a first take at a guided tour for Footballguys’ DFS coverage this season:
Ownership PERCENTAGES – And Why You EVERY DFS PLAYER NeedS Them
Ownership percentages for DFS players have always been a popular topic, but it has really become a hot button of late ever since FanDuel made a change to how they publish that information. Before last week, once a contest started the ownership percentages for all players in the contest were available (but you did have to sift through multiple lineups to find them). So what many people did, including Footballguys, was to enter into tournaments and cash games that started on Thursdays to get an idea of how heavily invested the DFS community was in each player. That information is now hidden until kickoff for each player, which means that a lot of this information we used to glean on Thursday night is not available. Or is it? Did we already know this information before Thursday night, and just wanted some confirmations of what we suspected in the first place, or did we really learn new information from Thursday data?
Here is what I personally think – we know who the top plays of the week are going to be long before Thursday night. Look at last week in particular. There was one cheap starting running back in Spencer Ware, and we all knew it. We also knew that two rookie quarterbacks were going to start in Dak Prescott and Carson Wentz. What we also knew is that you couldn’t turn on the radio, TV or read any fantasy site without a mention of Prescott (and very little mention of Wentz). Two of those names - Prescott and Ware - were so prevalently discussed that we all knew that both would be heavily owned in Week 1, especially in cash games. All we didn’t know before Thursday was what the exact ownership percentage was. Last year we would have had confirmation of information we already knew, and even that would be circumstantial as the ownership for a given contest can vary, especially with news coming out after a Thursday kickoff. Look no further than the “Rob Gronkowski is not traveling with the team” story last week. That certainly influenced tight end decisions for Sunday contests, and the information was not in the Thursday night ownership numbers even if we had them.
So what does matter, and who should care? First, it is usually the tournament (GPP) players that care more about ownership percentages, and I think that is a major oversimplification and frankly a mistake by cash game players. Ownership percentages matter in every type of contest, and I will provide a cash game example shortly. Tournament players ask themselves a few questions each week, such as “How widely owned will this stack be come Sunday?” and “I have these two players about even, who will be lesser owned?” Those are great questions to ask, and I have even heard pundits say that if Player X is only going to be owned 3% in this contest, if his odds of hitting tournament value in that GPP is better than 3%, he is a good play. I can sort of buy that argument, but what really matters is relative ownership. The first thing any DFS player should do each week is create a list of viable players for each format (GPP, Cash) and then he (or she) should consider ownership on a relative value. I personally do not care if Eli Manning will be owned 3% on Sunday or 10% if he is not a good play (this week he is). Since he is this week, I only care about relative value, so all I want to think about are which players are popular and which ones are not. Popular players have their place (cash games, or rounding out GPP lineups) and unpopular players have their value (GPPs usually, and only if they have upside to hit tournament level scores).
Let me give two examples, first the GPP one. I already started down the path with Eli Manning, and this week he is going to be very popular. You don’t need Thursday night data to tell you that he is going to be facing a bad defense (the Saints) at home in a game that Las Vegas thinks will be one of the highest scoring contests of the week (Over/Under is 52.5 as the Vegas Value Chart shows). Manning is going to be prevalent in lineups, and so will Drew Brees for similar reasons and the fact that he had a big game last week. All of that information is readily available to DFS players on Monday or Tuesday at the latest, and the fact that Footballguys’ DFS content (and other sites as well) keep mentioning Manning just reaffirms that Manning is going to be popular. Now, what we don’t know is how low of an ownership other quarterbacks will be, but experienced DFS players know how to use the context clues for the week to figure it all out. Is the particular player's price high? Is the Over/Under high for his game? Is there recency bias for or against him? Is he facing a good or bad defense this week? These are the types of questions our Footballguys staff explores with our amazing content in articles like The Fade and The Contrarian, and we talk about it in our video shows like the Power Grid each week. Lower owned players can provide very high upside if they reach or exceed value in tournaments, and that is amplified if they happen to be unpopular as well. As we discussed in our Cracking FanDuel book, if you have a player at 5% ownership and he exceeds value, you are ahead of the game against roughly 95% of the competition (at least at that roster spot). Those are the types of upsides you want.
