Buffalo vs. Blinders Challenge Update - Thoughts from Blinders

by Cameron MacMillan (Cameron) Last Updated 2010-08-14 19:21:27

Buffalo vs. Blinders Challenge Update – Thoughts from Blinders

NOTE: Follow the progress of this Challenge and provide your commentary in the featured Challenge forum thread on RotoGrinders.

The Blind Side

Last week we began coverage of the Buffalo vs. Blinders challenge. Representing Fantasy Sports Live, Blinders was the first competitor to accept Buffalo’s challenge, creating a sort of Daily Fantasy Projections vs. Fantasy Sports Live mini-battle. The stakes? $1,320 wagered over 48 matches and arguably, the title ‘Best All-Around Daily Fantasy Player’. Since #2 ranked Buffalo66 initiated the challenge almost an entire year ago, we gave him first crack at telling his side. This week we sat down with Blinders to hear the challenge from his perspective.

Kevin, first off, I apologize for offering a sidebet to anyone taking Buffalo’s side in this challenge. After doing a little more research, and reading your baseball strategy guide on your blog, it is clear you know what you are doing. So, my first piece was Buffalo’s viewpoint on the challenge and a history of how it came about. I think now its time to get your views and responses. First off, How you were made aware of the challenge?

I have been following Buffalo’s blog for a while. He also helped FSL with our Hockey and NASCAR structures back when we were developing them.

Buffalo was adamant about a stark change in terms from his original challenge offer. Tell us about your thought process while negotiating the terms of the challenge.

I think he is making more out of it than was really there. I went in expecting to do all 5 sports. Autopick drafts are proprietary to the site that they are on and do not represent daily fantasy sports skill, in my opinion. I also never looked at all of his exact terms before offering to accept. The fact that I am an insider at FSL removed that site from contention for a number of reasons. So we dropped NASCAR because FSL has the only good NASCAR offering right now. Autodrafts were dropped, because I do not want to waste my time learning FanDuel’s unique system and how to exploit it specifically. $25 was actually the highest stakes I offered him, and he snapped at it. I guess I just did not really understand all of his terms going in. I was never against the two contests per date, I did not know about it. I have already offered to do three sports per day on Sundays during football season, so it could be 24 days, 12 baseball only, and 12 with three sports which is pretty close to what he wanted. NASCAR was dropped for the reasons above. Doing baseball as a two sport day would mean waiting until next season, and I wanted the challenge done by the end of the year. No autopicks mentioned in his original terms. Ultimately, I did not grind him down, we just worked with-in some small restrictions to get the challenge to happen.

What are your thoughts and outlook on the potential outcome of the challenge?

I am off to a bad start, but am not worried yet. I think the skill edge will be higher in football and basketball and that’s where I plan to rack up lots of wins. Hopefully, I will catch a break or two before baseball is over. For hockey, my techniques do not actually require sports knowledge, so I am not as far behind as he would like to think. Same would have been for NASCAR if we did that. I said before it started that it would go down to the wire, and I am still in that camp.

What are your thoughts on Buffalo from a Daily Fantasy competition perspective?

Buffalo is solid and is a worthy competitor. He will be very tough to beat.

Do you think the winner of this challenge deserves the title “best all around daily fantasy player”?

Buffalo66 has the title right now. If I can’t get it by beating him at this challenge, I am not sure how he loses it.

Challenge Update

As a recap, here are the terms of the Buffalo vs. Blinders Challenge:

• 48 Total Contests – 12 Per Sport
• Sports Competed In: Football, Baseball, Basketball and Hockey
• All Contest Entry Fees are $25+2.50
• Contests cannot run until that sport’s season is 3-4 weeks underway
• No Auto-Pick Games will be involved

Currently, the Challenge is five matches deep. Here are the results so far:

Current Leader		Buffalo (4-1)	5 of 48 Complete

Ongoing Coverage

You can follow the Challenge in our forums or hear Buffalo’s perspective on his blog. RotoGrinders hopes to get commentary from both parties throughout the challenge in addition to providing updates and coverage on the progress.

- Cameron M.