As we prepare for the 2015 season, we take a look at strategies that can help you win in the cash game contests on Draftkings. For those of you not familiar with the term “cash game”, it is essentially when you are playing someone head to head, or in 50/50 games where the top half of the field wins the same prize. For these contests you want to minimize risk in order to have a consistent lineup.
Draftkings has made a significant change for this upcoming season, as they have removed the tight end position from the roster, and added an additional flex position. This at the end of the day is good for the game, but also makes it more critical to have the best information available as the pricing has become tougher due to this flex position as historically players were able to have some salary relief with the tight end position.
Quarterback
Since you roster two quarterbacks, this is where you can typically be the most flexible on a week to week basis. The goal here is to typically keep it simple. Since in a cash game you don’t need to finish first in a large field, the ultimate goal of the quarterback position is that you don’t miss. We recommend most weeks to take one of the top 5 quarterbacks based on expected points and then whichever quarterback based on projections rates out to be the best value of the week. This will typically leave you with one good quarterback, and one value quarterback allowing you to spend at other positions. One of the critical things is that if two players are similar values in projections, you will want to go with the quarterback who is the more consistent player. You don’t necessarily need the upside of a GPP, but you just need a solid performance that is as close to your projections as possible.
Running Back
Since Draftkings is a full point-per-reception, this brings in other options that otherwise wouldn’t be playable on Fanduel. Take D.J. Foster from Arizona State last year as a perfect example. D.J. had 1,081 yards and 9 touchdowns rushing last season. Those numbers really aren’t elite when it comes to rushing the football in the college game. Where he was elite, was that he had 62 receptions for 688 yards and 3 touchdowns. This is an extra 148.8 points that he otherwise would not have received. The issue with the receiving running backs is that they aren’t elite scoring threats most of the time, so you’ll have to make sure that you aren’t overpaying for the receptions.
The other key thing about Draftkings is that they provide a bonus for rushing or receiving yards over 100. This is worth 3 points which can really provide a nice boost to your player once he hits that mark. While it isn’t a ton of points, it should be considered when evaluating the running back position. Ideally all of your running backs that you are starting have an opportunity to exceed 100 yards rushing, but this should still be considered if you are trying to decide which player to start as each player has a percentage chance to reach that 100 yard threshold. Far too often, we have seen scenarios where players are adding 3 points to their projections as they believethat player will hit the 100 yard threshold, but then when comparing him to another player, they don't add the 3 points as they have the player falling just short of 100 yards. Realistically, you have to do it as a percentage chance to reach 100 yards, for example, if a player is likely to reach 100 yards, we may have him at an 80% chance which we will then add 2.4 points instead of the full 3.0 to his projections. Meanwhile a player may only have a 20% chance of reaching the 100 yard bonus total, so we will add 0.6 to his projections for that week. While the end result is binary (either the player is going to receive the bonus or not), it is important that you correctly build in your projections that there is still a percentage chance that this player either will or won't hit the bonus.
Wide Receiver
The wide receiver position for Draftkings is all about volume. We typically recommend avoiding the high risk players who only have 3-4 receptions a game and the hope is that he breaks a big play. Sammie Coates was a prime example of this during his time at Auburn. He was a guy who could have 4 catches for 140 yards and 2 touchdowns, but could also have a game where he would have 2 catches for 19 yards and essentially ruin your fantasy week. The variance with this type of player is too much for what we are willing to take on in a cash game. The type of guy you want to target is someone who is going to receive a consistent number of receptions with the ability to get over 100 yards.
When choosing a wide receiver, we will typically look for someone who is in a high scoring offense that will receive a high number of targets. You typically will have to go cheap somewhere to fill out a lineup and the third wide receiver is often the spot where we recommend looking for value. A majority of the time we recommend targeting a player who has seen an uptick in production over the last few games or we recommend a play based on injury news that has been released earlier in the week.
Another strategy that is typically under-utilized in cash games is stacking a quarterback and wide receiver in cash games. Players often think that this is a pure GPP strategy, but this works well if you are already spending on a top quarterback. For example, if you spent a large portion of your salary cap on Cody Kessler last year, if you could afford Nelson Agholar it may make sense to take him in a cash game. This only works for wide receivers who receive a significant percentage of their teams targets, as you want to ensure that if the quarterback has a good game, then the wide receiver will as well since he is receiving a bulk of the targets.
Flex
Now that Draftkings has implemented a two flex system, it is critical that you use the flex properly in order to consistently produce solid lineups. There are a few critical mistakes that new players will make that will create a disadvantage when playing in cash games. Looking at week one, the pricing is tough, so there may be weeks where a tight end grades out to be the best value play of the week, this is why having a projection system is so critical, as it takes an unbiased approach to which players are the best value plays of the week.
1) The first mistake that both new and experienced players make is that they build their roster in a top-down strategy. This means that they start at the top of the roster with their two quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, and finally whatever salary they have left goes to the flex position. Daily Fantasy Sports is similar to the stock market in the sense that you’re constantly looking to exploit value. We recommend looking at both the wide receiver and running back groups as a whole to determine our strategy prior to ever filling out a lineup. From a roster construction standpoint, this is where you can start to identify the value plays each week, so that you can identify strategies on how you want to build your roster. One example of a strategy would be in a week where there is significant value at the RB position, but no great value options at the wide receiver position. You are then able to quickly identify that you want to start three value running back plays along with a stud running back in Nick Chubb or Ezekiel Elliott. Unfortunately there is not a standard way to approach this on a week to week basis, but we will be helping guide you through it as we go through the season.
2) The second mistake is that often times the player in the flex position is in the first game of the day. For the flex position, you want your player to be the last player to play his game as it gives you the most flexibility in your roster for late swaps. For example, let’s say you’re down 30 points and all you have left is a cheap safe running back who is unlikely to get 30 points. Very rarely will a value safe running back hit 30 points, but at the same price is a boom/bust wide receiver that can have 4-5 catches for 150 yards and at least give your team an opportunity to win that week. Unfortunately if your last value running back was in the running back position, this makes it much more difficult to come back from a 30 point deficit. Using this strategy along with the late swap, may not help you win every week, but we have seen cases a couple of times per year where the team has come back from down what seemed like an impossible amount if not for late swap, so since it is available make sure to exploit it to give yourself the best chance of winning each week.
