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NFL DFS Strategy Masterclass: DraftKings Game Theory, Stacking & How to Actually Win

69m 41s

NFL DFS Strategy Masterclass: DraftKings Game Theory, Stacking & How to Actually Win

Mike Leone from Establish the Run discusses how daily fantasy football strategy has evolved over the past decade. In the early days, success came from simply identifying the best plays and occasionally mixing in contrarian picks. Today, the game requires a more sophisticated marriage of chalk and leverage plays, with contest type dictating lineup construction. Small-field tournaments benefit from correlated stacks and slightly safer builds since you don't need perfect outcomes to win. Large-field GPPs like the Millionaire Maker demand near-ceiling performances across multiple positions, often favoring skinny stacks and unique combinations. Leone emphasizes the value of simulation tools in understanding ownership thresholds, correlation needs, and player archetypes. Boom-bust players like Gabe Davis might be poor plays in small-field contests but excellent in large tournaments where their ceiling outcomes provide meaningful differentiation. He also highlights weeks two through five as prime opportunities to capitalize on uncertainty—new coaching staffs, scheme changes, or unexpected week one performances—before salaries and ownership adjust. The conversation covers practical lineup construction details including the value of running back correlations in stacks, when to fade obvious bring-backs, and how to approach tight end as a cheap position. Leone stresses that managing emotions and bankroll expectations is essential, noting that even strong players can experience extended downswings. The key takeaway is that DFS success requires understanding your goals, selecting appropriate contests, and accepting that variance plays a significant role in outcomes.

