7 ms·

The advantage is in knowing what percentage of football players are started by the entire pool entrants. This information is released once that particular game

by jaynos 11y ago

The advantage is in knowing what percentage of football players are started by the entire pool entrants. This information is released once that particular game is started (e.g. % start for NY Giants players would be known to all at 1 PM when their game started and % start for Denver Broncos players would be released at 4PM when that game started), but was known ahead of time by those who worked for the company. While these %'s would not be exactly the same between Fan Duel and Draft Kings, they should be close enough. How does this all help you win? You can get an average return in a tournament (e.g. buy in for $10 and win $15 or $20) by playing high point, low variance players (safe bets), but to win big, you need to play high variance players (e.g. the wide receiver who will probably score 4 points, but might score 20-30 pts if they have their best week of the year). That said, if everyone plays the same high variance player, you will be beat by or end up tying with many other players. So, if I have two high variance players that I think may have a good week, one who is owned by 8% of teams and one who is owned by 1%, I am better off playing the 1% player who will put me ahead of the field if he scores big. Edit to add information for those that aren't familiar with daily fantasy: Each player gets a salary and you are working under a salary cap that prevents you from making a team consisting entirely of "studs" (the top players at each position). If salary cap is 10X, then the average salary on your team needs to be X. A "safe bet" like Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers will cost you close to 2X. So for every safe bet you need to pick a long shot like Tavon Austin (who Yahoo tells me was owned by 1.4% of daily fantasy players) with a salary just over X/2.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
oxide 11y ago
that edit is very helpful for me, I've recently starting playing fantasy e-sports and I didn't fully understand the proper strategy for salary cap pools.
harryh 11y ago
But if you follow that strategy you might have a +EV but you are very very likely to lose in any given entry because you only win when all (or most of) your high variance players come through. And that is, by definition, unlikely. So this guy won big the first time he tried this? Or maybe he's tried 4 weeks now and has already won big? This still doesn't add up.
- avn2109 11y ago
  Undoubtedly the guy has a system and has diversified in either time or by parallelizing in several "leagues."
- swang 11y ago
  You can enter multiple times I believe with different lineups. So you enter some lineups with high variance low % picked players.
  - harryh 11y ago
    But if your system is to pick high variance players that are also underrepresented on other players rosters how many lineups can there be? I remain skeptical that this is a viable strategy.
    - jegutman 11y ago
      Here's an experiment: Go enter some giant free-roll and a $10 tournament with a huge guaranteed prize pool. I would bet that the top score (not the average) in the free-roll will have higher score. Now take the points that each player scored and their original cost and you can use a variant of the knapsack problem[1] to figure out the optimal lineup. You'll see that quite often the optimal lineup wasn't picked by anybody (mostly because the player costs are pretty good and the optimal lineup sometimes doesn't use the full salary). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem
      - harryh 11y ago
        Sure, but how would access to internal data help a DraftKings employee pick that optimal lineup ahead of time?
    - swang 11y ago
      To clarify, you don't just pick high variance players. You _must_ pick some people that are high-cost high-reward types. The superstars that will almost always get their lion's share of points. You cannot win a tournament just by picking high variance players, or it would be extremely hard to do so. You also have a salary cap so you can't just pick 5 superstar players. The higher their perceived worth, the higher they cost to "buy" them. So the main point you can differentiate yourself from other players is to find "sleeper" picks. These are players that are OK but not GREAT but if given a proper matchup, could do very well. For example, you may pick the 2nd best receiver on a team hoping he has a great day because the opposing defense is known to double team the offense's best receiver. This may give the 2nd best receiver more opportunities for catching the ball for yardage/touchdowns. BUT the thing is, this happens a lot. So you know maybe 4 games where this will happen. But you don't know the percentage picked of each player. Just like in March Madness brackets where picking all chalk (the favorites) to win is a bad strategy because almost everyone else is doing it and at best/worst you will tie, it is to your advantage to bet on players that you think _may_ have a chance, but are picked the least from the pool. So the advantage this employee got, was he knew how often each player was picked on DraftKings, so given his basic assumptions he just applied those percentages to FanDuel. He knew player X had a good matchup, but _no_ one was picking him. So he plays multiple lineups with player X, buying him up so if he has a good day the employee will win big. But he also places wagers on player Y, player Y has been picked more than player X, but still enough where the employee can get a good return, so he places a couple of lineups with player Y in it (even combining with player X hoping they both have big games). Buying some lineups with player Y also hedges your bet in case player X doesn't do well. This is probably what you are curious about. You don't pick only player X hoping he does have a great game. You hedge by buying more lineups with him in it, but supplement that with other lineups and picks that you think are +EV. So the advantage is you know who hasn't been picked a lot. And as you start buying players you have to start spending more "efficiently." If you know player Z has only been bought 10% of the time but you know he has a high likelihood of a big game, you will pick player Z more in your lineups than other lower priced players because his returns will be good.

