Spriz Goes Solo: September Goals

My August goals were all but met within the first two weeks of the month. To recap, I had three main goals for August; to profit, to place top 20 on the leader board, and to obtain 500 wins on Draftstreet. That was a fun challenge, and I greatly enjoyed the short trip to victory. This month, I feel I have a near impossible challenge for myself. It’s the last full month of the regular season, and no one knows what exactly will happen. Pitchers may get shut down, hitters with nagging injuries may hang it up, and it’s a young triple A or double A phenom’s time to shine. The problem with this is I don’t know who the phenom’s are… P.S. Ride Dayan every chance you can. Anyhow, all of the potential reasons for concern has me wanting to think outside the box when setting my goals for September. (Editor’s Note: Compare graph above to Spriz’s July graph … impressive.)*

September Goals:

1) Profit!
2) Make the leader board!
3) Utilize the “one team a day” strategy to win, win, win, and prove that there is skill involved in it!
4) Ship a GPP!
5) Learn NFL leagues on Draftstreet, and finish baseball season strong!

The second half of #3 just made you shake your head and say: “Man, this guy’s lost it. He goes off and has a good month and thinks he can re-write the books on winning. There is skill to picking all one team? Yeah right”. If you had those exact thoughts, I don’t blame you. This month I’m not trying to rewrite how to win, or even influence you to take this strategy seriously. I’m mainly focused on diving into it as a viable approach to daily fantasy and observing if it is profitable. Now we all know to win a GPP you have to take risks. Most people enjoy tag-teaming players to accumulate points quickly at the expense of that team having an off night. To this point it’s been conceived as a high-risk high-reward strategy, and rightfully so. I’m going to tag-team 8 or 9 guys a night and make my opponent feel the pressure with every base runner in that given game.

The way I look at the solo strategy, is if I can pick a team in select situations (one lucky offensive squad a day) and pick my spots with pitching, I can compete with anyone on a daily basis. I still get one or two utility guys that I can throw in to hedge a potential bad day.

Playing head-to-head’s probably isn’t the best approach to make this work. I want to get in 3-mans mainly, (6, 10 and 20-mans when they fill). With 3-mans, I can fully capitalize on that weak “third man” (when I’m not him…) and increase my return on big nights. I can risk less per night with this strategy, and expect bigger returns. I think I’m going to start with $11 3mans up to $55 3mans, with the occasional head-to-heads sprinkled in, as well as an occasional high stakes match. I don’t expect 80+ point nights with this strategy. I think a lot of nights I go 40-60 points, as I usually do building my normal salary cap team. What I expect with the strategy is bigger upside, and sweeping the card when it happens. I want to risk 400 bucks in a night and win 800, as opposed to risking 800 to win 400. As I said earlier, I personally don’t know what this will bring, or if it’s even possible to profit with it. Only time, confidence, and patience will tell.

You could also call this a desperate attempt at winning a GPP, my number two season goal (behind profit!). “But Spriz, if you’re just trying to win a GPP why not only use the strategy there?” When I enter a GPP I expect to win it. That means, I expect my team to score 100, no matter how that team is composed. I don’t care risk-reward relationships, or if there’s a guy with a statistically sound team in front of me. I just care about today… and if I lose today, it’s on to tomorrow…

One day this week (if I make it that far) I’m going to dive into my thoughts behind choosing a solo squad. The over/under I’ve set for this experiment is 7 days. You can go ahead and post your position on the over/under and pat yourself on the back when I fail or succeed. One thing is for sure about this month, it’s gonna be stressful. If done correctly though, I believe we could see more incredibly sick returns from Sprizouse Sports.

(That wasn’t a very well constructed blog, but this is a subject I’m not sure I can accurately put into words yet. I need it to fail or succeed I guess to accurately demonstrate what I was thinking and why. It Should be a fun month though, which is the whole point of this thing!!!)

-Spriz