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Speaker 1whenever there's a reason for the uncertainty it does make sense to buy early so the miami situation was a new coaching staff tyree kill hadn't been there before you know i want to buy into that as opposed to just one random really good week from a different offense you know we'll get i guess a crack at the mike mcdaniel stuff this year although i don't think it's flying under the radar with the chargers but i'm sure there'll be other scenarios that pop up and weeks two and three can be really profitable if you're willing you know just to take some stabs that some things are real that people want to see first because if you wait until you know it's real then then it's priced properly exactly it's literally price property both in terms of ownership and salaries so if you're ahead you're getting double leverage in terms of you're getting these players too cheap and you're getting them at lower ownership and there's only so many times throughout the year and in modern dfs where you can truly get someone that if you were to reproject this slate was one of the best values and and was very low ownership that mayo experience
Speaker 2welcome to the pat mayo experience presented by underdog how to win at daily fantasy football or just not how to lose or just make yourself a little bit better you don't need to win all the time because you're not going to win all the time because no one wins all the time mike leone from establish the run.com is going to be joining me if you missed part one tambo was on that we talked through process mistakes people make today what i want to talk about with mike is sort of overarching themes about how everything has kind of changed and what people should be doing now and mistakes and things that he's learned over the past decade or more mike when you started out i met you when the company i was working for acquired daily roto 10 to 11 to 12 years ago and you got you and dink like we're at the top of the game at that point with tools and understanding how stuff works basically competing against a couple guys like you and a bunch of people like me who are like man you know who's good matt ryan i'm gonna play him every week because he's really good you're like no yeah he's all right but what you want to do is like not have the same guys as everyone else but now 10 years later everything
Speaker 1has changed yeah i mean in that environment a decade ago when we first started doing this and very lucky that we're still doing this we were just so focused on playing the best plays and trying to figure out what that was our projection system was even you know pretty archaic at that point in time pretty rudimentary if you will and but it was enough for us to get on the best plays probably throw in some stacking here and there maybe now and then you throw in you know a contrarian play but for the most part it wasn't too complicated payout structures were a lot different fast forward 10 years from now so many different contests varying payout structures it's going to affect how you play i use dfs sims quite a bit in my process now now that might sound intimidating to some people you definitely don't have to but i've picked up a lot of tips just using those tools that kind of change how i play even if i didn't have access to them now so it's been a lot of fun winning seasons losing seasons over the past decade but i feel like i've learned a lot and yeah the game's definitely changing a lot more focus on game theory a little bit less focus on just pinning down you know the top value plays at each position if you were still to play cash do you play cash games ever i don't really play cash games anymore maybe i'll mess
Speaker 2with levitan once in a while but that's it yeah i don't either but in cash games do you play cash games do you think that the idea of just play the best plays is still the move yeah i think so um there
Speaker 1might be a little bit of edge in thinking about late swap more intelligently especially if you're in like these massive double ups where people are running trains and based on your early start you can kind of figure if you're going to chop with a bunch of different people and if it's worth getting off this maybe obvious lineup that a lot of people are playing so might be some edging late swap as a tiebreaker but for the most part you're starting with the you know team play the best plays
Speaker 2i am very curious about what you have learned about sims because you're saying you don't have to use sims but there are things that you've taken away by running out with them and looking at them uh people don't know i co-founded a site with justin freeman called run the sims.com and ours was based off 10 000 simulations of both of a play-by-play model but also contest sims at the same time now we do have those right now if you want to get your hands on the full optimizer projections which are customizable tournament simulations for the tournaments that you're in four for four dot com slash mayo gets you 25 off everything season-long fantasy football daily fantasy football the betting package there's discord there's articles uh you know squirrel patrols in there and he's going to have some of the best content that's going to come out so i highly recommend it four for four dot com slash mayo and you can get the extra package on there for tournament sims find the link in the description but what have you taken away because listen i'm not playing as much volume as you are i'm not playing at a as such a serious level as you are you're playing the thunderdome so what are the sims telling you yeah so if we look at
Speaker 1both ends of the spectrum 10 years ago i was probably playing way too few contrarian plays not focused on the field enough just focused on team play the best plays let's say five or so years ago i probably over shifted and i would try and stack my lineup with you know these high ceiling plays that weren't going to play and the idea was like get off the chalk if the chalk fails then i've got a bunch of different high ceiling guys that nobody else has that can elevate me to the top of the field and both of those strategies work a little bit if you do them really well but as dfs has gotten more competitive the sims have helped me kind of marry the two strategies know when i'm going too far in terms of pulling all these leverage plays like i don't want three uncorrelated high ceiling plays at wide receiver all at five percent i just don't need that to win some of the contests that i'm playing so the sims kind of help you figure out that balance between you know the right amount of good chalk to play along with the low owned plays and you start to pick up too that you know sometimes in content we're trying to say okay this guy's bad at this ownership throughout the week and this guy's good at this ownership but it's a little bit more nuanced than that where it's like this guy's good with this lineup like if you want to play a contrarian stack you can play this very heavy chalk running back alongside with it you don't have to make these binary fade or play decisions on players you can play this so the sims have really helped me do that and then there's some stuff that we talk about you know bijan robinson's 35 percent owned this week is he a good play or not well that's really hard for us to intuit like you might say now 40 he's fine but but that's that's the cutoff i might say 35 but like what are the odds you and i can kind of just figure that out on our own so that's where the sims have helped some of those decisions where you're just like not really sure especially in a
Speaker 2large field tournament football is i mean just like any other team that's been in the game for a long time football is i mean just like any other team that's been in the game for a long time football is i mean just like any other team that's been in the game for a long time football is i mean just like any other team that's been in the game for a long time daily fantasy sport be it mma baseball football eventually there are just some plays on a slate especially in larger term it's not so much in the smaller ones because what is the thunderdome how
Speaker 1many people are in that 19 that's grown a little bit last year most weeks it's 30 but it was getting up to about 40 50 people last year at times it's gotten a little bit more popular and what's the
Speaker 2buy-in for that every week that's 5300 buy-in did you ever imagine you'd be playing that 10 years ago
Speaker 1absolutely not and it's still terrifying and you know there's some years i don't play it every week there's some years where i'm going well and i'm playing it every single week but uh it is i like that contest because i really feel like when you get to know a contest and how your competitors play it you just feel like you have a better idea of how to attack things and also just such a small field tournament you legitimately have a chance to win every week as opposed to you know you're attacking that and you might have lots of caches but your odds of actually winning that tournament
Speaker 2just realistically aren't super high this was something that tambo and i were talking about it wasn't necessarily tournament selection like oh you need to play this one because it has the best payout or this one because of these things just playing against fewer people and then managing your expectations for what you're going to win is something that i tried to do for especially for football about two years ago and i've won a lot more doing it that instead of chucking eight dollar milli maker teams in that i can just play the 223 person two hundred dollar single entry and win far more often than lose and actually have a realistic chance of winning you know i'm not going to win a million dollars if i win but i'll win like 15 grand which is fine with me i would
Speaker 1love to win 15 grand but you you have to be honest with yourself as to what kind of sweat you want like do you want a lottery ticket where you can potentially win life-changing money or do you just want to have fun selecting a lineup playing the game and having a lot of fun playing the game and having a realistic chance at a sweat because even in a 200 person tournament you'll probably eke out a sweat once a year which even that's probably lower than people realize off expectation you're like only 200 people but i mean you just do the math on you win that one out of 17 times if we take you know chop off the playoffs in week 18 it would take you a lot of seasons to win that just one time on average if it was completely random so it is really important to have the same amount of time to think about how you're going to win the game and how you're going to win the game and how you're going to win the game and that's going to change how you play too you know the other thing i've learned with sims is there can be lineups that project is very high roi because you have really strong win equity and they're very boom or bust lineups there are other lineups that might have a similar roi that's a little bit more stable where your odds of banking are probably a little bit lower because you don't have a ton of leverage on the field but you are playing a very high projected you know smartly correlated lineup so you can cash in top 10 at a good rate so it is be ticked off at yourself in hindsight. Like, why didn't I play this game? contest? Or why didn't I play the safe lineup when you're a risky lineup tank? So consistency along with that, I think is important to managing your emotions over a full DFS season.
Speaker 2So have you ever, I mean, you said it's still somewhat terrifying entering some of these $5,300 buy-in tournaments and playing every single week. I had this during the Masters, the story I told Tambo that had I had gone with the lineup that kind of got me there, I won a big qualifier to getting the 444 and then when i went to go put in my lineup the masters i played the biggest chalk safe lineup of all time didn't cash because i was thinking man even if i could min cash this i'd be like super pumped with like 15 grand off a ticket that i got for 75 bucks and i played like the biggest goober lineup of all time when my lineup with rory who ended up winning was a bit off the wall but it's the lineup that i played in smaller single entries for like smaller at this point like a hundred dollars two hundred dollars and that did really well but i couldn't pull the trigger on the riskier lineup because of the higher buy-in did you have to get over that when you
Speaker 1started going up in stakes yeah absolutely and i mentioned you know there are some seasons where i play the thunderdome all the way throughout there are some seasons where i might stop if i'm having a cold season and part of that is i don't want to play that contest if i'm not going to play it the right way so if i'm tempted to make a safer lineup because i just want to cash because i'm like i can't lose 5300 bucks again you know i didn't cash the first six weeks you know i didn't cash the first six weeks you know i didn't cash the first six weeks or whatever i'd rather just not play that contest and spread it out into something else because you do want to play contests the right way i mentioned there are different ways to play contests safer lineups riskier lineups but ultimately you know there are some lineups that feel really safe that are just not the proper ev because you're you're soaking up too much ownership and if you're drawn to those lineups too frequently because you're afraid of losing then you're that's probably a good indicator that you're in you know the wrong contest for your bankroll
