Off To A Fast Start
Off To A Fast Start
About the Writer: After much research and preparation, Blinders turned his vision and passion for fantasy sports into the first Daily Fantasy sports site with Salary Cap based games in June of 2007: FantasySportsLive. He is a longtime online poker player and blogger, and the only daily fantasy grinder who was willing to take on Buffalo66 in his multi-sport fantasy challenge. Last NFL Season Blinders went 71-10 on FanDuel alone.
My Week 1
Fantasy Football season began officially for me last weekend. If you have read some of my strategy posts in the past, you would know that I don’t like to get involved in fantasy sports or sports betting early in the season. I am a numbers guy, and I need lots of statistics from this season for my projection models to gain enough accuracy. With my challenge with Buffalo66 moving on to football starting in Week 4, I figured it was time to get serious. I put up a score of 134 going 29-0 in the 60k cap public Heads-Up leagues at FanDuel over the weekend. I also entered two 55k expert leagues, losing them both, as well as losing my private duel with Buffalo66 (144 points!!!). Overall I was 29-3 Heads-Up, and sitting 2 wins out of first on the FD football leaderboard for October. This all happened with my starting QB (Vick) getting knocked out in the first quarter, and my RB1 (Foster) sitting out most of the first half on a coaches decision. I entered only the $5 and $10 leagues hoping to get matched up against weaker opponents, and stopped when my bankroll was exhausted. The folks at RotoGrinders asked me to comment on my strategy last weekend so here we go!
My Lineup Selection Process
One very important concept for fantasy football, is that I don’t like to take chances at any position. I want a stud everywhere, and I don’t want any of my positions bombing. If each position is contributing, your total score will be high enough most of the time, that you should be a long-term winner. At Fanduel
, I basically don’t take any flyers with the low cost players and try to focus on the top-tier, consistent players. At the pretty generous 60k cap level this can be done easily as long as you are avoiding the most expensive players at each position most of the time. This is where my player projection model comes into play. My top projected players are generally not the most expensive players, just players in the top tier. I try to fill my team with my top projected players without leaving a weakness at any position. Last weekend, my projections were pretty unique compared to many of the sites that do projections, and my success can be attributed to me trusting my projections over competing projections. Lets go over my roster that I used pretty much exclusively in all leagues.
- QB – Vick – My #1 projected QB, and a no brainer at his cap cost. I really was not considering the fact that a scrambling QB can get hurt easily, which was a mistake.
- RB1 – Foster – My #1 projected pick for the week against. (The #1 rushing back vs. Oakland’s rush D).
- RB2 – Tomlinson – I had him at about #8 in my projections, but I could not pass him up on value. I was also looking at Hillis (#10) hard, but committed to LT Sunday morning
- WR1 – White – Not my #1, but close, and pretty much the consensus #1 WR for the weekend at other projection sites
- WR2 – Wayne – My #3 projected
- WR3 – Collie – Statistically the #1 WR in the league, and my #1 projection. A nice value based on his cap cost.
- TE – Clark – My #3 projection behind Gates and Keller. I wanted Gates, but could not afford him, and was afraid of Keller for some reason, though he was cheaper then Clark and ended up outscoring him.
- K- Bryant – He was my #2 behind Reed who I could not afford. Worked out good for me, as Reed bombed.
- D – Atlanta – My #2 defense behind Pittsburg for the weekend. Atlanta was in the large pool of minimum cost Defenses at Fanduel. Not too many sites had Atlanta projected near the top, so I trusted my projections here as I had many choices.
Overall, this was pretty much the #1 or #2 projected players for me at all positions, except for LT. I like to enter the same exact team in all my HU leagues, because there is only one ideal team based on your selection strategy. If you believe your team selection strategy is +EV, any variance from it will lower your EV. To put this in layman’s terms, if your strategy works and is profitable, any deviation from it is a negative to your profitability. Entering different teams can and will lower your variance, but at the cost of profitability. Entering your team against multiple different opponents also lowers your variance, but that is free.