This week, we published a lot of content that will be applicable for a while. Within this FantasyLabs Friday Recap, you can find links to all of that content, for your weekend reading pleasure.
General
– AlphaGo, DFS Modeling, & Overcoming Biases, by Jonathan Bales
Don’t be so quick to dismiss “oddities” in your model; those might just end up being the most profitable plays you can find. I can recall seeing many “what the hell?” lineups from BeepImAJeep – a player who admits to not caring much about sports – that ended up being incredibly profitable. Because BeepImAJeep approaches the game in such a unique and outside-the-box sort of way, he doesn’t suffer from the same biases that a lot of us do – the “oh man I have to play this guy” or “there’s no way I can stick that guy into my lineup” that seems to be a daily DFS occurrence.
– Video: How to View Past Results on FantasyLabs, by Jonathan Bales
I think one of the most underrated and perhaps overlooked features of FantasyLabs is the ability to view past results (for players, models, and lineups).
– Video: How I Uniquely Use FantasyLabs, by Adam Levitan
Adam Levitan shows how you can take the FantasyLabs tools and data and personalize them to your own advantage.
– Introducing the FantasyLabs Network of Podcasts, by Bryan Mears
If you haven’t seen by now, there’s a brand new podcast we pushed out today — The Daily Fantasy Flex. That makes it now three separate and unique podcasts that we boast here at FantasyLabs and I wanted to take a moment to introduce and clarify all three and the vision of them moving forward.
– Bankroll Building, DFS Triangulation, and Mitigating Variance, by Matthew Freedman
With two lineups, it’s not uncommon for the two lineups largely to cancel each other out. But with three lineups, which can all be easily made using our Models and optimizer, you are much less likely to have your lineups cancel each other out. If you have two winning lineups, your one losing lineup usually won’t be bad enough to prevent you from turning a profit. And if you have two losing lineups, your one winning lineup usually will be good enough to keep your total slate from being a train wreck.
PGA
– Introducing the FantasyLabs PGA DFS Tools, by Jonathan Bales
The PGA product is finally here! In my opinion, our golf product could end up being the best one we offer. First of all, daily fantasy golf just sets up really well to model. There are a ton of relevant stats (and we have all of them), and, like baseball, you can create a really powerful model without the use of projections.
– The Daily Fantasy Golf Glossary of PGA Stats, by Bryan Mears
FantasyLabs’ mission is pretty simple: deliver the best data and provide the tools necessary to transform that data into winning daily fantasy sports lineups. And we offer a lot of data. Some of the stats are pretty self-explanatory, but others either aren’t widely used or were created by us, meaning you might have no idea what the hell they mean. Here’s a guide to all of the numbers we offer and a bit more about the philosophy behind each stat, why we use the numbers we do, and how to get the most out of the data.
– Strokes Gained Is Overrated in PGA DFS, by Colin Davy
As we’ve stated many times before, our products are always designed to steer our customers towards making correct decisions, and sometimes that entails excluding counterproductive data even if customers would be otherwise free to ignore it. And that’s why you won’t find strokes gained in our PGA tools, because for DFS purposes, it is exactly that: data that causes more trouble than it’s worth.
– The Daily Fantasy Sports Roundtable: #7 – Intro to PGA DFS
Matthew Freedman is joined by David Fraye, Jon Cabezas, and Colin Davy, who discuss the subtleties of PGA DFS.
– Taleb’s Hero, Anchoring, and the DFS Overvaluation of Making the Cut, by Matthew Freedman
I believe that making the cut is important but also potentially overvalued by DFS players (or at least by DraftKings). I believe that it might serve as a DFS anchor for those who weigh it heavily in their lineup construction. And my belief seems to be supported by the trends.
– The PGA DFS Inverted Yield Curve: Thinking Negative for Positive Results, by Matthew Freedman
This is such a straightforward trend, and its virtue is that it shows us something that we can’t see by looking at the Pro Trends (which show positive Plus/Minus production) and the Models. By simply looking at the divergence of long-term salary and recent production, we are able to identify a large group of players who consistently and dramatically underperform the salary-adjusted expectations with negative Plus/Minus production.