Speaker 2it's funny too because like i said it's not like i was paying the money for it it was a complete free roll for me and i still had that pensive nature where that's not how i play any other sort of contest usually i just build a whole bunch of crazy lineups scroll pick one and we're off to the races i kind of do the same thing for football as well where a lot of people are using sims to try to get a different lineup to the top i just find when i enter some of these higher stakes small field tournaments that my lineups are just inherently unique because i pick the plays rather than someone picking them up and i just find when i enter some of these higher stakes small field tournaments that my lineups are just inherently unique because i pick the plays rather than someone for me but it works out well because most of the time i lose but the weeks where i do well almost to your point about those sim lineups that my roi of being in contention is really good because i'm
Speaker 1just rarely on the same place as everyone else yeah and that's kind of what the sims have taught us is there's a level between chalk and contrarian that you want to be at that is optimal um but again yeah you can play two kind of pretty different lineups and have a similar roi over time but how it's achieved is different and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important and i think that's one of the things that i think is really important so it just goes back to your goals and yeah i mentioned the sims helping kind of intuit when you know to play or fade a guy at 35 owned that's like tough for us to figure out on just feel eyeballing and scanning things uh the other thing it helps with is correlation in those lineups too because sometimes you don't know how much correlation you need in a small field tournament versus large field tournament and sometimes it goes you know the opposite way that you would think i think a mistake people make sometimes is they want to be in a small to under correlate in the small field tournament because they don't want to have that cluster of players that could tank their lineup when they don't you know kind of need to be perfect and then in the large field lineup they think oh i need a you know a ton of ceiling huge upside let me do this crazy game stack and it's kind of actually flipped where in these really large field tournaments if you're going to win the million maker for example sort of have to hit the nuts and have you know three different wide receivers at the 90th percentile so you might want to do you know a single skinny stack with you know bird to chase and help you get the alpha wide receiver game instead of burrow to chase and higgins and having it spread out and then hit on a couple other contrarian wide receivers in those spots small field tournament opposite right like we only need to be x amount of lineups we don't need the nuts we don't need to be perfect if we have the double of burrow to chase and higgins we don't necessarily need chase to go for 40. he can get his 25 be kind of so so decent you know plus that is at his price but not crazy so and then higgins is a big winner at 20.5 points and 5k salary and then you know that's how you win the small field tournaments yeah i i found
Speaker 2that in those smaller field tournaments not even as small as the ones you're talking about somewhere up to either 150 people 300 people that i i run a lot of five man game stacks like i just three on one team and i usually try to soak up either a cheap tight end or a cheap like if i'm going to like punt off a position i always just make sure it's a part of that stack just in case and if it doesn't work out i'll make sure that two guys as a part of their team stack go off and that guy got nothing hopefully the combination of the two of them for their price still ends up paying off and
Speaker 1that i can still go elsewhere in that lineup yeah i had a triple stack a few years ago where i think one of the guys was you know had the icicle on dk and and didn't perform anything but the other two guys went nuts and again it was small field tournament didn't need to be perfect and you could say oh you know you should have just double stacked it but i probably would have left off the wrong guy had i done that so you want to limit the amount of things that you're going to be able to do you have to get right in the small field tournament and to your point about those five person game stacks we've had lots of weeks where there just aren't a lot of high totals on the board and when you get that a lot of ugly game environments the odds of just one game going off producing an excess amount of fantasy points increases so that's the other thing you pick up from the sims that you don't need them for you can learn the lesson and apply yourself without them but the scope of the like just the landscape for the week matters if you're you've got a week with six games with a 48 total or higher you might want to you know spread out a little bit more but if there's only a couple then you can take your chances on a five person game stack in a single game because there's gonna be less fantasy points scored period it's gonna be harder for people to get things right in the other spots in their lineups we we used to talk a lot
Speaker 2about these team totals like oh 53 total gotta pound this game and that isn't out of the question now but i think it's become a bit more nuanced which is far more logical it's just people didn't talk in these terms five i mean maybe five years ago but definitely not 10 years ago is just because there's a 43 game total it doesn't mean that there's not a team who's favored by 12 points in that game and although it's one of the lower total games on the board the implied team total for that team is still quite high sometimes i find that can lead to people overlooking it because they're just not processing it because they see the game total they're like ah there's better games to go at when in actuality like the third highest projected scoring team on the slate is in this low total game
Speaker 1yeah and that's another thing you pick up on the sims is like not forcing to bring back in those scenarios when we get these lopsided spreads with high team total i think we went through a stretch in dfs where everyone was picking up on correlation game stacks and whatnot and people felt like everything had to be a game stack that's really not the case um you know there's there were times you know just with the bills i remember a few years ago playing a bad washington team where it's like you can just play buffalo to win the game 40 to 10 or something and they're dominating possessions scoring a ton of fantasy points and not feel like you have to have someone you know push the game on the other side I think we kind of think too narrow sometimes in terms of how a game has to turn out for it to be beneficial from the DFS standpoint so I do think those types of totals can go overlooked like you said the other important part is just like how concentrated the offense is this isn't really a Sims thing but just in general you can have these annoying high total teams where the offense is spread out you know there's not a lot of reception volume it's difficult to kind of pick the right players you could have a team with a team total at six points lower that's like they're less likely to score a ton of real life points but should they exceed their team total you know where the points are going you're going to get paid off and the Sims do tell us like that is beneficial having this you're kind of clear pocket quarterback with top two you know wide receiver target
Speaker 2shares that we really know where the ball's going to NFL season means daily fantasy betting season long fantasy and four for four has the tools to get you that Edge get their lineup optimizer GPP and cash picks ownership projections and leverage scores all for DFS plus betting tools that cover props sides totals across the NFL and more plus a Discord get the data you need before you build a lineup or place a bet save 25 off on any subscription with promo code Mayo at four for four.com slash Mayo do it I started taking creatine because I'm working out consistently and if it's something I'm gonna use every day I want to know I'm actually getting the highest quality product you should too that's why I use and you should momentous signature spec creatine creatine's already one of the most researched supplements out there supporting strength power lean muscle growth recovery and health even cognitive performance which in my elder age I actually need at this point but momentous has taken the quality side to a whole nother level signature spec creatine is manufactured in a pharmaceutical facility using reverse osmosis water purification yeah and put through an expanded six-stage testing process with four independent agencies that means 10 times fewer impurities tighter heavy metal limits and plus PFA AS and microplastic screening all great stuff and the ultra fine powder actually mixes easily without those gritty clumps that you see those weirdos at the gym have so it's simple for me to work it in to my everyday routine. That's the Momentous Standard. Try Momentous Signature Spec Creatine at livemomentous.com and use code PATMAYO for up to 35% off your entire first order. That's livemomentous.com, promo code PATMAYO for 35% off. Who are the teams this year that you see that concentrated offense? I feel like for years the example, and now it's like outdating people, but the Michael Crabtree, Amare Cooper, Vegas teams with Derek Carr, I guess they were Oakland teams with Derek Carr, were like the perfect example of this. Demarius Thomas, Emmanuel Sanders on Denver as well for years were exactly like this where, yeah, maybe they didn't have the highest play volume, but those two guys received around 55% to 65% of the targets every week.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean you want these teams where they're just not running like a lot of wide receiver four, wide receiver five routes. I'm trying to pull up some of our routes. Week one projections that we're already starting to work on a little bit. I mentioned Cincinnati. You know, you've got two guys combining for over 50% target share.
Speaker 2I would guess Atlanta might be one of those teams.
Speaker 1Yeah, you get a really high concentration in Drake London and Kyle Pitts and Bijan Robinson. Those types of players where, you know, if you just think for season-long fantasy, like do I know, is the wide receiver two and three being drafted or not? You know, probably a pretty concentrated bet. I will say too, you want to keep into, account price when you're making these stacks too. Like the concentration is really important, but you can have more wiggle room if you've got, you know, a cheap dart throw wide receiver on Baltimore where you like, you know, you might get an efficient game. You might run into one from Rashad Bateman, for example. And even though his target share is not really in that concentrated bucket. So understanding the salary expectations, the opposite can be true too. I mentioned like the burrow to Chase and Higgins, but if that stack's gone off the previous two weeks, you might start getting to a point where Chase, Chase and Higgins is combined salaries are so high that it's difficult for them to both pay off the price tag in the same week. And that's where you might shift your focus to a single stack. I know I kind of took your question on concentrated offenses and I'm talking about doing the opposite, but no, you take it where you want to go.
Speaker 2You're here to be the expert talking about this, not me,
Speaker 1but that's just sort of where my brain goes. Dallas is another good one. You know, you get Pickens, CD lamb, those really high pass volume games from Dak Ferguson is a throw in at tight end. Words. So, um, there's, there's a few out there for sure.
Speaker 2If we were to start from scratch and you're just getting into this and you don't really know anything about, we'll talk about specifically drafting salary cap main slate NFL daily fantasy football, where is a good starting point of like the two or three things that you should just be doing now, obviously you need to know what contest that you're playing stuff changes, but let's say it's not the millionaire maker. Let's say it is a $100 single. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it.
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Speaker 2You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it.
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Speaker 2You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it.
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Speaker 2You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it.
Speaker 1You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it.
Speaker 2You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it.
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Speaker 1You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it.
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Speaker 1You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it.
Speaker 2You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it.
