Tournaments
By Jeff Pasquino
Forget cash-game mentality
For DFS players who are used to playing cash games, where the goal is to just get a winning score, tournaments can pose a big challenge. Players have to forget all about trying to put together a lineup that has valuable and safe players who will definitely produce a respectable score in order to cash. The key difference one must realize is that, in a tournament, first place has extreme value. The biggest upside a cash-game player has is doubling his entry fee. Tournament prizes can be hundreds or even thousands of times the entry fee.
So what changes does a cash-game player have to make? First, do not just put a cash-game lineup in a tournament. While there is a chance that the lineup could earn a prize in any given tournament, a properly constructed cash-game lineup is particularly unlikely to take first place. A cash-game lineup, filled with steady, high-floor players, will be up against tournament lineups with more upside. Winning tournament lineups do not play it safe: they embrace volatile lineups, knowing that if the right combination hits, the payoff is huge.
In summary, the philosophy of a cash game is to win one of the prizes, as they are all the same value. The first-place winner is the same as the last team to win a prize, so there is no incentive to welcome risk. Safe, solid lineups win more often than not, and that is the lineup style of choice in a cash game.
Tournament philosophy is completely different, as the goal is to finish as high in the contest standings as possible to earn those big prizes given out to the best scores. Taking on risk here is not only suggested but required. An appetite for risk, however, should not be confused with reckless abandon. Selecting a lineup constructed with some players who can hit it big in a given week can result in a Top 1% finish and a big prize. Without taking on some level of risk, achieving a first-place score is almost impossible.
Value, upside, and the right combination of both
There are many ways to build a lineup for a given contest. By studying the most successful strategies that have resulted in top finishes in GPP tournaments, several themes can be extracted. Combining the right groups of players who meet certain criteria is not necessarily a guarantee for success, but by considering how to build a lineup for a tournament, we can increase our chances of winning it big and taking home a top prize.
Value plays do matter, but upside matters more
When finding the right players to put in your tournament lineup, many will target value plays first. That's a good starting point, as these can be the foundation of a solid score that leads to a Top 1% finish. Most weeks, lf value plays can be found for cash games, but a key question has to be asked first—what does it mean to be a value play for a tournament contest?
Back in the discussion of cash games, we defined a value player as "2x player," which means that the player is expected to score at least twice as many fantasy points as his salary divided by $1,000. That means a $7,000 wide receiver has to be expected to score 14 or more fantasy points to reach value for a cash game. For tournaments, the bar needs to be raised. As one learns by studying successful tournament lineups at FanDuel, lineup scores in the range of 180 total points are required for a Top 10 finish, so that translates to a tournament value player to be a "3x player" or better. That severely reduces the population of value players each week. This guideline can help a player narrow the list of players who can be considered for their weekly lineup.
To find players who can reach tournament value, a player should calculate what it would take for a player to reach a fantasy score in accordance to the needed multiplier of his salary. Going back to our earlier example of a $7,000 wide receiver, he needs to get to 21 points to get full tournament value. One way to see what that would take is to start with a baseline of 100 yards and a touchdown and see what that would work out to be in points. Let's assume this player needs six catches to get to 100 yards and find the end zone. With FanDuel's half-point-per-reception scoring, a 6-100-1 stat line yields three points for the six catches, 10 points for 100 yards, and six more for the score—a total of 19 points. That is nearly value right there, so tweaking the numbers a little to 7-115-1 gives 21 points. So the question a player needs to ask about a given $7,000 wide receiver is this: how easily can he attain a statistical performance of 7-115-1 this week? If the answer is that he can do it pretty easily or that there is a strong likelihood of getting 7-10 catches, 100-120 yards and a touchdown, then he passes the test and can be on the short list of options for your tournament lineups.
