Earlier this week I wrote a piece on the importance of late swap on DraftKings. This piece is a quick follow-up in which I outline a particular late-swap technique that I don’t believe anyone has mentioned before but that I find useful. And since my title hints at the strategy, I’ll go ahead and mention it here: If you are going to punt on a position, if possible do so in the early games.
This is the 28th installment of The Labyrinthian, a series dedicated to exploring random fields of knowledge in order to give you unordinary theoretical, philosophical, strategic, and/or often rambling guidance on daily fantasy sports. Consult the introductory piece to the series for further explanation.
Playing Bridge Instead of Reading Poetry
I was once a Ph.D. student in English at Boston College and my field was British Renaissance (or early-modern) literature. The summer after my first year in the program, I was supposed to be studying for my Minor Field Exam (on the poetic collections and sequences of the period) — and I did read a lot of stuff that summer — but instead of studying for the exam by reading and researching the sonnets of William Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser I instead learned how to play bridge.
Bridge is an awesome game, and because of how bridge tournaments are organized (with every table being dealt the exact same hands) it is very much a game of skill. In fact, the International Olympic Committee has recognized the World Bridge Federation as a legitimate sports organization. It’s possible that bridge could be an Olympic sports in the future.
It’s been years since I’ve played bridge, but one of the best lessons it taught me is something that I still carry with me today and that informs my perspective on life: Early in the game is when you should play the cards that are likely not to take rounds.
Essentially, bridge taught me that, if you are going to lose, you should do so in as optimal of a manner as possible.
The Trick to Trick-Taking Card Games is to Lose at the Right Time
Bridge, like spades and hearts (which are derived from bridge), is a trick-taking card game. In bridge, there are four different players (broken into two teams). At the beginning of the game, each player is dealt 13 cards, and then (after bidding is finished) a hand is played, consisting of 13 rounds. In each round, each player puts a card on the table and whoever has the best card wins the hand and leads the next round. Generally, the goal of each hand is to win as many of the 13 rounds as possible. (The game is more complicated than “win as many rounds as possible,” but for the purposes of illustration let’s leave it at that.)
And to win as many of those 13 rounds as you can, you need to play your cards in the right order. And by that I mean that you need to know when to play cards that are likely to take a round and when to play your “losers.”
Here’s an example that could be taken from your average trick-taking card game: Let’s say that you have the ace and queen of spades to start a game. In which order do you play them?
Scenario 1: Ace then Queen
If you start with the ace of spades, you will definitely win the round. You might (but most likely will not) catch the king of spades in that round. If that happens, then your queen would be high and you would be able to take the second round.
If you don’t catch the king, however (and remember that you are likely not to catch it), then when you play the queen in the second round it will likely be taken by the player with the king, who will know that the king is high because the ace will already have been seen. And so the king will take your queen, the round will be lost, and the person who took your queen will now get to lead the next round and potentially could take control of the game.
So if you play the ace and then the queen, you will win one round, probably lose the second round, and not get to lead the third round.
Frankly, that’s the way that a novice would play these cards.
Scenario 2: Queen then Ace
If you play the weaker of your two cards earlier, the outcome is much better. For one, when you lead with the queen, it has a chance of actually winning the round and outperforming its ranking. Why? Because the person holding the king (working with incomplete knowledge) might not want to play the card because it could potentially be taken by the ace. And if that happens then you have turned a potential loser into a winner simply by playing it early. And then of course one would win the second round with the ace and still be able to lead the third round.
If, though, the king does take your queen in the first round, losing your queen in the first round is still better than losing your queen in the second round. Why? Because you still have the ace. Yes, you will not lead the second round under this scenario, but when spades are led again you will be able to win the round because you still have the ace and at that point you will have regained control by holding your winning card into a later stage of the game.
So if you play the queen and then ace, you might win the first round and then will definitely win the second round and lead the third round.
This second scenario is much likelier to produce the preferred outcome (two won rounds and the lead in the third round) than is the first scenario.
Punting Early & Late Swap
This bridge/trick-taking concept of playing your potential loser early is highly applicable to DFS and specifically to the DraftKings, on which you can use the late-swap function strategically.
As I mentioned in my previous piece on late swap, the function can be used in a variety of useful ways. Per Jonathan Bales, one can strategically use late swap to assume or decrease risk and to add or remove stacks when necessary. In another piece, Bales argues that one can use late swap in order to be aggressive in early games and to hedge a position in later games. And Bryan Mears has noted that one can leverage late swap to use ownership data to make adjustments during contests.
Needless to say, late swap can be really useful. And no matter how you like to use it, I believe that playing your likely loser early will put you in a better position later.
Look at it this way: If you punt a position with a minimum-salary player and that guy goes off in an early game, then that information really means something. Maybe that puts you in position to win a big-money tournament and so you can adjust your lineup accordingly.
Or maybe your punt play doesn’t work out, but at least you know the outcome of your weakest player early in the contest so that you can make adjustments from a position of strength moving forward, knowing that your best players are still available.
This point might seem simple and insignificant, but it’s important. Just as you want to put your latest player in the lineup spot that gives you the most flexibility, you want to have your weakest player(s) in the earliest games because that will also provide you with the most flexibility later in the contest, likely both in terms of strategy and salary.
In DFS, as in bridge, the key to winning is knowing when to play the losers.
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The Labyrinthian: 2016, 28
Previous installments of The Labyrinthian can be accessed via my author page. If you have suggestions on material I should know about or even write about in a future Labyrinthian, please contact me via email, [email protected], or Twitter @MattFtheOracle.