Speaker 1You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it, you're going to be able to do it. the defense is controlling the game. The running back is hopefully scoring in this situation, putting the opponent in a situation where they have to pass and those pass attempts against the defense. That's when you get big defensive outputs, you know, that sacks turnovers, big plays. So I do like that correlation. The one correlation to, I do think people sometimes maybe avoid running back, same team running back with wide receiver a little bit too much, like including, especially in these small field tournaments, including the running back in your stack. And we're talking about the game totals and how sometimes one game or one offense can really just lap the field on a given week. That can happen across all the positions. You know, Awesome-O was winning tournaments, you know, this is going to date myself, like four years ago with Raiders stacks that were like Derek Carr, Josh Jacobs, Devante Adams, like all these players that you'd be like, why'd you include Josh Jacobs if you're playing the pass? And I'm like, no, I'm not going to play the pass. I'm going to play the pass. But it's like, if the whole offense goes off, everybody kind of eats situation. And I think people are too, again, too narrow minded sometimes in how their stack has to work, where it's like, no, I'm either playing the running back and fading the passing game, or I'm playing the passing game and fading the running back. Even if the running back is not a pass catcher, you can use them in the team stack. So that's one that I think is a little bit undervalued. And if we were to swing
Speaker 2that around for a millionaire maker type contest, obviously you probably do want some correlation, but it really feels like a nine player prop, same game parlay, where you're just trying to maximize with, with alt adjusted overs and try to hit that.
Speaker 1Yeah. I think you're slanting that way for sure. Where, and I said that earlier, you have to hit the nuts. And if you're over stacking, it's a little bit harder to do that. I will say there have been weeks where we still get these crazy games that end up, you know, 38 to 31 and a triple stack with a lot of crazy games that end up, you know, 38 to 31 and a triple stack with a lot of crazy games that end up, you know, 38 to 31 and a triple stack with a lot of crazy games that end up, you know, the double bring back is even enough in those tournaments. If the pricing bands work out where you're carrying some cheap players along with it. There was one a couple of years ago, I think it was a Texans box game that went back and forth that comes to mind where the Texans were really
Speaker 2concentrated. I think it was Stroud's rookie year. I had a, I won a king of the beach qualifier from
Speaker 1that game. Yeah, absolutely. So I don't want to, which is to say there's, there's heuristics that we want to follow, but each week, we're going to be playing a lot of crazy games. So I think it's it's own thing. So I don't want to like say a hundred percent. You can't have a big game stack in the million maker. It's just between a million maker and a small field tournament. You're definitely more likely to over stack in the small field tournament and trying to hit the nine leg parlay in the million maker. What other things should we be looking for here? Almost at an
Speaker 2intermediate level that, okay, I have a three person game stack. I had a quarterback, a receiver and a bring back on the other side. I have a running back versus a wide receiver on one side. How do you generally approach tight end? Is it pay up for the nuts or find the cheapest punt possible, preferably as a part of that stack that you played?
Speaker 1I feel like the way the pricing's been lately, I'm more on the going cheap at tight end. And even honestly, the double tight end and flex has been something recently, you know, the pricing changes year over year, but I know Levitan hates the, the tight end and flex, but just the way they've been priced, they've been better bets at, you know, that three to 4k price tag than the cheap wide receivers have been. So if you're paying up for expensive running backs, and you're trying to get in a double stack, sometimes you need to play double tight end. So I think people should be open to that. Something that we haven't talked about yet, but in terms of your lineup, telling a story, we have the term like flip the build. If there's a cash game bill, that's a certain way. Sometimes you can actually play a competitive lineup from a pure projection standpoint that just flips things. What I mean by that is if on a given week, there's two really expensive running backs that everybody wants to play. They're afraid to fade. So that everyone has to go, you know, double tight end to fit that in, you can maybe take the mid tier running back values that possibly project very well this week. They're just not being played because these expensive ones exist. Now you don't have to play double tight end. You can afford a third running back and flex, and you end up with these bills where you're actually not sacrificing a ton of projection, but you have a lot of different players because like one decision changes things. I'm actually, I'm working on an article for Establish Run right now talking about game stacking and how sometimes when there's an obvious bring back that everyone's playing, it might make sense not to. I played a small field tournament last year where I think I played a Niners triple stack and 10 people in this hundred person field played it. I was the only team that didn't bring Puka and Nakua back on this stack. And it worked for me because I was able to flip the build and use a cheap value wide receiver in that spot. Play the three strongest running back values on the entire slate, whereas nobody else could fit those three strong running back values together. So if you're being contrarian, if it gets you something that projects well by shifting one spot here and shifting things over there, I think that's super valuable. Yeah. I think that's something that
Speaker 2people don't consider enough either. They generally think of it as a very binary decision. Well, I'm playing this guy or I'm not playing this guy. How does it detrimentally impact my lineup? Not a combination of three players versus three players, all for the same salary, despite being on the same bill that it's a pretty sharp way of looking at it, actually, to make a and this goes to your point of you can still play. I mean, if someone's playing, if 10 people out of 100, so 10% of the field is playing exactly the same three man lineup and then building around it and nine of the 10 guys are taking the same guy and putting it with it, although 10% doesn't sound super chalky. If you're playing in that term, that is super chalky.
Speaker 1Yeah. And then there was a week last year where Arizona was super chalky. I think Marvin Harrison was out. It was when Bursette was smashing, but not priced expensive yet. And people literally played, I think it was, you know, Jacoby McBride, Dorch and Michael Wilson, triple stack bringing back Christian McCaffrey and maybe even John jet, like this huge game stack of, of San Francisco. Arizona. And I didn't play it because I thought, okay, I'm just not buying into Jacoby yet. It's way too own, but there were people who played that with, they just threw in this, this really contrarian mini correlation of Bijon Robinson and Taro McMillan at really cheap ownership. And that was enough to kind of flip people and gain this leverage. There was a way to take advantage of something that was highly correlated and projected super well, but was super chalky. How do you still play that lineup in a way that's intelligent? So that was, that was one way to do it. And going back to your point about sometimes people look at the fade or play thing as a binary decision. It is sometimes better instead of me saying, okay, puka is chalk. I'll play Jamar chase at the same ownership or not at the same ownership at the same price, but lower ownership that leverage works. You can definitely do that, but sometimes it's better to say, okay, I'll play, you know, DJ more as this mid tier value. And with. The wider super volatility, if DJ more matches puka, and now I've got more salary to spend elsewhere, like that kind of that compounding return that you can get on a fade is more
Speaker 2appealing to me than just a one V one swap. Well, you build out these projections. So you get to see the raw data, you input it and you get to see what it spits out, whether it's a 10 percentile outcome all the way up to a 95th percentile outcome for you when you're building your lineups, is there an outcome that you're looking for? Cause I, I don't know if you remember this or not for years, I'd be like, you know, who you need to play every week is 10 gin at 4,000 bucks. Cause he's going to smash four times a year. So you gotta play 'em every single week. Cause you wanna be there when he scores his two 80 yard touchdowns in a game, and then you can print all the money. But that was his like 95th percentile outcome where, you know, his median outcome was probably his 30th percentile outcome. It was like two catches for 10 yards or something like that. When you're assessing either high end players or even cheaper players that you're trying to take a gamble on, do you look at these ceiling outcomes or is it like, Hey, I'll play to their 75th percentile outcome and points projection and kind of scale it back that
Speaker 1way? Do you have a strategy with that? Yeah. So the thing you pick up from the Sims is when to use, which type of player where, so the Ted Ginn example, another good example of that was when we first launched the Sims at the solver was Gabe Davis for the bills. Uh, when you know, he was this very boomer bus player. And if you looked at kind of like the odds, he was optimal compared to his ownership. He looked like this really good value play, but the Sims actually told us in these small field contests, you know, he just busts too much for it to be worth it. And you're not getting this exponential payoff when he hits necessarily when he, you know, when he has a high ceiling game, but the same player and the same Sims would say actually play him in the Millie maker, because there you're a little bit less concerned about the fact that he's a low floor. You're kind of buying a lot of. Ticket anyways. And when he booms in a really big way at low ownership, it really elevates you above the field in a way that's meaningful. And in a way that for a small field tournament might be excessive and we're not even need that much of an outcome. So choosing the archetype of player that you're using based on the contest makes sense more specifically to your question about what I'm looking at. I definitely look at the difference between a player's ceiling and their base projection. And if it's a player that. Kind of has a narrower band, which is we would call like a more boring player, like a Tony Pollard type. I really want to get paid off on the ownership if I'm going to play this kind of more boring player or just have a really cheap price tag where I think you can pay off value. Whereas generally, I am looking at the Jameer Gibbs. Well, Jameer Gibbs is a way better player, so that's maybe not a 1v1 example, but a similar price running back, similar projected running back, but maybe someone that has a bit more rushing touchdown upside, rushing efficiency upside, and that gives you more of these ceiling outcomes that matter. I'd say if I had to narrow it down, the 85th to 100th percentile outcome is probably where I'm looking at where I don't want just the once in a blue moon, this player erupts, but we have no idea when. That's a little bit too risky for me, but I do want the players that can have more of these outcomes that actually are super meaningful in terms of pushing you up the leaderboard.
Speaker 2Do you have any strategy for picking defenses or is it whatever I have left or I need to correlate this with a running back? Because defense is weirdly one spot where I actually do put in time to figure out which ones, because I never really like to pay up, but you can always kind of find three or four of them underneath $3,000. You're like, in the right scenario, this is the defense that you're going to need, and it will free you up $500 to $1,000, which can be pretty meaningful in a lineup.
Speaker 1There were so many chalk defenses that did. It did so well last year. It almost broke me a little bit. It is ironic. That's one thing I picked up from the Sims is I thought it would tell me to basically never play the chalk defense because defense is so volatile. Whoever scores a touchdown, it doesn't really matter, but the Sims generally are on just playing the very low price, best value defense. So I've slanted that way a little bit. Generally, I want a defense on a favored team that's facing a team that's going to throw a lot. That's super simple. Generic, but that's where you run into these huge games is when you get a quarterback that's probably mediocre if they're on an underdog team to begin with, dropping back a ton of times. That's where you run into a lot of sacks. You run into a fumble six or a pick six. So anytime a mediocre or below average quarterback is in a spot where they're projected to throw a whole bunch, I generally want the defense on the opposite side of that.
