Rise & Grind: Friday, August 7th
Welcome to the RotoGrinders cup o’morning joe. Start your day off right here, as we sort through yesterday’s happenings and take a peek at the upcoming DFS day.
In Case You Missed It
Republican Presidential Debate – Last night the 18 Republican Presidential candidates squared off in two separate debates. It was really interesting; Donald Trump said a few things, John Kasich countered with a few things, Jeb Bush tossed in his thoughts. Ahh, who am I kidding? I didn’t actually watch the debate. I did catch some of the highlights on Twitter though. The debate got me thinking, what if notable people from the DFS community ran for President? Here are some of the ideas or platforms we might see.
Condia – “If I’m elected President, America will exert its dominance over the world. If a war breaks out anywhere in the world, we are joining that contest. If two countries want to fight, that’s going to be a three-man contest now.”
Dean78904 – “If I’m elected President, I will cash in all my unused DraftKings tickets and pay off the national debt.”
Tommyg1979 – “My first executive action as President would be to ban Coors Field and stacking. Also, Tommy would be the first President to have multiple first ladies during his term.”
Al_Smizzle – “I’m not actually running for President, but you can buy my projections on DFS Bootcamp for only $3.”
Kcannon – “I’m also not running for President. I plan on being the Vice President (aka +1) for either CSURam88 or Birdwings. We worked together on our platform and all three of us are using it in our campaigns.”
CrazyGabey – “My first executive order will be to ban shaving. If you are a man who can grow a beard, you better do it. If you are a woman who can grow a beard, that’s cool too.”
Renee Miller – Sorry, who is Renee Miller?
Cynthia Frelund – “As President, I will I take a measured quantitative approach. I leverage my entrepreneurial background in the predictive analytics space. And my finance pedigree including counting one of the most brilliant financial minds, Anthony Noto as my mentor and former boss. Daily fantasy is the best because I get to be an I-banker and GM all in one and get to win real money all in one night. I also have a 94% approval rating on DraftKings and 90% on FanDuel.”
Did I forget anyone? – I’m sure I did. Feel free to comment below or start a forum thread with the platform of any notable DFS player I missed.
FanDuel Bracket Championship – Alright, that’s enough DFS Politics. What else is going on in the DFS community? Tonight the Final Four of the FanDuel Bracket Championship kicks off. Scout326 takes on McJester and the second matchup is between bcalicore and cashupcash. LeoTPP wrote an excellent preview of tonight’s matchups and even included a recap of the entire bracket. You can read it here, if you are into that kind of thing.
EPL Kickoff – Soccer fans, the wait is finally over, the English Premier League kicks off a new season this weekend. The first full slate starts tomorrow at 10:00 AM ET. DraftKings is running a $40K Kickoff Special for only $20 and the winner will take home $10,000. If you want to get in on the action, Hambazaza posted his first strategy article and top plays for the Saturday slate.
MLB Recap – Tonight offers several chances to take down a live final seat. We will get to those in a minute. In the meantime, TheHazyone has a quick recap of the big tournaments from 8/5 and 8/6. Give it a read, if you are curious what worked over the last couple of days and who is heading to Vegas for a shot at one million.
Quick Hits – If you couldn’t tell from the section about DFS Presidential platforms, yesterday was a rather slow news day. What do we do when things get slow? We pass along funny links and gifs that are loosely related to DFS. Yesterday, the Royals/Tigers game was interrupted by a squirrel. I have to assume it was a blind squirrel looking for a nut, since that’s also my strategy in MLB.
Hopefully, you had a chance to watch CC Sabathia strike out David Ortiz last night. He was pretty pumped.
Last but not least, check out this backwards home run.
On The Menu
MLB Tonight – Today is Friday, and that means another super-sized MLB slate. There are 15 games on the schedule tonight with all but one starting at 7:05 PM ET or later. That’s a lot of baseball to breakdown, but the experts here at RotoGrinders have you covered. Keep your eyes peeled for the MLB Grind Down, Starting Pitcher Breakdown, Hitter Breakdown, Tournament Plays, Expert Picks, Six-Pack and more. Once you take in all the video content you can handle, be sure to check back at 3:30 PM ET for 3.5 hours of live advice on GrindersLive.
MLB GPPs – Across the industry there is close to $1 million in guaranteed contests. A quick peek at the Big Two shows tournaments like the $250K Monster $115K Rally, $140K Moonshot and $300K Perfect Game. Those are great options for your DFS dollar, but none of them include a trip to Vegas and a chance at $1M. Instead, you will want to try out one of the qualifiers across the industry. FanDuel is offering a WFBC qualifier at $25 which is very affordable. Over on DraftKings, tonight is literally your last shot to win a WFBC seat. They are running a $5, $100, $1000, and $5,300 FBWC qualifier. That’s a qualifier for just about any bankroll. Don’t be the guy who spends all weekend thinking about what could have been because he didn’t pony up $5 on DK or $25 on FD.
#NarrativeStreet – If you want o win a trip to Vegas, you will need to find a player or two that others did not think of. One way to do that is to look at the underlying narratives. For example, today is Mike Trout’s birthday. He’s going to take Gausman deep to celebrate, lock it in. If they are in the lineup, Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Ryan Lavarnway have birthdays as well. If picking players based on their birthday sounds dumb, maybe you can try using BVP instead. Anthony Rizzo is 3-for-5 with two HRs off Vogelsong and Adrian Beltre is 11-for-30 with three HRs off Iwakuma.
Last Call – It’s time to get out of here for the weekend. Good luck in your contests tonight. Also, make sure to check out the amazing NASCAR, UFC, and EPL content this weekend and enter some contests. Shoot, maybe even dedicate a few minutes to some NFL preseason content. I will try to get a strategy article up on whether or not you should consider Johnny Manziel, Jimmy Garoppolo, or even Tim Tebow.