The Working-Man's Approach to Daily Fantasy Sports - Know Your Numbers
If you read Part 1 of this column, you'll remember that we're going to do our best to avoid the heavy-duty analytics side of Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) and instead focus on how your average Joe (or Jill!) can best maximize their DFS potential. However, just because we're not going to take an analytic-centered approach does not give us the freedom to ignore it completely. Rather, instead of worrying about complex predictive models or becoming a professional statistician, we want to maximize the Expected Value (EV) of each action we make so that we are utilizing our time and resources as efficiently as possible.
So let's look at a couple of paid resources as well as a couple of free ones that will help us accomplish this.
Tools, Resources & Actions we can utilize to increase our edge
Allow Vegas To Do The Heavy Lifting For You.
It's no accident that Las Vegas has managed to remain one of the sports gambling capitals of the world. The Sportsbooks are good at what they do. Real good! Therefore, in the name of efficiency and common sense, let's trust that the people who have dedicated their lives to setting lines, establishing over/unders, and analyzing player props are going to be better at it than we will ever be. What this means in practice is that when making decisions about lineup composition, make sure you look at what Vegas has to say about them first.
Does Vegas think the gameflow conditions are optimal for you to roster a bench player (aka will Golden State be up by a billion before halftime again)?
Does Vegas give you reason to consider rostering two opposing PGs (by setting a high O/U in a +1 spread game)?
Using Vegas lines in this way will give us a solid roster construction starting point and allow us to instantly gain edge over any opponent who is not utilizing this same information.
Invest in your long-term equity by signing up with a site that presents all the statistical information you need in an easy-to-navigate format.
My three personal favorites (no affiliate links included!) are:
1. OptimizeLineups which offers incredible spreadsheets for basketball, football, baseball, hockey and golf. And we're not talking about your grandma's spreadsheet either; these are top of the line spreadsheets that offer nearly every stat you could want while also giving you the ability to rank players based on your preferences and then have it create optimal lineups for both Draftkings & Fanduel. With a starting rate of $6.99 (which includes access to the spreadsheets for every single sport), I feel extremely comfortable saying that OptimizeLineups offers far and away the best bang for your DFS buck.
2. FantasyLabs, an intuitive and incredibly comprehensive website created by Peter Jennings and Jonathan Bales, two of the most successful and highly respected players in the Daily Fantasy Sports world.
Here we can see that not only do we have a plethora of statistics including (some not shown in image): Ceiling/Floor Projections, Trends, Vegas Lines, Monthly/Season statistics for each player, and even a recent shot chart, but we also have the ability – using one of the tools on the site - to weigh the importance of each of these crucial DFS factors (either as decided by us or by using Bales and Jenning's personal models, which, insanely enough, are included with your membership free of charge). Using the information found on FantasyLabs, I've been able to cut my research time by a ridiculous percentage, and only expect that number to continue to rise as the site evolves over the next couple of seasons.
3. Basketball Reference (and its counterparts for other major sports) is one of the most comprehensive statistics sites out there. And the best part is that it's absolutely free! Basically anytime I need information that is not available on OptimizeLineups or FantasyLabs, 99 times out of 100 I can find it by spending a little time looking through Basketball Reference.
Using these tools, we can begin taking big steps towards reducing the skill gap between ourselves and more experienced or professional players, while vastly increasing our edge over recreational players.
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