Speaker 2Well, most people look again at the game totals, and they're like, wow, 49 projected points in this game. I can't use a defense from this game. Those sometimes are the best defenses to go use, especially when they're a crappy quarterback or one team that can be offensively stunted, but has a very good defensive line that can generate a ton of pressure. Because one thing that people don't consider in that point total is that sometimes the defense scores those points or generate short fields.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. And it can flip though, where sometimes people are picking out a low total team and they're not going to run a lot of plays. They're going to run a lot of runs and they're going to run a lot of runs and they're going to run a lot of runs. And that's going to be a problem for the team as a whole. And that's going to be a problem for the team as a whole. And that's going to be a problem for the team as a whole. And that's going to be a problem for the team as a whole. And that's going to be a problem for the team as a whole. And that's going to be a problem for the team as a whole. It's a very low total game. So it looks really safe from a Vegas perspective. But if you look at the potential for these really big outcomes where the defense vaults you to the top of a tournament, you're not getting those opportunities at a high enough rate. So that's something I try to consider. And I do, you know, I'm hoping to manage our projections with this a little bit better to capture it. But whenever we get a quarterback playing that has very little history, I think it's worth gambling that there's a chance this quarterback is just terrible. You think Max Brosmer last year going into Seattle and it ended up being an epic disaster. There's just this threshold that you need to be above as an NFL quarterback for it to not be a disaster. Or if you're below that threshold, you're going to have to be above that threshold. It's kind of like all bets are off. It's a completely different scenario. So gambling that, you know, quarterback we haven't seen much of is below that threshold. I think the risk reward generally plays in your favor, even if it is a little bit chalky.
Speaker 2Well, I think that's a really interesting concept of gambling on unknowns, which is usually a spot that people try to steer away from. The only unknown that people truly love to gamble on in DFS is the unproven, relatively unknown backup quarterback who's super cheap. Getting thrust into the starting role because running backs don't matter. This guy's going to get 20 touches. We can project that out. Even if he sucks, he can pay off that price tag pretty easily. But as it pertains to receivers or offensive line injuries or new quarterbacks, people are really a bit hesitant that they want to see it first. When I spoke with Tambo about like the best weeks that I have every year, I went back and looked over the past 10 years. I do really well from weeks two to five, two to six before all of the data starts piling up. Then people like you beat the shit out of me. I'm like, oh, I'm going to be a good guy lineups because you actually have data sets to work with. But in that intermediate period where people are still using last year's data and not catching up to what's going on right now, it's not that I think that I have a better sense of what's going on than other people. It's just I'm far more willing to gamble in these extreme spots where there's complete unknowns and either bet on it all the way in or all the way out and go against it. Whereas most people I find just try to avoid those. I think there's real value in doing that. Now, it sucks when you're wrong and like hilariously wrong, but it tends to work out if you bet against players with unknowns, they tend to suck most of the time.
Speaker 1My DFS history honestly aligns with yours to a certain extent where like just week two randomly, I've had a really good success week two. Last year, I almost banked in week two and there was a situation, I think it was the first Mike McDaniel year in Miami.
Speaker 2That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Not even a player, but like you see week one, you're like, holy shit. Like this offense looks really good. Most people will be like, well, it's one week. Let's see if he can do it again. Whereas if you just bet on, hey, this is a real, like if you would just bet on Indy's offense last year, being really good after week one, you printed for six straight weeks.
Speaker 1Yeah. And no one played that the second week, even though we saw like these really high targets per outrun condensed offense on Tyree killed Jalen Waddle. And, you know, I kind of ran away with the Thunderdome that week with the Miami Baltimore stack that nobody played and it could have blown up in my face. But to your point, I think there's, you've said that you don't have, you don't have necessarily a good sense, but you're willing to gamble. And I think that is a good sense in terms of if, because there's other times where people are too confident and where they see week one. I remember a few years ago, Derek Carr had two insane starts for the Saints to start the year. And we're trying to do the projections of people like you're too low, Derek Carr, you're too low, Derek Carr. I'm like, I have him for the highest yards per attempt on the week. So then you kind of want to play the other side, which is like, I'll fade this thing that people are like pretty sure is a real thing that I'm not so sure about. So you do kind of just in those situations, take an opposite side of the market, but whenever there's a reason for the uncertainty, it does make sense to buy early. So the Miami situation was a new coaching staff. Tyreek Hill hadn't been there before. You know, I want to buy into that as opposed to just one random, really good week from a different offense. You know, we'll get, I guess, a crack at the Mike McDaniel stuff this year, although I don't think it's flying under the radar with the chargers, but I'm sure there'll be other scenarios that pop up and weeks two and three can be really profitable. If you're willing, you know, just to take some stabs that some things are real that people want to see first, because if you wait until, you know, it's real, then it's priced properly. Exactly. It's literally priced properly, both in terms of ownership and salaries. So if you're ahead, you're getting double leverage in terms of you're getting these players too cheap and you're getting them at lower ownership. And there's only so many times throughout the year and in modern DFS, where you can truly get someone that if you were to, you project this slate was one of the best values and was very low ownership.
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Speaker 1Yeah, and that's also a detail that people know there's offensive line injuries, but they can kind of tend to dismiss. It doesn't show up as like an A to B thing quite as much in the projections and whatnot, and like you said, we just don't know how to deal with it yet, so it's like, oh, maybe their team total is a point lower than it would have been. We're not drastically projecting them differently, but there is a bit more variance there to your point. Week one can be good, too, where these players that you might have really liked in season long, you know, they might not project well week one DFS, and there's some players that you just got to let go because, you know, you're betting on them for the full course of the season, but there's other situations in players where it's like, you know, if someone's going to be mispriced, it's probably week one. We really have no idea of the allocation, so that's a good time to take, you know, stances as well.
Speaker 2I find week one is tough.
Speaker 1I've historically done worse week one than that two weeks, two to four that you mentioned. I think it's one of the most fun weeks to play, but it is difficult because what you hope, though, is that you don't run into a scenario where the pricing has come out so early that there's a bunch of too obvious plays, and then it can kind of be challenging if, you know, you get the 3K wide receiver that very much should be played, and then you get the 3K wide receiver that very much should be played, and then you get the 3K wide receiver that very much should be played, just because the pricing came out so early. But if you get, like, an evenly priced slate, there are some, you know, scenarios. This year, there might be a little bit less because the rookie class is somewhat underwhelming, so there's probably less rookies to really take a shot on. But, you know, I'm probably not in on the tight ends, but, like, if you're optimistic on Cam Ward, you know, it's a new coach and staff. He's got Carnell Tate, rookie wide receiver. I don't know who it is. Like, those are the spots that do kind of make sense to deviate from the market a little bit if you feel good about them.
Speaker 2There's also a new coach, a new offensive coordinator, those are usually good spots, either dramatically improve or wildly go backwards spots that you can either bet on or bet against, almost like at the craps table.
Speaker 1There's also, you know, guys like Kenneth Walker, where it's like maybe he catches a lot more passes with Kansas City, and then just playing with Patrick Mahomes really unlocks him. And because there's a wide variance on where he should go in redraft, right? I know Silva's got him super early. It could be end of the first round. It could be end of the second round. Whereas someone like, you know, Henry or Saquon, we kind of know how to project them. Not that there's not variance. I mean, there's, you know, differences in their offenses this year, but there's not that same level of uncertainty as there is with Walker that isn't going to totally be priced in yet.
Speaker 2Yeah, if you hit my sub stack right now, free sub stack, it's down in the description. You can also find my rankings up at 444.com. Those are free. You want the tools like the Sims, you use Code Mayo, you get 25% off. I have Kenneth Walker at 17 overall. So I have someone like a Murray and Hampton ahead of him. Maybe that's wrong, but I feel better about that spot. Mainly because Kenneth Walker gets hurt all the time. Do we forget this?
Speaker 1Hey, week one though. It doesn't matter, Pat.
Speaker 2Sure, but I'm just being for the season.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah, Walker's injury history is also his playoff success was so huge that I do think it outshines that he was basically chalk a few weeks. At the end of the season in DFS and people were so sick of playing this dude even at like 6K when Charbonnet was out when he just wasn't producing. So there's still recency bias there too along with what is perceived as like correctly perceived as a positive move from Seattle to Kansas City. But there were situations last year he was in a very good spot and failed. So I'm kind of neutral on Walker. I think 17th is a pretty fair ranking.
Speaker 2And we forget that Seattle managed his touches for the first two years. Two and a half months of the season to keep him ready for the playoffs.
Speaker 1They did. And then obviously the Charbs injury broke, you know, perfect for him. KC too. They, I mean, I know with Walker, they're probably going to want to lean in with this signing and utilize a running back in a way that happened the past few years. They just haven't had the talent, but they do do some weird things at the running back position at times. I'm very curious to see, you know, how much of the third down stuff and how utilizing the passing game he is. There's some uncertainty there. It could go really well, but, he's also priced with backs that we know just either can handle a superior workload or are on these really good teams. Like you compare Walker to Derrick Henry kind of, you know, prefer Derrick Henry there where the bat he's probably gonna catch less passes and Walker, but we've seen the efficiency time and time again, we've seen the goal line time and time again, we've seen it work in Baltimore time and time again. I do feel like if you push Walker into the back of the first round, then you're asking him to be better than back. that are more proven like what i'm not sure what your profit potential is if you move them up quite
Speaker 2that high i guess it is that you ensure that you get him and if you gamble right on that that's like if you take him at the back end of the first round you would have to take him there or he's not going to fall back to you is the bet that you're making and there's a few guys like that in drafts where if you're selecting at a certain spot they need to be such a big reach that they're probably not worth it to take in season long but if you do want them you're gonna have to reach
Speaker 1yeah and that's where you know we're getting a season long but i prefer you know james cook saquon henry to walker right now but you know what those are the guys
Speaker 2let's see 16 henry hampton 15 saquon 14 james cook 12 i'm with you yeah we're aligned chase
Speaker 1brown number eight you like that i don't like the chase brown ranking oh how dare you no you're not worth it to take in season long but if you do want them you're gonna have to reach
Speaker 2you're like hey draft terence ferguson don't draft chase brown like i'm gonna go with my
Speaker 1take here around 18 in best ball a little different opportunity cost here i've you know when i was doing research last year before this season i started to get pretty concerned that chase brown just like if you're taking guys in the first round i want to be even if your situation's really good i want to be pretty confident you're an elite talent or near elite talent and with chase brown i started to have question marks and i'm like oh my god i'm gonna and some of his rushing efficiency stuff and Samaj P Ryan just refusing to ever go away and some of the pass down stuff. So I can't, I can't get on board with Chase Brown that early.