– PGA: Finding Low-Cost Cut Makers, by Graham Barfield
A part of my process that still needs work is identifying golfers that are low priced but are relatively less risky. PGA inherently has a ton of variance, but my general checkpoints were as follows: first, since a golfer sub-$7,000 just needs 61.5 points to meet or even exceed value, I care if they have a higher probability of making the cut or not. Next, but less importantly, I wanted to develop a Trend that also incorporates form, but doesn’t chop off a predictive part of the sample. Finally, I needed to incorporate the number of tournaments played in a relevant range so we derive a decent sample of golfers that play often.
– The PGA Process: Valspar Championship Lineup Review, by Graham Barfield
Colin Davey, our new PGA director, brought up an interesting topic on this podcast: Does course history at an event even matter? I’m sure it does in some theoretical percentage, but how much? The masses absolutely love to use course history at an event to make their DFS decisions, but if a golfer isn’t in good recent form, shouldn’t course history matter dramatically less?
MLB
– The King of Cash: wOBA vs ISO Revisited, by Mitchell Block
In the brief history of DFS I think it’s safe to say that wOBA has been the go-to metric for selecting cash-game hitters. And as it does a great job at valuing a hitter’s performance as a whole, it’s proven to be a very solid indicator of projecting the consistency we seek for cash games. My only problem with this is, I’m not sure it actually is the best.
– Change of Scenery: Todd Frazier, by Bill Monighetti
All told, we can probably expect similar, maybe slightly better production from Frazier in 2016. If you remember back to 2015, Frazier’s value sort of fell off a cliff at the end of the season. The Reds finished as a bottom two team in 2015, a place we don’t expect (key word: expect) the White Sox to find themselves this year. In MLB probably more than any other DFS sport, a rising tide lifts all ships, meaning we might be able to expect more consistency from Frazier on a more successful team this season.
NBA
– The Daily Fantasy Flex Podcast — NBA: 3/18/16 Full Slate Breakdown
Jay Persson and John Daigle break down the 3/18/16 NBA DFS slate.
– The Daily Fantasy Flex Podcast — NBA: 3/18/16 Position Quick Hits
Jay Persson and John Daigle quickly run through the positions on DraftKings for the 3/18/16 NBA DFS Slate.
– NBA DFS: Bargain Hunting on DraftKings, 3/18/16, by Mitchell Block
He won’t be popular tonight, and I myself have a tough time rostering him in general, as his production has been highly variable, but I’m on Deron Williams for a couple of reasons this evening. First is the matchup – he has an Opponent Plus/Minus of +2.31 and the game has an over/under of 226. And second is how Williams has performed in positive matchups after price drops of at least $500. His price is now down $900 over the past month.
– Video: DraftKings Fantasy Basketball World Championship Preview, by Peter Jennings
Peter Jennings (CSURAM88) gives a preview of the DraftKings Live NBA Final tonight.
– Video: How to Use Opponent Plus/Minus in Player Models, by Bryan Mears
Bryan breaks down the new Opponent Plus/Minus metric and how to use it in your daily NBA models.
– NBA Trend Testing: PER and Opponent Plus/Minus, by Bill Monighetti
Today, we’re going combine PER and Opp Pos +/- to find efficient players in good spots. I’ve been wanting to create a Trend with the new Opp Pos Plus/Minus stat and this seems like a good chance to do so. Targeting high PER players against teams that have struggled guarding the position makes sense logically, and the Trend comes with a relatively high Plus/Minus and Consistency Rating.
Trends
– PGA 3/16/16: Adjusted Round Score: Long-term Form less than 60%, Recent Form over 60%, by Jonathan Cabezas
– MLB 3/15/16: Is PETCO Park Actually Bad?, by Bill Monighetti
– NBA 3/14/16: Players with a Large Increase (+$1,000) in Salary in the Last Month, by Bryan Mears
– NBA 3/15/16: Over/Under Less than 201, by Mitchell Block
– NBA 3/16/16: Negative PaceD & B2B for Fast-Paced Teams, by Bill Monighetti
– NBA 3/17/16: Ceiling 50+, Floor 15-, by Bill Monighetti
– NBA 3/18/16: Struggling Players Trending Back Up, by Jonathan Cabezas
