Leading the Large-Field Contests: Interview with Judson23
If you have played a large-field contest on FanDuel this baseball season, chances are that you’ve seen the name Judson23 near, or at the top of its leaderboard. After a mild April of around $1,700 in winnings, Judson23 topped $15,000 in prizes, for three consecutive months! In addition, he’s on his way to compete for $25,000 in the DFBC finals after earning his seat by winning the FanDuel Tournament Kings promotion.
Judson23, whose real name is Phil Zukor, is on a tear to say the least. As we conducted this interview, he even shipped two huge contests on FanDuel on the same night…ridiculous. You’ll constantly find his name atop of the RotoGrinders Monthly Grinder Leaderboard, the FanDuel money winners list, and at the time of this publication, Phil’s shot up to #12 in the Overall Grinders Rankings (in just four months)! Impressive to say the least. Judson23 was kind enough to give RotoGrinders his time, and an inside-look, into the mind behind the large-field contest success. Here’s what he had to say:
Give us a little background on who you are; you have come out of nowhere to the top of the charts lately! Where are you from? What’s your favorite sports team? Did you play any sports?
I’m 37, from Long Island, went to Rutgers University, live in Jersey, married with a son. I’m a die-hard, Don Mattingly-obsessed Yankees fan & die-hard Mets hater, and played baseball in high school.
What is your experience in Daily Fantasy Sports? How did you get started? Did you play online poker, season long fantasy leagues, or anything else similar?
My first year of fantasy baseball was 1984 with my family. I was 9 years old, and we had an auction and would have to write down the stats every morning when the newspaper came. After that it was lots of drafts with my friends, and a lot of betting on football in college (which didn’t go too well). After college, I started doing fantasy baseball and football leagues on-line and with friends, with some success. But once I found daily fantasy, that’s where all of my focus went. It’s so much fun to do it every day, but also way too addicting. I keep trying to stop (and my wife’s practically begging me to), but I just can’t do it.
So you’ve been on a bit of a tear. You had just under $1,700 in winnings in April when MLB started. However, you’ve had over $15,000 in winnings for 3 consecutive months now, and you’re always at the top of the Monthly RG Leaderboard! What happened that made you turn the corner from small time player, to big time grinder?
I first started with Basketball, playing $5 & $10 Head-to-Heads, and was doing pretty badly. Once baseball started, that’s when I really started pouring money into the big tournaments. Being the baseball-obsessed guy that I am, I thought I’d have no problem winning, but that wasn’t the case. I’d win a decent amount of money and then spend the next 2 weeks losing it all. So I kept going up and down like that for a couple of months. Then, when I was down a bunch of money and about to quit in early June, I decided to officially change my strategy, and all of a sudden started winning. I was doing pretty well for awhile, and then somehow went on a streak a couple of times where I’d win big every night for a week. I attribute some of that to strategy, but most of it to getting very lucky. Of course, all it takes is one night to realize how unlucky you can get too.
It seems you are pretty unique in the industry, because you focus almost exclusively on the Large-Field Contests (GPPs). Why do you prefer the big fields over, say, heads ups? What sites and game types to you prefer? And for what sports?
I’m just greedy, really, and I love the idea of maximizing my chances to win big. And I’m just not that good at Head-to-Head. Since I can never decide what players to choose, I like to enter a lot of teams and have a lot of chances, and I’ve found that I have a really hard time winning when I just get one shot at it. People who win the single-entry contests are the ones with real talent. One thing that winning some decent money has allowed me to do is to enter a lot more teams than I normally would, giving me a better chance of winning the GPPs. But man, it can get frustrating sometimes. When you put as much money in as I do, and don’t win for a week or two, you lose A LOT of money. I’m not really up as much as some people might think. But another reason I’ve put so much money into winning in the GPPs was to win the spot in the DFBC by winning the Tournament of Kings contest. Once I saw that I was in the lead in June, I had to just go for it. Since I won that spot, I’ve cut down on my entries a little bit. Plus, I’m just freakin’ exhausted. It’s been a long season.
I only do Fanduel. I don’t have the energy to start on another site. And I’ve really gotten used to the way it works. And I’m still undecided about whether I will do football or not. If I do, I’m going to start very small. I did enjoy basketball, though, and would do that gain, if they ever have another season.
What is your approach to the Large-Fields? Do you have any specific strategies? How many entries do you usually do?