Speaker 2All right. Well, we might have to make a bet off air. I feel like we did one of these bets like two years ago and I totally forgot what it was and I forgot who won.
Speaker 1Sounds about right. I'm just going to say I won.
Speaker 2Yeah, I probably won if we're thinking about it. Well, since you are the resident bills guy, I have, I have DJ more like hilariously overranked and I have the entire off season. I have a number 25 overall. I think he's going to be awesome on the bills.
Speaker 1He is, we're a little behind market at ETR. We're a little more conservative, but he's genuinely one of the most difficult players to rank for a variety of reasons. The first of all, he, he's starting to age a little bit and he had a really down year last year. So in general, it's typically not the type of wide receiver you want to buy, but you can make a case for like him, just not meshing with that new offense. And Chicago. And if you look back prior to that, he was a legitimate wide receiver one. And now he's playing with one of the best quarterbacks. I would say the best quarterback in the NFL. And then from the bill standpoint, there's some uncertainty there that obviously the OC is now the head coach and there's a new OC. So we don't think a lot's going to change, but there might be some macro decisions that are different under Brady relative to McDermott in terms of how aggressive the offense wants to be. So like, do they throw more? They have a new defense. Is the defense worse than the regular season and forces them to throw more or not? You know, we've seen them be concentrated in the past when they had a wide receiver one, like stuff on digs, but we've seen them be super spread out and low pass volume the last two years. So there's so many factors and like how they combine can really move more as rank, you know, a ton of spots and it gets pretty, I'd say to the rankings this year are like kind of flat when you get into that fourth round or so. So you can, yeah, you tweak the inputs a little bit this way, a little bit, you can, you can go up or down 10 spots pretty easily.
Speaker 2I just think when I, when I think about the types of players that I want at receiver, and we've seen this a bunch of times over the years where, you know, an upper crust talent doesn't need to be the most elite talent, but someone who's near one of the 10 best receivers in the league, some somewhere inside the top 15, that they go to a new team. It kind of works, but doesn't work. And it just turns out that the situation for them wasn't right. Then they go somewhere else and absolutely smash for two years. And then they kind of fade into oblivion. That's how it works. Now I see what is happening with DJ Moore. And I think that he's the right type of receiver for what Josh Allen does. Like he can break off routes. He can, connect with quarterbacks on the fly and josh allen is eventually caleb williams might get there but he's not there right now in the terms of the vision downfield that josh allen can have in a broken play or on the run i just think of it as the talent deficit at receiver for the bills last year led me to playing brandon cooks a lot and betting brandon cooks overs a lot because he would just get these shots down the field you know what brandon cooks was good on the bills last
Speaker 1year it's kind of sad how important brandon cooks uh aging below average wide receiver that joined the team mid-year was to the team so from that standpoint i definitely get what you're saying where it's like okay now we've got dj more instead of brandon cooks and brandon cooks already like helped the offense a ton because the outside wide receivers were just so atrocious i i hate being the non-conviction guy but i can just see the dj more thing playing out in a lot of different ways i can see it going very well and very poorly from a fantasy standpoint well from but from a season
Speaker 2long standpoint and even maybe i guess he's not going to be on the main slate is he the bills
Speaker 1don't play a main slate game week one do they i think they do versus houston i believe all right
Speaker 2so if we talk about type of contrarian plays that could be the contrarian play of week one no one's going to want to play dj more even as a one-off against this houston defense after we watched houston ravage the bills with their defensive line a year ago but if you bet on that this is the right situation for dj more this could be the only time all year
Speaker 1you get them at two percent owned that is i think the type of play you want to make week one that i'll get on board with um even probably a little concerned from a season-long standpoint because you're absolutely right that's the uncertainty situation we're looking for a receiver that in the past has been very talented maybe wasn't great last year getting a huge systemic upgrade in terms of more condensed target share or potential for it because the lack of wide receiver competition playing with a quarterback that's one of the best in the league so i do think that's a really good spot and it's something that in other matchups people might be in on but i think you're right that the matchup at houston is going to keep people off of it and i i suspect the bills have we'll have a pretty you know it's week one they're going to game plan for this houston game pretty intensely especially after what happened to them last year in houston which was frankly kind of
Speaker 2embarrassing the last thing i want to speak to you about is losing and the expectation that comes along with playing daily fantasy every week you know when i enter a millionaire maker lineup you know i think i'm going to win a million bucks never have but every week when i enter and i think you know this one's got a real chance it's like when you enter like because i like to play well there's a new 40 10 max which i think i might hit up a ton this year but i was playing a lot of those like 75 5 max tournaments i'd build one lineup or look at the five for that i was like no i'm gonna enter that one in the millionaire maker too and it comes like dead last in the 75 and even worse somehow in the millionaire maker because you know you really like the look of it so you have to expect that you're going to lose i felt like once you realize that it's easier to
Speaker 1play better if that makes any sense yeah i think going in with them again it's kind of what we talked about earlier but just having the proper expectation of you might be very plus ev in a tournament and your cash rate might still only be 25 on average which means you're only in cash once every four weeks so if you run a little bit bad you could go eight weeks in a contest and maybe min cash once or not min cash that's very within the bounds of something that can happen i did write an article very early in the off season i need to resurface it because no one cared about dfs at the time that i wrote the article but talking through kind of like our post lock sims which is another thing i'm using which is like not just simulating the tournament in advance but after the fact with the actual field lineups to kind of get an idea for which lineups the sims thought were good and like if they thought they were good did it actually matter um is kind of what this article dove into but it also went through kind of a bankroll simulation of hey you could be this really good you know plus 30 roi player and still have these crazy downswings so i do think it's really important i had one of my worst years last year and it was one of those years that was very clear kind of the variance i had twice in this season i had straight up 2v2 coin flip in my head on a lineup literally down to option a or option b and option a that i took lost and option b would have run away with it and won the tournament so it was like those two coin flips were the difference between my worst year ever and probably my best year ever so as much as you try to control things you do realize how much is out of your control you do realize how much is out of your control you do realize how much is out of your control you do realize how much is out of your control and how getting lucky at the right time or unlucky at the right time can have really disproportionate impact on on your total season well it's funny you say you whittled it
Speaker 2down to two lineups you end up picking one the other one does well i find that is especially when you start getting into three max and single entry when people give up on playing the the lotto ticket type playoffs they want to concentrate a little bit more on building good lineups and they build five how do you or they build 20 how do you pick the one that goes in these lineups is there a to that of what you're looking for or a lot of times is that just luck that i think a little bit
Speaker 1of both you know a little column a little column b i have weeks where it kind of i think comes together naturally like i want to play these three stacks and i've got these three small field tournaments and it's all going to fit i'm going to get my exposures how i want them there's other weeks where i you know i'll be working on it for like two hours and run myself in circles with all these different lineup combinations to the point where i'm like i need to like start over like i need to wipe my brain and start fresh because i'm just getting absolutely nowhere so it can be really difficult um i do think if you consistently play in the same contest each week it becomes a little bit easier to kind of you know whether using sins or not you just kind of get a little bit better feel for what your competitors in that specific contest are going to do because like we have ownership projections on etr for small field medium field large field but different small field contests if it's a single entry three max or like multi-entry you know 50 people versus 400 people it can be different it can vary quite a bit from contest to contest so getting that familiarity with a single contest i do think helps sharpen your ability to kind of figure out the right lineup for that contest but man at the end of the day if you're like you've got two or three lineups you really like you know it can be a lot
Speaker 2of luck in terms of which one you actually play do you know your content schedule in season yet at etr
Speaker 1i have a good idea of the content schedule so me and silva are doing a man versus machine show on thursdays in season we've never done an in-season show together so i'm pretty excited for that which will be kind of what we talked about with like the week two stuff which is like we see stuff in a week and we're kind of discussing with each other if we're buying it or not buying it um so it'd be some healthy debate there and some agreement on on the stuff we're buying i will be doing establishing millie with dink on saturday mornings which is just dedicated to the best strategy of the week so i'm going to be doing that on saturday night so i'm going to be doing a lineup build show which is actually me using these sims that i'm talking about it's kind of me going in there and showing people how i'm utilizing them and um kind of going through ways of different building different lineups and and testing different strategies for that week well you
Speaker 2can find all of mike's work over at establishtherun.com my daily fantasy show is expected projected at the moment to be out on friday night on saturday night we're going to be doing a lineup fridays every single week with myself and tambo and a rotating third guest or maybe just tambo and i but we'll be using the tools from fourforfour.com which you can too fourforfour.com mail for 25 off hit the description while you're at it check out part one of the dfs strategy we we've talked through so much over the years of here's how you play this position and here's how you pick your tight ends and things like that we touched on that a little bit but the two shows that i wanted to do this year was sort of what was the evolution of where did we start where are we now what has changed and what have we learned along the way and that's why i want to talk to mike and tambo about those two things to give especially new people a critical view of even people who do this at the highest level what are their expectations what are the mistakes that they make and the biggest thing that i think that between both these shows that it whittled down to was manage your expectations figure out what you actually want to get out of daily fantasy what do you want to win if it truly is winning a million dollars by throwing in 25 bucks every week just do that it's fine you're probably going to lose every week but if that's the sweat that you want go for it it's not that big of a deal but if you do want to up your game and try to make this profitable it's not just going to be oh well i'm going to win 5 000 bucks every week because i played 3 000 bucks it's not how it works so you need to be able to manage your expectations and manage your losses pretty critically as well by doing things like building smarter lineups using leverage picking the right tournaments and figuring out what your expectations are sort of the overall conclusion of both these shows that i've taken away from it and so i'm just going to leave it at that and i'll see you guys in the next one thanks for watching and i hope you enjoyed this video i hope you enjoyed the stuff that i've tried to do over the past few years to make myself a more profitable player and i'm playing nowhere near the volume or at the level of mike or tam so share the show around if you think it was helpful
Speaker 3smash like and sub to mayo media network while you're here and i will see you next time