So for tournaments, relative ownership matters more than an exact number. It should not matter too much if Andrew Luck is 1% vs. 2% vs. 5% owned this week. For success in tournaments you want to construct a lineup full of upside that has enough uniqueness where if most or all of your roster hits or exceeds value, you will be at the top of the tournament standings. That does NOT require a roster full of unique players, rather only a few (one can be enough in smaller tournaments, usually 2-3 are plenty in big ones). Ownership is a tiebreaker in lineup decisions, because value and upside matter more than ownership across the board. Ultimately you want a roster full of points and uniqueness concerns come in at a distant second when constructing the best rosters.
For you cash game players, thanks for hanging in there with me. Let’s talk about ownership and what it means for your lineups. Believe it or not, cash game players should care MORE about ownership than GPP players. Why? Let’s explore a great debate topic from last week:
The Curious Case of Dak Prescott
When it comes to ownership in cash games, popular players have to be considered first and foremost. Looking back at Week 1, one of the most hotly discussed players was Dak Prescott, who was at or near minimum price for a starting quarterback at nearly every DFS site. The question was whether or not to take the salary cap savings with Prescott and spend elsewhere in cash game lineups. This is a classic game theory questions, as there are six outcomes based on a lineup decision and Prescott’s performance:
Chart 1 - Possible Outcomes for Using Popular Players in Cash Games
Based on the chart above, given how highly owned everyone thought Prescott would be, the correct game theory decision was to roster Prescott and move on to building the rest of the lineup. Now, I get that people were probably more successful in not using him (and I was one of those people), but the game theory implies that you want to use highly owned, popular players in cash games. The reasoning is imbedded in that chart – as long as most people use a given player, most rosters will rise or fall with that player. In Week 1, Prescott lineups were not going to be out of the ability to cash because of Prescott’s performance, since the plurality of lineups in most cash games were using him. It was up to the rest of the roster to determine whether the lineup was a winner or not.
To look at it from the other angle, consider the outcomes when NOT picking popular players. There is a very bad outcome possibility where a lineup without that popular player is way behind a large amount of rosters because they all used the popular player and either he did well, or he was cheap enough to allow for better values and higher scoring players to be rostered. The downside risk clearly resides in NOT using a highly owned player, as shown in the red box where you choose to not use a highly owned player and said player has a great day. Basically, unless you are very confident in the decision to fade a popular player, you are much better off by taking popular players in cash games and building around them. The key takeaway for cash game players is to know who is popular, regardless of the numeric ownership percentage, and build around them unless you have a strong opinion to look elsewhere. Just be sure to understand the risk implied by doing so (you may land in that red box in the chart above).
So – to put a bow on this topic and summarize:
- Ownership matters – but true ownership percentages likely do not.
- Relative Ownership (who is popular, who is out of favor) is all that is truly needed for both cash game and GPP success
- Cash game players should use popular players as a general rule of thumb – but not gospel. Understand that the (implied) risk of fading popular players may result in being behind a large number of rosters, making it much harder to cash.
- Tournament players should decide which players each week are capable of hitting tournament value first, and then use a few lesser owned players with upside for differentiation purposes only
- In both types of contests, using lesser owned players only for the sake of differentiation is a losing proposition (-EV) in the long run. Players must have DFS value first, differential value second.
As I mentioned last time, there is no one path to DFS success and growing your bankroll, but information is king when it comes to DFS. Lineups are a weekly puzzle to put together, which makes it so much fun and challenging. Understanding the role of ownership of players each week is another piece of information that helps to build that successful roster and wind up winning more than losing. Take the time to understand who are the hot names each week and who may be a little more off the radar, but still solid values.
Best of luck this week.
