DFS New Year's Resolutions
With 2017 winding down, 2018 brings new beginnings. At the start of every new year, it’s a good time to re-evaluate your goals and set new ones to focus on. This year, I thought it’d be interesting to take our goal-setting process that we apply to New Year’s Resolutions and apply them to DFS.
Below are 10 DFS New Year’s Resolutions that you may wish to undertake. The best Resolutions are those that are realistic and measurable, so tweak the Resolutions to fit your bankroll, personality, and playing style.
You can follow me on Twitter I’d love to hear your thoughts in the Comments section – what are your DFS New Year’s Resolutions? Let’s dive in:
1. Qualify For A Live Final – Live Finals are the epitome of a DFS Super Bowl or World Series where the best of the best battle it out. You get to be among DFS royalty, covered in swag that doesn’t fit, and competing for large prizes. Getting there is no easy feat, so if you can find a way to qualify, you’ve made it to the big time.
PC: DraftKings
2. Start A Blog – I find blogging to be therapeutic and a way for me to focus and organize my thoughts. It’s also a way to get your voice out there in the DFS industry. If writing isn’t your thing, consider a podcast or YouTube channel.
3. Take Advantage Of The Marketplace – The new year is a perfect time to rethink what resources you plan to use to help you win. RotoGrinders has a ton of options in its Daily Marketplace if you’re trying to gain an edge on your competition. There are also several lineup sellers on Twitter who can help you (Just kidding! Don’t buy from them).
4. Reassess Your Bankroll Management – This is one I plan to focus on in. In order to make sure I don’t spend more than I should on a given night, better discipline and a reassessment of my bankroll is in order. RG’s DFS Analyzer is a great resource to help with this.
5. Max Enter A Contest – You know what I’ve always wanted to do? Max enter the heck out of a tournament. This will probably ruin my bankroll management plan (see #4), but I’ve always dreamed of dropping 150 lineups in a $3 tournament and seeing what happens. But be careful because there’s a chance you also have 150 awful lineups too. OK on second thought, maybe this Resolution isn’t very smart.
You don’t want 150 of these.
6. Become A Top-Ranked Member – If you haven’t done so already, consider linking all your DFS screen names to RotoGrinders so you can be ranked (you can do it in the Profile section). Then choose a target that is realistic for you. Perhaps it’s a Top 10,000 ranked tournament player, or Top 1,000. Either way, it should be fun trying to climb up the leaderboards and seeing where you stand among the best at the end of the year.
7. Give Back To The Community – Perhaps you’ve been a lurker on the forums for the past several months and have wanted to contribute. Maybe this is the year you add to the message boards. There is never a shortage of members asking for advice or feedback. In the grand scheme of things, the DFS community is a relatively small, tight-knit community. Don’t be afraid to give back to it.
8. Switch From Cash To GPP (Or Vice Versa) – I started out as a cash player in 2015 because it better suited my personality. I’m the type of person who hates risk, and battling it out in a head-to-head or 50/50 was better for me than trying to tackle a tournament where only the top 20% won.
To put my personality into perspective, my wife and I attended one of those painting-over-dinner classes with some friends a few years ago, where you follow the instructor and you end up painting a famous piece as if you were Bob Ross. Our piece was a painting of four ice cream cones. Here my wife was, swapping the order of the ice cream flavors than what was in the original painting. “Blasphemy!” I screamed. You can’t do that – you have to stick to the status quo. Of course her painting turned out 100x better than mine, but it was a lesson for me: it’s okay to deviate from the norm.
In an effort to work on this aspect of my personality, I switched to mainly a GPP player at the start of this year, knowing that I don’t embrace variance well. GPPs force me to change the way I think about risk tolerance and variance, which are aspects we deal with in life on a daily basis. I still have a lot of growing to do as a tournament player, but I made significant strides this year. My wife would probably make a good GPP player.
My boring, chalky painting on the left and my wife’s beautiful, contrarian painting on the right
9. Try Different Games – Maybe you’ve always played head-to-heads or large field tournaments and haven’t had much success. Perhaps three-man games or single entry tournaments will give you better results. Another idea is trying other DFS sites than the one you’ve stuck to over these years. By mixing it up and trying new game formats, you may find something more enjoyable and profitable.
10 Take Down A GPP – If you’re a tournament player, this is the goal. The goal is to hold up that giant tournament check and tell the world, “I Win.”
Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Enjoy the music, food, family, and eggnog. See you in the new year.