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. DFS has shifted from simply playing the best projections to a more nuanced game-theory approach that balances chalk and contrarian plays based on contest type.
  2. Small-field tournaments favor correlated stacks and safer builds, while large-field GPPs require hitting near-perfect ceiling outcomes with more unique combinations.
  3. Weeks two through five offer significant leverage opportunities by betting early on uncertain situations like new coaching staffs or offensive scheme changes before pricing and ownership catch up.
  4. Simulation tools help players understand optimal ownership thresholds, correlation requirements, and whether to play boom-bust archetypes versus stable floor players depending on contest size.
  5. Managing expectations and bankroll is critical because even strong players can experience extended losing streaks due to inherent variance in DFS tournaments.

Summary:

Mike Leone from Establish the Run discusses how daily fantasy football strategy has evolved over the past decade. In the early days, success came from simply identifying the best plays and occasionally mixing in contrarian picks. Today, the game requires a more sophisticated marriage of chalk and leverage plays, with contest type dictating lineup construction. Small-field tournaments benefit from correlated stacks and slightly safer builds since you don't need perfect outcomes to win. Large-field GPPs like the Millionaire Maker demand near-ceiling performances across multiple positions, often favoring skinny stacks and unique combinations.

Leone emphasizes the value of simulation tools in understanding ownership thresholds, correlation needs, and player archetypes. Boom-bust players like Gabe Davis might be poor plays in small-field contests but excellent in large tournaments where their ceiling outcomes provide meaningful differentiation. He also highlights weeks two through five as prime opportunities to capitalize on uncertainty—new coaching staffs, scheme changes, or unexpected week one performances—before salaries and ownership adjust.

