I will be posting my cash game lineup for full transparency once the contests lock. I am not able to do this earlier due to FanDuel's rule about sharing lineups.
Here are my final thoughts for week 1.
1) Be careful with your bankroll this week. The pricing has become incredibly soft due to the following players emerging as great value plays. Dak Prescott, Spencer Ware, Christine Michael, Deangelo Williams, Marvin Jones, Eric Ebron, Martellus Bennett, and Jesse James. This will lead to a lot of overlap in contests, as teams will then have Antonio Brown and Julio Jones based on the savings they were able to obtain by starting the value plays. In cash games this can lead to your contests being decided by kickers and defenses which can be much more volatile than other positions.
2) In GPP's avoid a few of the value plays to differentiate your team. These value plays are going to be very highly owned this week, and may not possess the highest upside. For example, Spencer Ware and Charcandrick West could split carries more than we expect them to. Thomas Rawls and C.J. Prosise could take away from Christine Michael's production. Dak Prescott may show that he is a rookie against non-vanilla defenses. The entire Patriots offense may get shut down thus impacting Martellus Bennett's production. Some of these players will be 25%+ owned this week, and therefore you likely want to avoid them as if they fail you have a leg up on a large portion of the field.
3) A few of you have asked, and I'll be making a separate column for next week on this, but I am not a 50/50 guy for cash games. The primary reason is that competition level is higher in the 50/50 than it is in head to head games and head to head are better for your bankroll. If you lose one 50/50 odds are you are going to lose them all, as the cut line tends to be around the same number. For head to heads you face a much wider variance as you will face opponents who would finish first in a 50/50, but you will also face players who finish in the bottom half of the 50/50. Therefore from a bankroll management standpoint, if you join a variety of head to heads it is likely you will get more back if you have a bad lineup compared to losing all of your contests in 50/50's with a bad lineup.
Good luck everybody, I'll check back later.
Do you post your H2H or take other's?
ReplyDeleteI typically will almost always take others on FanDuel as they do not have a matchup blocker. The primary reason for this is that I can control who I am playing. On DraftKings I will often post and control how many games people can join.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that I disagree with your approach on H2H vs 50/50's.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct that if you play a bad lineup, then you are likely to finish in the bottom half of a 50/50. That said, if you are able to use the skill that you have and knowledge that you gain from FBG, etc. then you should more often than not be able to put together a better than average lineup most weeks. Therefore I would rather play against a larger single entry 50/50 field where I should finish in the top half the majority of the time versus a H2H where it is more dependent on the results of my single random opponents. On the other hand, if you aren't skilled enough to put together a lineup that is better than 50-60% of your opponents, then you might be best playing H2H and letting luck be a larger factor in any given week.
I completely get and understand that approach, I would only recommend my strategy if you are going to be joining a high number of H2H games to mitigate that risk that you mentioned against a single opponent. For example, this week I joined 102 $5 head to head contests. What I have found is that when I join 100-150 h2h contests, my lineups will hardly ever be in the bottom 25% of lineups, and if I lose it will be in the 25-50% range. However, if I have a great lineup, I can be in the 80-90% range, which therefore I can get a higher ROI on joining a higher number of h2h than multiple 50/50's. If you finish in the 49th percentile one week and 90th percentile the next your ROI for head to heads will be much higher in h2h than 50/50 as you would have lost one 50/50 and then won the next week.
ReplyDeleteIf you are just joining a few contests than I completely agree with your approach as head to head contests as a small number can be highly variable based on your opponent.