If you missed my entries post Sunday, read it here.
An Unexpected Win
After the Sunday Night Football game, I thought a loss on the week was inevitable. I had Martellus Bennett as my tight end on every site and he performed far below expectation. I also faded Spencer Ware on Fanduel, choosing to play Lamar Miller and Martellus Bennett over the more popular combination of Spencer Ware and Jordan Reed. This choice, combined with a subpar game from Dak Prescott, and I figured I had no chance to recover and book a win on the week.
Luckily for me, as terrible as the last 4 Sunday football games went for me, the first Monday night game went perfectly. Antonio Brown and DeAngelo Williams, two players I owned higher than the field, both scored 2 touchdowns and racked up a ton of fantasy points to save my weekend.
source: quoteaddicts
The start of the first MNF game was bad for me: on the first drive, Jordan Reed was targeted 4 times and had 3 catches, surpassing Martellus Bennett's fantasy total in less than 5 minutes. Giving up hope on winning for the week, I decided to review everything that happened that weekend and keep a private journal of my mistakes and things I can do better. I analyzed each site and wrote down everything I learned from that weekend.
Immediately after my analysis my players started crushing and Jordan Reed went mostly invisible for the remainder of the game. So not only did I gain knowledge from thinking I would lose, but I didn't actually end up losing and had a great first week of the season.
Draftkings
I included golf in my Sunday entries writeup, so I'll include it here.
Golf Results: +$3788.06
NFL results: +$13713.49
Fanduel: +$11258.39
Yahoo: +$6662.90
Some slates ended before Monday and there is no results uploading site that takes yahoo, so I had to do some spreadsheet work on a .csv file and total everything up. Won on most of the slates and profited!
Fantasyaces: +$5262.29
Fantasydraft: +$6288.76
Overall (including golf): +$46973.89
Very happy with my week 1 overall results. Including my last two weeks of golf before this week, some bonuses being cleared, and the frequent player points gained, my $60k downswing from this summer is basically over and I'm right around my peak winnings.
But again, I try to separate results from process. I did some things I think I can improve, and the difference between a win and a loss is often miniscule. As of halftime of the first Monday Night game, I was barely winning money on the weekend. The second half of one game accounted for most of my profits. Winning is never assured, and I'm not blind to the luck I had at the end. I was probably 20-25% to have a losing week coming in, and based on my buyins, my profit expectation was likely about half of what I actually made. This was a fortunate week, and they won't always go like this, and I am going to have to retain the positive mindset I have right now during the unlucky weeks too.
I also noticed a lot of other high stakes players and regulars making what I think are large mistakes. For instance, Saahil Sud, the #1 overall ranked Fantasy player (he plays the most buyins and is successful at both cash games and GPPs, and rankings are volume based) played a kicker on fanduel who isn't even in the league right now. Other players missed must plays. I'm extremely confident heading into the rest of the season and am going to work very hard in future weeks and refine everything I do so that the gap between myself and other DFS players gets wider, not shorter. If you aren't getting better, you're getting worse, and I'm just happy that I got better on a week that I also won.
My name is Ryan Daut and I'd love to have you as a follower. Click here to go to my page, then click 
in the upper right corner if you would like to see my blogs and articles regularly.
I am a professional gambler, and my interests include poker, fantasy sports, football, basketball, MMA, health and fitness, rock climbing, mathematics, astrophysics, cryptocurrency, and computer gaming.
Wow what a start to the NFL season! Congrats man!
That's like 30%+ in a week. That's an incredible return.
I really like how focused you are on the process.
It would be great to get an overview on the thinking behind the process because I think it can be applied in a lot of various business operations that always have elements of uncertainty.
Anyways thanks for sharing the insights!
Hey man, actually coming over here from poker. What are some suggestions for a new player w smaller bankroll who is familiar with the payout structures and general concepts of DFS.
Also, does me being highly successful at midstakes yearlong fantasy through the years, have as positive a correlation to convert to DFS, as i think it does?
And Congrats on the week
There's some correlation, but I originally came over to DFS from being a successful year long player and struggled for a few months. I played 10-20 leagues a year, probably had around a 10% ROI, but DFS was different and I lost a couple thousand my first foray in. But with a poker and season long background it doesn't take all that long to figure out, probably took me 6 weeks of NFL and I started winning in NBA right away.
I would say play mostly 50/50s, you'll get bumhunted at HU, and the 50/50s probably have more bad players percentage wise for someone new. And play lots of beginner contests if you are just signing up on a site.
Congrats on the awesome week! Antonio Brown is such a beast! Thought he might get covered up well last night, but he still had a good one. Going to be hard to get him in many lineups this year though with his hefty price tag!
What kind of percent of entries do you generally enter H2H / GPP ? 60/40? 70/30? Or is it just all on lineups and the perceived advantages each week?
I put far more into cash games than GPPs. This past week I maybe had 10k worth of GPP lineups and the remaining 110k was in cash games (not all H2H, hard to get much to fill, probably mostly 50/50s but I did get some 1k HUs to fill and one 2k HU against Condia on Fantasydraft). I'd rather try to make the best lineup I can for a lot of money than make a bunch of random lineups with low percentage chances of winning with a little bit on each of them.
Out of curiosity, what kicker did Saahil use that wasn't playing? I can't think of any that were a last second scratch, and it seems crazy that someone who is playing so big and putting in so much time would be able to make a mistake like that.
He played Zach Hocker thinking he was on the saints.
Thanks again for sharing this with us @daut44
I'll repost my questions here since you posted about learning and the process being more important than the result (wich is a hard lesson to learn, but an important one)
What bankroll management rules should be mandatory applied for a new DFS player?
How do you build your confidence in your lineups? I Had a good week too, but I chikened out on putting Ware on all my line ups (even if it was a must play for me).
Also what's your opinion on Stacking? The tops line ups of GPPs had stacks of some sorts.
Again, thanks for the opportunity to discuss DFS on Steemit !
Bankroll management depends on how new someone is. For extremely new players I would suggest playing only small rake, low buyin, 50/50s with a lot of players. i.e. 100 man $1s. I think someone should put in no more than 5% of his bankroll on any single lineup. So if you have a $200 bankroll and are playing draftkings and fanduel, you could do $10 on each of a thursday DK, sunday DK, thursday FD, sunday FD lineup. There is some correlation in your player choices, but there won't be perfect overlap.
Decide who your must plays are and who your great plays are, fit your great plays around your must plays. It's ok to put your must plays (in cash games) everywhere for 3 reasons:
Stacking in GPPs is really good, It's not necessary in cash games
Oh wow, I was so nitty first week, it costed me value for sure.
I'll go back to work for week 2.
Any value/must play on your radar for now? :p
Keep the great content coming !
Damn dude..! Good luck on them crazy moves. Gambling is the devil!
If you ever get too rich to count your moneys, I got you!