Interview with Jeff "Rotomania" Lowe
He’s one of the most consistent performers in all of DFS, with year-to-year top 50 rankings in the RotoGrinders Tournament Player of the Year standings and over 20 live final appearances to his name.
We’re talking about Jeff Lowe, aka RotoMania and the current #30 TPOY ranked player (#30 in MLB as well with a #117 ranking in NBA), who took time to answer a few questions for RotoGrinders.
RotoGrinders: Tell us a little bit about yourself – who is the man behind the name “RotoMania”.
Rotomania: My name is Jeff Lowe and I’m your typical family man. I have a wife and two kids, and a house with a two-car garage in the suburbs of DFW. I grew up in Dallas and went to an all-boys prep school that has some semi-famous alumni like Owen Wilson, Tommy Lee Jones, and Steve Miller (from the Steve Miller Band). I was stoked to find out last year that Ty Montgomery was also from my high school, and maybe that’s why I had an unhealthy amount of Montgomery shares on my rosters last year.
RotoGrinders: How long have you been playing DFS? What was your introduction to DFS?
Rotomania: Ha- I’m dating myself now, but here’s the quick history of how I stumbled upon DFS. Around the time when Myspace was still popular, niche social network sites started popping up all over the place. There were social network sites for automobile enthusiasts, crafty knitters, cycling addicts, etc., but no one had created a social network site for traditional fantasy sports fans. So a friend of mine and I did just that. Our site had some cool bells and whistles, but it was basically a slick message board on steroids where members could get advice on their fantasy teams from other season-long fans.
Anyway, we had about 10,000 members and so in late 2012 we got an email from a guy saying he was with a new up-and-coming company called Draftkings, and he wanted to explore the possibility of an affiliate partnership or advertising on our site. So I go to check out DK for the first time, am instantly hooked, and the rest is history.
Oh btw- my site was called Rotomania.com, hence the username. But I’m now one of those guys who wishes he had thought of a more clever username.
RotoGrinders: Tell me about your first experiences playing DFS? Did you start out right away high-stakes or work your way up? If you worked your way up, tell me a little bit about how that came about.
Rotomania: I definitely experienced a steep learning curve when I first started playing DFS. 2013 was my first year of playing semi-regularly and that was a pretty rough year. I remember playing MLB DFS for the first time and losing H2H games and being perplexed as to why anyone in their right mind would want to put all their eggs in one basket by rostering five hitters from the same team.
I think I started by playing higher stakes than I should have been playing, so after I dug myself a hole I had to lower my stakes and spent 2014 working my way up. That summer I qualified for my first ever Live Final (DK’s $3.3M Fantasy Baseball Championship in Atlantis) and I was able to get a decent boost to my bankroll from that event. And everything started to come together for me in 2015.
RotoGrinders: What is your favorite sport to play DFS in and why?
Rotomania: MLB is definitely my favorite DFS sport. Of course no one really gets newspapers anymore, but do you remember how old folks would find great joy in getting hold of their daily crossword puzzle and solving it throughout the day? That’s how I feel about MLB. Each day’s slate is one giant puzzle that I look forward to trying to conquer.
And as a GPP player, MLB is just the most fun because it’s such a highly variance game. Crazy things happen in baseball all the time, and it usually pays to be contrarian.
RotoGrinders: Which sport are you most profitable in? Why do you think this is the case?
Rotomania: I’d like to say MLB just because it’s my favorite of the three major sports and it’s the sport I feel like I have the biggest edge. But last year was my first year playing NFL seriously and I had a sick rookie year, so if we’re just going by the numbers, then NFL is my most profitable.
I think most DFS veterans tend to agree that NFL is the easiest- at least from a cash game perspective. It’s the sport with the the largest number of casual players, you have an entire week to do research and chew on decisions, and you don’t have to worry about players getting “Pop’ed” or games being postponed post-lock.
Those massive NFL Double-Up’s are pretty easy to cash, so maybe psychologically it helps when making GPP lineups… knowing that I can go YOLO with a number of lineups and at worst break-even if I played an equal amount of cash and GPPs.
RotoGrinders: Which sport do you struggle with the most? Why?
Rotomania: Definitely NBA – or at least “no late-swap” NBA. Those last-minute player scratches are a royal pain for players like me who like to play multiple lineups, and I don’t watch enough NBA or tech-savvy enough to be a champ at the mad-scramble phase that takes place minutes before lock. You really have to know the rotations because it’s not as simple as just plugging in the replacement for a scratched starter, but knowing what low-owned teammate perhaps benefits even more. A prime example was at DK’s NBA live final this past March. DeMarcus Cousins was a late scratch and Dante Cunningham was the obvious cheap punt beneficiary. But the key was playing Solomon Hill who had the game of his life. Of course, ChipotleAddict and papagates were the only guys to roster Hill; those guys are much smarter than me.
RotoGrinders: Tell me a little bit about your daily process. Take me through a typical day in the life of Rotomania.
Rotomania: Ideally, I’d wake up early, drop off the kids at school, go work out, break open that Bible on my desk, have lunch with a non-DFS friend, and then research and make lineups the rest of the day, but that doesn’t end up happening 90% of the time. Instead I just spend A LOT of time doing research, figuring out who the chalk will be, strategizing my game plan for my teams, and building lineups.
RotoGrinders: Tell me about the first time you hit a major score in DFS. What was the feeling like and what did you do afterwards?