The conversation covers practical lineup construction details including the value of running back correlations in stacks, when to fade obvious bring-backs, and how to approach tight end as a cheap position. Leone stresses that managing emotions and bankroll expectations is essential, noting that even strong players can experience extended downswings. The key takeaway is that DFS success requires understanding your goals, selecting appropriate contests, and accepting that variance plays a significant role in outcomes.

FAQs

When there is a reason for the uncertainty, like a new coaching staff or a player joining a new team, buying early makes sense because you get players at a cheaper salary and lower ownership. Waiting until the situation is proven means it gets priced properly, eliminating the leverage.

The game has shifted from simply playing the best projections to a much stronger focus on game theory. Modern DFS requires balancing chalk plays with contrarian leverage plays and using tools like tournament simulators to understand optimal ownership and correlation for specific contest sizes.

You should use more correlation in small-field tournaments. In these contests, you don't need a perfect lineup, so a double or triple stack can provide a stable floor. In large-field tournaments like the Millionaire Maker, you need to hit the nuts, so a skinnier stack combined with high-ceiling one-offs is often better.

Yes, it is a common mistake to treat players as binary decisions. Instead of just fading a chalky player, you can pair them with a contrarian mini-correlation or pivot to a mid-tier value play that allows you to upgrade other positions, creating leverage through the entire lineup build.

In small-field tournaments, you should avoid overly volatile, boom-or-bust players because you don't need an extreme ceiling to win. In large-field tournaments, you want to target these high-variance players because when they hit at low ownership, they can elevate you to the top of a massive leaderboard.

Target a defense on a favored team that is facing a mediocre or below-average quarterback who is projected to drop back a lot. Even in high-total games, a bad quarterback throwing frequently creates opportunities for sacks, turnovers, and defensive touchdowns, making these defenses undervalued.

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