Daily Fantasy Sports: Multi-Site Play
Multi-Site Table Selection
A lot has been made of table selection and opponent variance in daily fantasy. When picking up games for the day or week, you are likely sniping noobs in the Fanduel lobby or at least researching a potential opponent’s track record using the always helpful RotoGrinders database. Those are good ideas for sure, but I think you can take it a step farther, especially if you play on multiple sites. Work with me.
Multi-site play
First, let’s talk a bit about playing on several sites over a single contest period. It’s tough. To become adept at one site you need to get a good feel for the user population, scoring system, roster settings and pricing engine. For every additional site you add to your gaming catalog, you have to not only learn the idiosyncrasies of each, but also be able to keep the straight. To me, it’s not a surprise that some of the top players in this industry concentrate their play on one site rather than spreading themselves thinly across multiple sites. That said, where’s the fun in that? If you can effectively manage the quirks and loopholes of different sites, I think you can be quite profitable if you practice effective table selection and bankroll allocation.
Opponent Quality
By virtue of their significant advantage in volume, Fanduel and DraftStreet offer the widest range of players making it pretty easy to find a game against a soft opponent. Sure, you could argue there is no such thing, but I’d certainly rather play a guy with $200 in career winnings than one with $200,000. The $200 guy might be better, but I’ll take my chances that he’s not. Anyway, other sites have lower traffic and may not offer enough lower-quality opponents, but if Dailyjoust is where you built your favorite lineup for the week, don’t be afraid to step into a game against HeadChopper or Lord of the Podcast db730. Anyone can be beat in any given game in the daily fantasy world.
Building the Best Lineup
To me, the decision on where to play from week to week during the football season boils down to where I can build the best lineup. Yes, it’s all relative as my opponents at whatever site I’m playing can certainly build the same lineup, but if I can exploit some inefficiency to build a more potent lineup at Draftzone than I can at Fanduel or Dailyjoust, I’ll concentrate my play for the week at Draftzone. The following week, I might think my best lineup was created at FSL and focus my play there. My point is, you have to identify the situations where you can have an advantage, no matter how small, and aim to maximize profits by concentrating your play in those situations.
Scoring and Pricing
Here is where a little bit of homework can help you identify potentially profitable situations. You need to learn these components inside and out. For example, Draftzone’s pricing engine doesn’t play well with injuries. Arian Foster, coming back after missing time with a hamstring issue, was priced under 4,000 in week 4…you know, the week he lit up Pittsburgh for 166 total yards and a TD? Sure, the total production was higher than many expected, but when he was priced at a 60% discount to Adrian Peterson, that’s value. I’m looking forward to similar pricing inefficiencies on Miles Austin and Andre Johnson when they return from their respective maladies. If you spend the time to really understand the pricing engines, you’ll be able to find mispriced assets and take advantage of them.
Conclusion
It takes time to get to know each site you choose to play on, and even more time to identify and capitalize on the relative inefficiencies of each. That said, if you can invest the time and energy you should be able to put to enter your best lineup against your preferred opponents which should lead you to allocate your bankroll to profit-maximizing situations. And really, that’s the goal, isn’t it?
_______________________________________________________________________________________
RotoKevin is a Top 100 Ranked Grinder, who started climbing the rankings during MLB season of 2011. Rotokevin’s been playing fantasy sports long enough to have owned two generations of Griffeys, Barfields and Fielders. He’s captured seasonal league glory in all four major sports, though claims no particular knowledge of the NHL. He’s dabbled in non-mainstream fantasy sports such as soccer and golf and once attempted NASCAR with spectacular failure. He’s a man of the people and you’ll frequently find him in the $5 and $11-level games at your favorite daily sports site…you know, provided your favorite site is DraftStreet.