Top Five Reasons Why You Should Be Playing MMA Daily Fantasy
If you enjoy either DFS or MMA, you should bring those two worlds together and begin playing MMA daily fantasy on DraftKings. UFC Fight Night: Maia vs. LaFlare is tomorrow and it is not a pay-per-view event, so it’s a great time to start as all the fights will be on free television. Now, why should you playing?
1) Entertainment
DFS is a form of entertainment, and MMA might be the single most enjoyable DFS sweat there is. You assemble a lineup of five fighters, and they all fight the same night, and all fight one at a time. You get to watch every single one of your picks individually, and at any moment in time their fight can end. It’s a hard, defined result of your picks winning or losing, decision or finish, and you get to watch every second of every one of your fighters’ performance.
2) No Frustrations
There are no late scratches. There are no “injuries”, as we know them in other sports. There is no coach taking away your pick’s minutes or snaps. There are no challenges overturning your touchdowns. There are no unexpected blowouts that result in your picks sitting the 4th quarter. When you make your lineup, you absolutely know that every single one of your fighters will get the full opportunity to score a maximum number of points.
3) Hours of Research Not Required
MMA is the “easiest” DFS sport. Now I obviously don’t mean easy in terms of winning or losing, I mean easy in terms of the amount of work you need to accomplish in order to field a competitive lineup. Salaries are strictly based on fight odds, which generally means that any lineup at or near the salary cap will have a relatively similar chance at a respectable score once the event begins. There are only 18 or 20 fighters to choose from, which means you can build a thorough understanding of every single potential pick’s strengths and weaknesses in a very short amount of time. Note that “short slate” rules always apply for GPPs, any “chalk” lineup you enter in a GPP will always have duplicates.
4) Conventional Media Coverage Applies to DFS
Unlike other sports, any event preview articles on ESPN, Yahoo, or the MMA specific sites like Sherdog are perfectly applicable to making your daily fantasy lineup. For example, a traditional “NFL Preview” article will focus on which team will win the game and whether or not they will cover the spread, which has a very limited use in daily fantasy. However, traditional preview coverage of UFC events is composed of analysts and/or experts (not always the same thing!) not only picking the winners for each fight, but their method of victory and the round in which it will occur. This is 100% translatable to fantasy points! DraftKings’ scoring system for MMA is heavily based on finishing a fight, and finishing it as early as possible. Thus, there is already plenty of free quality information out there by experienced, knowledgeable MMA experts that you can use to help guide you in making your lineup.
5) MMA is Wild Wild West of DFS
MMA daily fantasy began in January of 2015. It is not a game that has been “solved”. There is no standard approach to making cash or GPP lineups. You will never be going up against someone who has been playing this game for years. For now, the sharks and the casuals are on equal ground! It is a brand new market, and the time is ripe for you to build an edge prior to the flood of new money that will come in when DraftKings launches their big marketing push for the start of the NFL season. Start playing now! Start building your approach and your strategy! There is a great opportunity here to sharpen your skills and to be prepared for September when the player base will undoubtedly expand if not outright explode.
I wish you all the best of luck! MMA is one of the few sports that runs 12 months of the year, so it’s a great way to stay engaged in DFS during your favourite sports’ offseasons. Lastly, there is quality content available here on Rotogrinders from users such as bbbomb, Jasen777, Pug_ca and myself, so be sure to check it out.
I’ve tried to make a compelling case, and I hope to see more of you playing in the near future!
Follow me on twitter @huitcinqDFS
Comments
You sold me, I’m trying it again after all this NBA nonsense recently. Is there a general rule on if the points from strikes etc in a long fight are likely to get more points than a 1-2 round fight?
All you really need to know is the scoring system is heavily based on wins, and the earlier the better. The earlier a fight finishes, the more points the winner is going to score (in terms of rounds of course, a finish 4 minutes into the first round will get more points than 1 minute in the first round due to strikes, takedowns, etc).
A fighter who finishes his fight will get more points than a fighter who wins by decision 95+% of the time, if not more. A fighter who loses his fight, even if it’s the main event that goes the distance over five rounds, will never get more points than a fighter who wins his fight.
In terms of how that translates to picks is still cloudy at the moment. Some guys target underdogs solely based on how likely they are to get a finish, others like an underdog who will go the distance so at least they get some points on the board and maybe eek out a controversial judge’s decision. It all depends on cash vs GPP and your take on the fight, and what strategy you think will work best. All this stuff is still up in the air as far as I’m concerned.
Great info thanks.
So far this year the score for a win by finish beats scores for wins by decision 97.4% of the time. (That is if you pick a random finish win score it will be higher than a random decision win score 97.4% of the time).
5 losers have put up scores higher than the lowest scoring winner, but scores for winners beat scores for losers 99.6% of the time.
Alright nice, pretty solid estimate on my part… now the question is did I just nail it or did I subconsciously remember it from your databomb column?
Pretty consistent results, good to know.
Well I didn’t blog about that specifically.
Thanks guys I’m big fan of dfs mma.do you have a write up on the fight. I read all I can.but has not helped last two cards they have been crazy
Nice work man. I am excited to see how this TUF tourny is going to go. Should be fun.
totally agree with all your post—no extensive research req;d whew tg. and yes get this nba nonsense on the back burner honestly wish dfs. mma was daily like baseball my 2 simple rules for mma play 60% dogs and gut feeling has the final say tx now
I don’t write an event preview as the guys who have been regularly publishing them here on Rotogrinders do a great job as it is.
Pug isn’t writing one this week, but bbbomb’s post is up.
https://rotogrinders.com/blog-posts/ufc-fight-night-maia-vs-laflare-beat-down-620967
I’m assuming Jasen will have one up later today as well.
This is a perfectly fine way to go in MMA. As I said in the post, the pricing is generally very accurate on DK with respect to fight odds, so almost every fighter is a viable play in one form or another.
It’s also interesting because sometimes your goal is to find winners and losers but the best losers to get you the best winners. I wasn’t the biggest MMA fan but the fantasy version definitely makes for some fun decisions because of the pricing.
good stuff as always my man! preach preach preach!
Nah, bbbomb and Pug do much better event previews than me so I’ve been trying to do other things.
Ah ok that’s cool
Anyone else excited for the TUF tourney starting?
Yeah I’m excited to crush it ;)
It’s not about winning, it’s about not losing.
I chose poorly last night, but I was close enough to cashing that I think I see where I went wrong with 1-2 of my picks so maybe next week I can fix that.
My cash lineup was great but I got crushed in GPPs.
I had too much action in GPPs too. I thought there’d be more 50/50 & H2H action between 7-8pm, never got the volume in I wanted.
Were to you get your picks from ? I’m new to rotogrinder, does this website have experts on MMA ?