Rotomania: I had hit a couple of big scores in 2015 but my first crazy night was in early January of 2016. I was getting my feet wet and trying my hand at mass multi-entering, and it looked like a perfect storm was brewing for Marreese Speights to have one of his garbage time specials. The Warriors were on their third game in four nights, Bogut had been playing heavy minutes, and they were facing the Lakers. So I went all in on Speights who turned out to be the best punt of the night at like 4% ownership. The rest of my core was basically the nuts so I ended up having one of those “maxdalury domination nights” and finishing 1st-10th in every contest.
I had actually gone to bed before the game was over so I didn’t realize how much I had won until the next day. I’m not a morning person so when I picked up my phone and saw that I had won over $200k, I was the happiest I’d ever been at 6:30am at any point in my life.
What did I do afterwards? Ha – nothing special. My wife is the saver in the family so I ended up forking a big chunk of those winnings over to her.
RotoGrinders: In terms of your research process what resources do you utilize? Do you utilize any other analysis or solely rely on your own?
Rotomania: I use pretty much what I think everyone else uses. For MLB I frequent Fangraphs, BaseballSavant, and Baseball Reference. For NBA, I frequent RotoGrinders’ CourtIQ, Basketball Reference, and sometimes Statmuse. And I always check out ownership projections from RotoGrinders and FantasyLabs.
Of course ownership projections are never 100% accurate, so I subscribe to most of the major content sites to get a better idea of which supposedly under-owned players may go over-owned. Ownership numbers in the high stakes GPPs are especially wacky because a lot of time “sharp” sneaky plays end up being chalk.
RotoGrinders: Do you use your own models or rely on others? Do you use DFS tools from other sites of build your own? If you do your own, tell us a little bit about what goes into that.
Rotomania: I have my own systems, and I have a particularly unique one for baseball that I’m pretty proud of. Back in 2012, I started to become interested in Vegas lines after seeing stuff like prime Cliff Lee or prime Roy Halladay get shelled in a couples of starts. And I started to wonder if there was anything in the lines that may have revealed that Vegas had an inkling that such blowups might happen. So I started tracking Vegas lines on a daily basis and eventually I started to see patterns and trends based off a number of criteria. For instance, a line for one game would have a strong track record of being a low scoring pitching duel. Or a line for another game would often times be a blowout by the home underdog. I soon realized that these trends could serve as a starting point to help me identify possible contrarian plays for DFS.
Long story short, after hundreds of man-hours, I have a personal database of Vegas lines for thousands of baseball games that go back to 2012. And I have a program that allows me to enter certain criteria that I’m looking for, and it’ll spit out all the relevant games that are matching my parameters. I can then easily glance over the filtered games to see if I can find anything useful. This week for example I found some useful trends that helped me get all-in on under the radar guys like Mike Foltynewicz and Trevor Williams.
I know most pros are very model-heavy in their approach and that I’m marching to a different beat, but that’s kind of what you want when it comes to GPPs.
RotoGrinders: How long do you foresee yourself playing DFS? If you have other endeavors in mind down the road what are they?
Rotomania: I’m hopeful that DFS will be around for a long time because I plan on being an active player for the long haul. I don’t have any endeavors brewing at the moment, but I’m open to anything. This past May I finally closed down my math tutoring business, and so for the first time in what felt like ages I’m not juggling two jobs.
RotoGrinders: The DFS landscape has changed much over the last few years. How have you seen that impacting what you do now and how do you think it will impact your future as a professional DFS player?
Rotomania: I know this isn’t new news, but I feel like it’s becoming more and more difficult for most people to be profitable in NBA cash games. Considering the rake, the abundance of good information available and the increasingly sharper competition, there’s little room for error. So I’m thinking about dialing it back for this NBA season – at least for cash games.
RotoGrinders: You are very proficient in qualifying for live finals having done it over 20 times. What do you think the secret to your success in that area is? Many think live final Q’s are a bankroll drain – what are your thoughts on that? Is there something about live finals that appeals to you?
Rotomania: The possibility of that six to seven-figure payday is obviously the most appealing, but live finals are just generally a lot of fun. It’s always great catching up with other finalists and meeting new people. Ziplining when you’re terrified of heights, and swimming with dolphins with your daughter make for awesome memories. My daughter keeps asking me when I’m winning another fantasy sports contest (so that she can miss school and go on a random vacation), so it’s always cool to surprise her with good news.
But yeah, pretty much every pro will tell you that spending money on these qualifiers generally isn’t the best use of your money and I agree. These Q’s can definitely be a bankroll drain, so it’s important to pick and choose your spots when entering.
For MLB, I can attribute my success to my system. But for NBA and NFL maybe I just got hot at the right time?
RotoGrinders: Are you solely a GPP player or do you play cash games as well? If you play both, what would you say your typical breakdown is on a given night.
Rotomania: I would say I’m a 90/10 GPP/cash player. I just enjoy building GPP lineups so much more.
RotoGrinders: What would you say is the biggest mistake the average DFS player makes?
Rotomania: Tilting and not taking a break for a couple of days when you’re in a slump. Slumps are inevitable, especially for GPP players, so mastering the psychology aspect of the Grind is key.
RotoGrinders: If you were going to teach a new person to DFS one thing – what would it be and why?
Rotomania: For GPP players, it’s important to survey the field to get a better sense of who everyone is likely to be on, but in the process it’s easy for a new DFS player to get swayed into getting off his original pick, especially if it’s rather contrarian and there’s a ton of love for another player. So stick to your guns and don’t make insecure changes to your lineup. You’ll end up hating yourself when the player you were on the majority of the day double-dongs and he’s not on your roster.