by jaynos 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

oxide 11y ago

that edit is very helpful for me, I've recently starting playing fantasy e-sports and I didn't fully understand the proper strategy for salary cap pools.

harryh 11y ago

But if you follow that strategy you might have a +EV but you are very very likely to lose in any given entry because you only win when all (or most of) your high variance players come through. And that is, by definition, unlikely. So this guy won big the first time he tried this? Or maybe he's tried 4 weeks now and has already won big? This still doesn't add up.

avn2109 11y ago
Undoubtedly the guy has a system and has diversified in either time or by parallelizing in several "leagues."
swang 11y ago
You can enter multiple times I believe with different lineups. So you enter some lineups with high variance low % picked players.
- harryh 11y ago
  But if your system is to pick high variance players that are also underrepresented on other players rosters how many lineups can there be? I remain skeptical that this is a viable strategy.
  - jegutman 11y ago
    Here's an experiment: Go enter some giant free-roll and a $10 tournament with a huge guaranteed prize pool. I would bet that the top score (not the average) in the free-roll will have higher score. Now take the points that each player scored and their original cost and you can use a variant of the knapsack problem[1] to figure out the optimal lineup. You'll see that quite often the optimal lineup wasn't picked by anybody (mostly because the player costs are pretty good and the optimal lineup sometimes doesn't use the full salary). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem
    - harryh 11y ago
      Sure, but how would access to internal data help a DraftKings employee pick that optimal lineup ahead of time?
  - swang 11y ago
    To clarify, you don't just pick high variance players. You _must_ pick some people that are high-cost high-reward types. The superstars that will almost always get their lion's share of points. You cannot win a tournament just by picking high variance players, or it would be extremely hard to do so. You also have a salary cap so you can't just pick 5 superstar players. The higher their perceived worth, the higher they cost to "buy" them. So the main point you can differentiate yourself from other players is to find "sleeper" picks. These are players that are OK but not GREAT but if given a proper matchup, could do very well. For example, you may pick the 2nd best receiver on a team hoping he has a great day because the opposing defense is known to double team the offense's best receiver. This may give the 2nd best receiver more opportunities for catching the ball for yardage/touchdowns. BUT the thing is, this happens a lot. So you know maybe 4 games where this will happen. But you don't know the percentage picked of each player. Just like in March Madness brackets where picking all chalk (the favorites) to win is a bad strategy because almost everyone else is doing it and at best/worst you will tie, it is to your advantage to bet on players that you think _may_ have a chance, but are picked the least from the pool. So the advantage this employee got, was he knew how often each player was picked on DraftKings, so given his basic assumptions he just applied those percentages to FanDuel. He knew player X had a good matchup, but _no_ one was picking him. So he plays multiple lineups with player X, buying him up so if he has a good day the employee will win big. But he also places wagers on player Y, player Y has been picked more than player X, but still enough where the employee can get a good return, so he places a couple of lineups with player Y in it (even combining with player X hoping they both have big games). Buying some lineups with player Y also hedges your bet in case player X doesn't do well. This is probably what you are curious about. You don't pick only player X hoping he does have a great game. You hedge by buying more lineups with him in it, but supplement that with other lineups and picks that you think are +EV. So the advantage is you know who hasn't been picked a lot. And as you start buying players you have to start spending more "efficiently." If you know player Z has only been bought 10% of the time but you know he has a high likelihood of a big game, you will pick player Z more in your lineups than other lower priced players because his returns will be good.