Did you ever see that “What’s Happening” episode where Dwayne picks all of the winning teams based on how pretty their helmets are? Sometimes I’d be better off just using that strategy.
Anyway, I don’t want to give much away, although nothing I would say would be too earth-shattering. These days it seems like most people have got pretty much the same ideas as I do. I guess my advantage is that I haven’t been scared to lose a bunch of money in order to win a bunch of money – so I’ll enter 5 teams in a $100 per team contest, or 15 teams in a $25 contest. If course, then when you win, you don’t win as much, but it does help you win more often for sure. I’ll just say, it helps to work at home like I do, but it doesn’t help to have a 3-year old son to watch from 5-7pm every night before the games start like I do. That makes it a little tough sometimes to check the lineups, but I figure out ways. Also, I like to write down lists of potential picks, so I usually do that the night before, and then dream about it while I’m sleeping.
How is the variance, or the swings, in the Large-Field contests as opposed to heads ups? Do you think that Large-Fields are more or less profitable than grinding Heads Ups? Why or why not?
I just like large-field, because if one of your pitchers gets bombed, you’ve got another entry with a different pitcher who might pitch a gem. In a heads-up, you’ve got one shot at it. That’s too much pressure for me. But whatever type of game you play, you’re almost always gonna regret the choices you make. Also, since I feel that there is so much luck involved, you may as well take your chances in the large-field tourneys and win the big bucks. Nothing wrong with doing both, though. But I totally suck when there are early games – for some reason I can only win anything in the late contests.
What have you learned over the past 3 months that has helped you out with your game?
Well, when I started, I didn’t know you could check the lineups in advance, and I didn’t realize that I had to constantly check the weather reports. And I also realized not to focus too much on batter vs. pitcher stats. It can helps sometimes, but most of the times for me it doesn’t. Better to just go with who’s hot. And of course, I don’t play guys when they’re facing Halladay or Lee, and I play everyone when they’re facing Aaron Cook or JA Happ.
Another important thing for me, is that I’ve learned not to freak out on a daily basis. I never get too low when I lose and never get too high when I win. I’ve lost so much money because of fractions of a point, it can make you sick if you let it.
Daily Fantasy Sports is definitely a nerve-racking game! It is also still a new industry. So far, what are your favorite aspects of Daily Fantasy? What do you think most needs to be improved upon?
I just love that no matter what happens, you can always start fresh the next day. And I love that you can win a lot on any given night, and then you can take a break for awhile if you want. In my year-long 10-team fantasy baseball league last year, I had to work my ass off every night for 6 months and put in like $500 (I picked up a lot of players) to win the grand prize of $1500. And I’m not coming close to winning that league this year.
For baseball, I wish there was a way to minimize the importance of pitchers, but I’m not sure of the right way to do it. A pitcher getting the win is so important, but so hard to predict on a consistent basis.
I’d also have contests where you can pick more players. Like maybe do one where you can pick a 15-20 players instead of 9. I just like to have a lot of guys to root for. But I don’t have much to complain about. Fanduel has made a lot of improvements on their site in the 5 months since I’ve joined.
Do you have any plans lined up for entries in the FFFC 2011?
I’m probably not really going to get involved. I just don’t have it in me. I have to start small with football and figure out my strategy as I go along.
Thanks for the time Judson! And best of luck in the big guaranteed contests moving forward (not that you’ll need it!) Let’s close this interview with some quick-hitting, fun questions. Answer the following quick-hitters with your first thought that comes to mind:
Best Pitcher rest of season on FD: Clayton Kershaw
Worst Pitcher rest of season on FD: AJ Burnett – he’s screwed me so many times this year.
Player you select the most: Troy Tulowitzki
A good player, you will never select in a GPP: 2 Tigers: Alex Avila, because if I want to take Tigers, I always take Victor Martinez over him (Same thing with Adrian Gonzalez over Ortiz). And Max Scherzer is always over-priced for some reason.
Best Large-Field Grinders on FD: I don’t really know. But I’ve been seeing a lot of Hatchins, Kiko1, uppower, and ucsdmed13 up on the lists lately (sorry to everyone I left out).
Could you win at heads ups if you wanted to? I’m not sure, since I haven’t really done it with baseball. I’ll probably do some of that with football and see how it goes.
Who will win the Superbowl? Well, I’m a Dolphins fan, and they suck, so I’ll go with the Patriots. As long as it’s not the Jets.
Cameron MacMillan
RotoGrinders.com Fantasy Content Manager