A Guided Tour to Footballguys’ DFS 2016 Coverage (WEEK 2 EDITION)
Last week I brought you a guided tour to all the DFS coverage Footballguys is providing this season. As I mentioned, I questioned whether it would be a good idea to jump right in for Week 1 as some of the articles are not appearing just yet and a few of them would not be live until Saturday, the day after Daily Grind first appears, but given how much great content we had I thought I could jump right in for Week 1 and then add to it in Week 2 (and if need be, Week 3). So, I am going to do two things here. First, I am going to update last week’s guided tour with links to Week 2 articles even if they aren’t published yet so you can have this one-stop shop to find everything you want (in addition to our DFS Landing Page), along with sprinkling in some updates to the latest and greatest content for Week 2 for all of those articles I mentioned last time. Next, am going to add to the tour with a section for Week 2 updates (and possibly again in the future as we add more and more), so that you can continue to use this article and section to help you navigate all of our excellent DFS coverage every week. So let’s start with the refresher of the Week 1 tour:
Updates to our Week 1 Tour:
Going back to where we started last week with our DFS Landing Page in Week 2, we have plenty of great articles to get you on the path of another winning DFS week. Let’s start with some of the articles I mentioned last week about bankroll management. There are not one but two blogs this year on bankrolls, first by Devin Knotts (“Growing the FanDuel Bankroll”) and the always entertaining David Dodds’ thoughts (“The Bestest FanDuel Blog Evah”). Adding to that is a great new column by Steve Buzzard, who is telling us his thoughts every week this year on how to build the best cash game lineups in ”Bankroll Building”.
So what about the games? Where do we start each week? Well, in addition to the Thursday Spotlight game breakdown by Andrew Katz, we have every game from the week broken down by the Las Vegas lines in John Lee’s Vegas Value Charts. Don’t forget to check the latest on injuries too from our Dr. Jene Bramel as he provides the latest medical insights to help make those critical lineup decisions.
But wait – there’s more. There are several additional articles to help find the best value plays for your cash games, starting with David Dodds’ “Cost/Value Chart”” for FanDuel and Justin Howe’s “Cost Efficiency” for DraftKings. The Footballguys’ staff is also sharing their collective thoughts in many ways (and formats) this season, highlighted by not just one but two video shows. The “Footballguys’ Daily Fantasy Hour” is a collaboration with Rotogrinders, and it features both Austin Lee and John Lee along with host Dan Back to discuss what to expect in the coming games along with lessons learned from the prior week. Footballguys also has their own version of a DFS show entitled “Power Grid”, which had a soft opening in Week 1 but the Week 2 version starts to show how we are taking advantage of our immense talent pool of DFS staff with five guests along with host Cecil Lammey to direct the traffic in an hour long conversational format for an NFL whip-around that will help you in not just DFS but also with all your fantasy decisions for the week.
Bridging the gap from video shows back to the main site is Phil Alexander, who had some fantastic videos on how to get the best out of the Footballguys’ tools in the preseason (see the videos on “Targets” and “Game Log Dominator”). Phil continues the great tool breakdowns in his series “Exploiting FBG Tools for DFS Success” this season, and it is definitely worth the time to help in your own player research. The Week 2 version highlights how to use one of our best DFS tools, the IVCs.
The staff adds more thoughts throughout the week with a large question and answer session directed by Alex Miglio in the “Wisdom of the Staff” in both a FanDuel version and one for DraftKings to help with cash game and GPP lineup building. Ryan Hester adds to the mix by hosting the DFS Roundtable each week as well where several staff members share their thoughts on hot DFS topics.
General DFS discussion continues with “Narrative Street” by Will Grant, where he points out the various motivational factors beyond the gridiron for the coming set of games. Aaron Rudnicki, one of our best IDP staff members, adds his own unique viewpoint with “Exposed” where he highlights both good and bad receiver / defender matchups. Justin Howe takes a look at goal line players in “Redzone / Short-Yardage”, while Ryan Hester brings it home with “Trendspotting” for a look at the top recent trends around the league.
