Contests Dashboard | A Look At NBA DFS Chalk
The chalk tastes so good.
Some nights, anyway.
If you’re newer to the daily fantasy sports grind, “eating chalk” is one of the oldest DFS slang terms to date, which simply means rostering popular players.
But in tournaments, it’s not ideal to play all of the chalk.
The beautiful concept about competing in this peer-to-peer game, is that everyone has their own perspectives, rules and opinions when lineup building.
Using our Contests Dashboard (powered by FantasyLabs) I was able to dive into some data, dating back to the beginning of the new year.
After two coffees this morning (one with espresso), I was able to find some interesting takeaways.
It’s an obscure (and tiny) sample size (11 slates), so take the following with a grain of salt. Consider it some “Food For Thought,” as I wasn’t able to pull every contest from January, while I also threw out slates with less than five games, and more than 10.
I specifically took a look at the DraftKings NBA Fadeaway contest, which is arguably its most popular large-field hoops tournament, with one of the biggest prize pools most nights.
The chart below illustrates:
— Date and Main Slate size
— The number of top-10 highest owned players by the field, per slate (in the DK Fadeaway), who were on more than half (at least 50%) of the top-1% lineups.
— Players, per slate, who were at least 30% owned by the field, that were on a majority (at least 50%) of the top-1% lineups.
— Players, per slate, who were at least 40% owned by the field, that were on more than half (at least 50%) of the top-1% lineups.
— Average price of the top-10 highest owned players per slate in the Fadeaway.
| Date | Slate Size | Top-10 owned | +30% | +40% | Avg. $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb. 3 | 6 games | 3 | 1 | 1 | $6,930 |
| Feb. 2 | 9 games | 3 | 2 | 1 | $6,900 |
| Feb. 1 | 7 games | 4 | 3 | 3 | $5,720 |
| Jan. 31 | 8 games | 5 | 4 | 3 | $7,320 |
| Jan. 30 | 5 games | 3 | 3 | 3 | $6,650 |
| Jan. 29 | 6 games | 1 | 1 | 1 | $7,010 |
| Jan. 26 | 10 games | 4 | 1 | 0 | $6,850 |
| Jan. 23 | 9 games | 4 | 3 | 2 | $5,970 |
| Jan. 12 | 9 games | 7 | 3 | 3 | $5,680 |
| Jan. 8 | 5 games | 3 | 2 | 2 | $6,320 |
| Jan. 3 | 10 games | 3 | 2 | 2 | $6,230 |
| Total | 7.5 games | 4.0 | 2.27 | 1.90 | $6,507 |
It’s true, not all chalk is bad. Some of the “right plays” end up being right!
—There were zero nights where none of the top-10 most owned didn’t appear in a majority of the top-1% finishers.
— 8 of 11 slates featured 3-to-4 of the top-10 highest owned players on more than half of the top-1% lineups. Only once were less than 3 top-10 owned players in a majority of the best finishers.
— Jan. 12 was the night with the most (7) of top-10 highest owned players appearing on a majority of top-1% finishers. Unsurprisingly, it marked lowest average price of those highest owned players ($5,680) of the 11-game sample. There was a ton of value that opened up due to injuries, as 5 of the top-10 highest owned players were priced under $5,000.
This article isn’t advocating that all chalk is good, but it’s important to properly incorporate the “correct” plays into your builds.
As you can see, using our Contests Dashboard, Thursday featured a classic Gregg Popovich “bench most our guys” kind of night. Gotta’ love those.
Fortunately, LineupHQ offers easy access to either group players together, or set rules to separate them. How much chalk is too much? Well, it depends who you ask — that’s for sure.
Thankfully, our NBA projections team here at RotoGrinders is very good.
I set a player group that contained these popular Spurs with a rule imposing “no more than 2” players in this group per lineup. This is just one example of many ways to utilize the player-group function.
In hindsight, it’s easier to say maybe I should have made it a maximum of one, as only Thaddeus Young appeared in a majority of top-1% lineups.
The public is getting sharper every season, with more resources, tools and projections at its disposal. It may be difficult to be unique some nights, but there are plenty of paths to creating +EV lineups.
There are plenty of ways to sift through the “right plays,” and with our revamped Contests Dashboard as another fantastic resource at RotoGrinders, it’s easier to find trends and apply them to your process.
If you’ve listened to our guy Blender, you’ve heard him say something to the effect of “it’s not about the player, it’s about the lineup.”
And I got news for ya folks, he’s correct.