Know the Competition
If you read my stuff for long enough – my RotoAcademy courses, my RotoGrinders articles, my tweets, my thoughts (especially my thoughts – are any of you reading those?) – you’ll probably see me say some variation of the following over a thousand times:
Success in DFS requires more than simply that you know the sport. Knowing the sport is only half the battle! You also have to know DFS.
People who think that all they have to do in order to win at DFS is “know the sport really well” take the misstep of failing to view the other individuals in a DFS tournament as their direct competition. But really, that’s what everyone else in a tournament is; they are your competition!
In any other form of competition, a person competing would be looking for a way to gain an edge on their adversary. In DFS, however, most people rarely (or never) think about the others in a tournament in these terms. The more you start to think in this manner yourself, the more you will open yourself to the sort of DFS success most people (most of your competition, that is!) can only imagine achieving.
You see, once you start thinking of DFS in terms of “beating the competition,” you will also start to notice some of the traditional “beating the competition” tactics that can be applied to DFS.
What if you were a football coach who knew what plays your opponents were about to run? (Wait – wasn’t there some coach in New England who had that edge? [Hey! – if you’re a Pats fan, don’t be mad: I grew up just north of Boston and am a lifelong Patriots fan myself; just poking a bit of fun!])
What if you were a chess player who knew in advance what moves your opponent would be making?
What if you were a business owner and had access to the marketing plans and business strategy of your chief competition?
Wouldn’t that information help you gain an edge in your own efforts in these areas?
In DFS, the greatest edge we can have is knowing who our competition is likeliest to roster. And the crazy thing is, every single one of us should be able to predict ownership percentages with very high accuracy.
“Very high accuracy?”
Let me be clear: I almost never put an exact number on the percentage I expect a player to be owned. And that’s perfectly fine. I don’t need to waste time laboring over the question, “Is this player going to be 60% owned, or will he instead be 70% owned?” I don’t need to determine if I think a player will be 5% owned or will instead be 3% owned. All I need to know is if a player will have high ownership or low ownership. If I’m able to accurately peg the general range of “high ownership” or “low ownership” in which a player will fall, I’ve done all I need to do.
One of the most important things I do each DFS slate I play is look through a large number of rosters in whatever tournaments I am in. For each roster I click on, I look through the players on that roster – paying attention to the general construction of that roster, and paying particular attention to the ownership percentage of each player on that roster.
As with my study toward “knowing the sport,” I do not do this in search of any nugget or specific bit of knowledge. I don’t search through teams saying, “I want to see how highly-owned this specific player is,” or “I want to see exactly who this particular DFSer rostered.” Instead, I simply sort through teams. I absorb the information. I file away ownership percentages in my mind. And it isn’t long before I have accumulated information that is extremely valuable!
As you sort through and pay attention to ownership percentages each and every night, you will begin to spot the trends that cause athletes to see high ownership or low ownership. What’s more, you’ll spot the trends that can cause the ownership of particular athletes to spike or dip. You’ll spot athletes who are constantly over-owned or under-owned. You’ll notice that there are some athletes in each sport who people are “terrified of missing out on a big game from” (leading to these athletes having high ownership even in spots where this should not be the case), while there are other athletes who people are “terrified of capturing a dud from” (leading to these athletes being constantly under-owned). You’ll notice how the DFS community weighs certain matchups, and you can use this knowledge to help you gain an edge. You’ll notice market inefficiencies that you can take advantage of – knowing long before rosters lock the general range in which an athlete’s ownership will land.
I almost never let a day of DFS play go by without taking the time to study the ownership percentages across the sport. Sometimes, I’ll click on over a hundred lineups in my search for comprehensive information. (Hey – it’s a better use of time than “sweating out a slate”!)
I keep saying that “knowing the sport” and “knowing DFS” are the two key components to successful DFS play. There is one other thing that goes along with this, though:
You also have to know how to fit this knowledge together in such a way that you can turn it into consistent, reliable profit! There might only be two pieces to this puzzle, but they don’t always come together as perfectly as DFSers would like.
The good news for you? – the next lesson provides you with a cheat sheet for this puzzle, conveniently numbered in a “steps one through three” format.
If I were lying, it wouldn’t be the first time in my life I had done so. But I’m not lying.
Don’t believe me? Click on the next lesson and see!