So now you have a good foundation of the upcoming week and games. What about some articles that focus on each DFS site? We have two answers for that question. First, we have five features that highlight the best plays for those sites as a marquee piece for each of those contest hosts, so if you want to dig into FanDuel, start with “Cracking FanDuel” by David Dodds. John Lee does an extensive piece for DraftKings called “Tips and Picks”, which is a must read each week. We have added three more similar articles for 2016 for FantasyDraft (“FantasyDraft Dominator” by Dan Hindery), Yahoo! (“Exclamation Point!” by Keith Roberts ) and FantasyAces (“Acing Aces” by Danny Tuccitto). Those features are must reads for anyone playing on those sites each and every week.
I promised a second answer to that question, and it is from Maurile Tremblay’s Interactive Value Charts, or “IVCs” as we have come to know and love these tools. The IVCs allow you to click on players and build lineups right on the site, where you can sort players by price, value, H-value, stacks and many other ways. You can even use one of three sets of projections to fill out the blanks in your lineup, or the average of all three sets. The IVCs are all linked from one page to the other on the right side of the page – here is the FanDuel IVC as an example. All of the five sites that are featured are represented, and as more sites come online for NFL play more and more IVCs will be added.
Last but certainly not least, we have tournaments to consider. That’s right, chasing the big money. As I mentioned about bankrolls, play, but don’t go crazy. The articles that will help you here start with “The Chalk” by Chris Feery and “Projecting Ownership” by Chad Parsons. FanDuel has recently changed their publication of ownership for Thursday night contests, so projecting which players will be high or low owned is much trickier, so you need to read up on this and find those diamonds in the rough.
Tournament talk continues with three stack articles for 2016 – one for FanDuel (“Starting Stacks” - FanDuel) by Scott Bischoff and one for DraftKings (“Starting Stacks” – DraftKings) by John Mamula. James Brimacombe throws in a third opinion with “The Other Stack” for a look at some different approaches to stacking players each week. More GPP pivot plays are offered by both Chris Feery and Justin Bonnema in a version of “The Contrarian” for both major sites (“The Contrarian” - FanDuel, “The Contrarian” - DraftKings). Justin goes further with “The Fade” for players on FanDuel, highlighting highly owned players for both cash games and tournaments and what decisions to make based on those ownership levels.
One last article on tournaments wraps up the week with “Bink, Inc.” by BJ Vanderwoude. For those not familiar with the term “bink”, it means to take down a GPP – so if you are looking to win a tournament this week, especially on DraftKings, give this one a good read.
New for Week 2:
This week debuts a few new items for DFS from Footballguys. Wait, did you think we had enough already? Well, you should really enjoy these new pieces of content. One of my favorites this year is a new article (actually two, but who's counting) called Consensus Rankings where 10 Footballguys' staff members submitted their value play rankings for both DraftKings and FanDuel this week. That would be great content by itself, but we went one step further. Both Jeff Haseley and Will Grant will be adding their own comments on the rankings each week such as who is popular and who is not, plus they will be pulling in comments from the staff to explain why one or more of their individual choices are in the unique category. If you ever wanted to pick the staff's collective minds on DFS, this is a great insight to just that and will go a long way towards your own rankings and lineups for the week.
Also new in Week 2 is a look back at the Sunday Millionaire contest from FanDuel. Here James Brimacombe breaks down the top teams from one of the biggest weekly DFS tournaments in fantasy football and how the winning rosters were constructed. This is one of the best ways to learn how to build winning tournament lineups and is a must read for all GPP players. The "Trust or Fade" writeup by Jeff Haseley also debuts this week, where he breaks down Dr. Jene Bramel's injury video to give insight on all the medical issues around the NFL and how they will impact the DFS lineups for the week.
Now start reading (and watching), go build some lineups and enjoy NFL Week 2!
Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.
