Any successful daily fantasy sports player will tell you that due to the large amount of information there is to decipher, all with varying degrees of importance, in a very limited window of time, it is essential to develop a routine. As part of that routine, the segment that is most overlooked is the post-game analysis, namely going back after the tournament day and looking at what went right, what went wrong, and where you might have been able to improve upon the entry you submitted.
As part of that post-game wrap-up, deconstruction of winning tournament lineups is invaluable and sure to improve your bottom line, with an eye towards spotting where you might have been on the wrong side of variance or where you simply did not think a roster placement through thoroughly enough.
The Week 12 DraftKings Millionaire Makerwas won by player keasy, who rode the Seattle Express to a $1,000,000 prize. I finished a bit further down the trough in 473rd with a total of 213.7 points. In deconstructing the winner’s lineup beside my own, I was encouraged by how closely my game plan matched the winner’s, using ownership percentage and stacks as well as in the highly owned players each of us chose to fade.
Our rosters contained three of the same players: Seattle teammates Russell Wilson and Thomas Rawls, and Odell Beckham, Jr. of the Giants. Coming off of his massive Week 11 performance, Rawls promised to be very highly owned.
While the high ownership makes him a prime player to fade altogether, this one actually presented an opportunity for some outside-the-box exploitation. We already know that DFS players are averse to pairing a QB and RB from the same team. We also know from our own research that the QB/RB stack has already been successful this season in taking down the Milly Maker. And sure enough, we see that Wilson, in a prime matchup as a home favorite against a poor defense, is only 3% owned.
Of the six positions where we had different players, keasy’s players averaged 9.3% owned and mine are 10.5% owned. Overall, his roster averaged 14% ownership; mine is 14.77%. The decision to fade DeAndre Hopkins and his 51.5% ownership was crucial in differentiating from the crowd and was one shared by the winners on this day.
On the downside, knowing that Rawls was going to force Wilson’s ownership down way below where it belonged was further exploitable by knowing that this also meant his primary downfield weapon, Doug Baldwin, would be seeing microscopic ownership levels in his prime matchup. The winner took advantage of this angle, but I did not.
When looking at where my team missed opportunities for additional points, we find it was in running a bit unluckily in barely missing the DK three-point milestone bonuses given at 100 yards rushing or receiving. Ivory finished with 87 yards, Hilton had 95 yards, Steve Johnson had 92 yards, and Gronk had 88 yards. That’s 12 points right there that could easily have been grabbed. Merely reaching two of the four milestones would add six points to the total, and an extra six points would put me in 251st place, 222 spots up the pay scale.
If I just add those six points, and with a very conservative projection of Gronk getting two more catches for 22 yards instead of leaving with an injury, the scoring total becomes 223.9, good for 145th and a $600 pay jump. Obviously, others have these guys as well, but the same pay jump holds even if 54 people between my actual score and the new projected score all get the same extra 10.2 points.
Keep in mind that this exercise is done with the intention of giving a realistic assessment of the lineup you put in and in no way is intended be a way to bemoan what might have been, which is nothing but counterproductive. By the way, to the attorney generals out there reading this article, that 10 to 22.2 potential swing is where the element of luck comes in that you love to decry. It is a very small portion of what goes into any and all skill games and is in no way the driving force of the action. The tail does not wag the dog.
In summary, there is probably nothing you’d rather do less than review your entries after a losing day, but in a game where it really pays off to do the dirty work your competition won’t do, there might not be a more important practice to add to your arsenal. The old adage that you learn more from losing than from winning happens to be one of the few that never fails to hold up to the test of time.