Stop Entering Draftkings Tournaments and GGP's Until You Fix These 10 Mistakes
1. Overstacking
This is definitely numero uno, most common mistake that is made. Now don't get me wrong there is a time and a place to stack huge, but in huge field GPPs on Draftkings is not the place to do it. Unless it is a two game slate you never ever want to stack any higher than two deep from a team. It is commonly thought and accepted in the DFS community that the optimal stack for NFL would be pairing a quarterback with two pass catchers. I find there to be a few flaws with doing this, at least in a GPP sense, ideally we want the highest ceiling possible for our lineup so when we stack two receivers from a team most of the time we end up canceling the other one out. The probability is against two pass catchers, especially two wide receivers we are asking a lot to happen in the game for this to happen and both players to have a ceiling game. Ideally we want to capture the highest upside single QB-Receiver (WR, RB, TE) so ask yourself when putting together your lineup who you think has the most chance to score two TDs, because essentially that is what you would need to win.
2. Fading Good "Chalk"
This is a tricky one, some people say fade chalk, others say don't fade chalk, others say walk that fine line. I would lean more towards being like Johnny Cash and walking the line. The fact of the matter is, most of the time when plays are obvious or "chalk" its because they are actually good plays. The problem with rostering these players lies with competitive ownership. Ownership is key when playing a large field GPP Tournament, and essentially yes, you do want different players than your opponent to gain a leverage advantage. Now of course the most important time to not fade the chalk is when a player has a score or better yet not even a score but a value that you just cannot be without to make a winning lineup. This happens when a player "breaks the slate" and fading such a play can have you drawing dead quickly.
3. Spending Your Salary
This may be a shock to some but Draftkings, cannot predict the future, they have no idea how good or bad a player is actually going to do. Draftkings uses a specific algorithm to determine their prices week to week. Now the exact specs to this algorithm have never been released but it is widely believed that the pricing is made up of a combination of past performances and opposing defense, along with probably some other factors, we don't know for sure. Now everyone knows that players themselves are mis-priced every week and this creates massive value when you are able to hit on these players. Now where people make mistakes are is when you get this value it opens up extra salary at each position and then that creates a situation where we are maybe not building the most optimal lineup because we are so focused on salary, most players spend nearly all of their salary, other players are keen to this do a degree and opt to leave anywhere up $1000 or so dollars on the table. I am heavily on the side of, lets not pay attention to money at all, if a line makes sense from a stack perspective, if the opportunity is there play it, stop worrying about salary so much.
4. Flex Confusion
There is a lot of material out there about the flex spot and how to optimally use it on Draftkings and as far as I'm concerned, until someone can show me these things work on paper, I do not buy them, in fact its popular DFS mythology that some will say you have to have a WR at the flex, others say always go running back. I guess the idea would be WR is more optimal due to the higher ceiling they usually possess. Here is the thing, just keep in mind that you are playing to ideally get at least 20 points out of each position with the potential for more. The mindset should be the same as a cash game where you are playing plays that make sense but are at the same time lower owned than your opponents. So in closing play who you want in the flex as long as its not helping you overstack a team you should be ok in most sense.
5. Strange Things Happen
This of course ties back into the ownership talk but the fact is strange things happen every week, we have to try to account for the unaccountable. So when doing that a big mistake people make is not hedging themselves against their better judgement. People are so set in their ways with how they view certain teams and certain players. Whether its a recency bias, a home team bias or whatever it may be, you have to put all those things out of your head. Ignore what you think you know and go the opposite way with a couple of lineups. The worst that can happen is you were right the first time. Then maybe make one for in the middle of what you think or not. The results should work wonders.
6. Not Playing Multiple Lineups
This should be a given at this stage of the game but not accounting for the unaccountable is a big mistake when playing DFS. This ties into the above example as well it makes no sense to play the same team multiple times in a GPP, Hedging yourself into and out of at least a few different situations you give yourself more chances to win, and that's what we want right? We want to get that top prize, you wouldn't enter the same numbers in 20 different lottery tickets would you? I mean that just doesn't make sense, especially in DFS, one thing wrong and boom you are drawing dead for the day for the big money. Play multiple lineups play different stuff, go against the grain, give yourself as many chances as possible. Build differently each time, doing this will help you land on different players and open your player pool.
7. Using Optimizers The Wrong Way
Look, If you know what you are doing a lineup optimizer can be a very friendly tool. However for most of us just breaking into DFS and if you are a person who finds yourself on this page, chances are you do not know all the tools of the trade to use any given sites optimizer. I wholeheartedly believe that unless you are mass entering 150 lineups at a time, using an optimizer is probably not an ideal strategy for you. Now some of these tools can be used effectively, especially is you pay for a good ownership projection service. Build lineups by hand on a computer, not on a mobile phone this way you can easily reference the next topic on my list.
8. Not Using Free Information
So many people play DFS as a "hobby" of sorts, they like to play their favorite team, or whatever team they are watching that day and it gibes them a little something extra to cheer for. We are obviously not those people, we have become people obsessed to a degree with winning this game figuring out this system and more importantly, winning money. So if you are a serious player use the tools and the information that are out there for FREE to your utmost advantages. These are the same things the successful people are using in DFS and you can find most, if not all of it for free online. For NFL, you want to be looking at targets, snaps, play data, formation data, anything you can get your hands on to find something tangible that can give you an edge over the field. NFL is the least "systematic" type sport when it comes to DFS which means that hard stats do actually matter for skill position players as opposed to say MLB or NBA.
9. Not Paying Attention To Vegas
You hear a lot of people in the DFS community talk about Vegas and most of the time you hear "implied total" thrown around a lot. So usually without fail you are going to see concentrated ownership towards players on teams with these high team totals. Like mentioned above completely fading these situations completely can be risky. You want to use Vegas your advantage with certain things as far as how heavy a favorite is and how to leverage appropriately given the situation and given the slate.
10. Over-projecting
There are many different versions of this but it should go without saying that if you are not doing full out projections on paper or digitally, you need to at least be trying to do the basic math in your head. Know the range of outcomes, Lets take a QB for example, a realistic expectation we want from a QB would be for them to throw for at least 300 yards and ideally throw 3 TDs. So who gets those yards? Who gets those TDs? There are only so many of them to go around. So keeping this into account when making stacks and making lineups will go a long way.
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