Upside
Another way to find players capable of making points for the week is to consider upside plays. These are players who typically do not cost as much as normal weekly starting fantasy options, but given their lower salaries they can reach value with their matchup for the coming week. A typical example is a backup running back who is expected to see far more action than expected due to an injury to the normal starter. A $5,000 running back who should get 20-25 touches is not normal, but when it does happen (and it happens far more often than most realize) then he immediately gets on that short list for DFS tournament consideration.
Note that this same player is likely to be on cash-game lists as well, and for good reason. Any player with a high probability of getting to tournament value is, by definition, a cash-game option. This goes back to the mentality discussion earlier in this section where you have to remember what your goal is for each and every lineup you create. Some players will pass the criteria for both cash and tournament rosters, but that does not mean that all of the cash players will be worth a tournament lineup spot.
True upside plays often come from opportunities that arise during an NFL week. Injuries, suspensions, benchings, and depth chart changes can turn a minimally priced player at the bottom of the DFS salary list into a player with upside value. It is not hard to imagine a new starting player with a bargain basement salary that has starter snaps and production to have a much higher likelihood to reach tournament value based on that new status. These players have to be at the top of a player's weekly list for lineup consideration.
Variance and Volatility
Because touchdowns are relatively rare, there is substantial, inherent variance in DFS football production. This volatility in production is often considered a negative when it comes to cash games, as a cash-game player wants to have a safe and productive roster. Unlike cash games, tournaments force a player to consider variance a positive factor and to embrace the volatility in scoring (within reason). Rostering a wide receiver that only scores once in a while is a risky play in a cash game, but a tournament player is an eternal optimist, focusing on his team's potential when the stars align and his players do hit it big.
Uniqueness
It goes without saying that if you finish at the top of a tournament, you definitely do not want to split that top prize with anyone else—but that is not the main reason you want to have a unique lineup. If a DFS roster has a player who is not owned by many other teams and that player has a huge game, that team is that much further ahead of the competition.
Immediately after a tournament begins, FanDuel displays the ownership percentage of each player—the percentage of teams in that tournament that the player is on. For example, in a 1,000-entry tournament that has 100 teams using the Seattle defense, the Seahawks' 10% ownership will be shown.
One way to think about uniqueness is to remember the old saying, "A rising tide lifts all boats." If a player is on everyone's roster, his performance helps all teams by the same amount—which is to say that it helps no one. If just a few teams lack that player, those teams will find themselves ahead or behind the great morass of teams that do have him (depending on his performance) and that is a good situation for those few teams. Being one of the top few teams half the time and one of the bottom few teams half the time is better in a tournament than being stuck in the middle all the time. Uncommonly owned players are the ones with the greatest potential to pull you away from the middle and separate you from the crowd. This is where a savvy player can improve his chances by finding players who are likely to be off the beaten path.
A running back who is suddenly active at the last minute (or starting due to a last-minute scratch) could increase your uniqueness, just like owning a player who is coming off of an injury that many will want to avoid. The key is to find players who will be uncommonly owned for reasons other than that they are poor values. Rostering a unique player who performs poorly will uniquely hurt your team, so you're looking for players with decent value that others are overlooking…not for players with terrible value whom others are rationally avoiding.
Discussions about the value of unique lineups continue in DFS circles, as it is not clear whether a unique lineup is truly necessary to win the top prize in a GPP contest. There is no question that winners of major contests typically have at least one high-performing player who is not widely owned. It is also true that winning rosters do not typically have a great number of such players—usually three at the very most. Even in tournaments, there is such a thing as too much risk.
Stacks
Tournament lineups that finish at or near the top of GPP contests often have what are considered "stacks," which are teammate pairings of quarterback and either a wide receiver or tight end. The theory behind this goes back to embracing upside, as a big game by a receiver or tight end for a given team assures a good game by the quarterback. Lineups that have one of the best wide receiver performances of the week will greatly increase the chances of having a prize-winning roster, but that likelihood significantly increases if the lineup contains that receiver's quarterback as well.
Another stacking concept that is sometimes used by successful lineups is pairing some combination of an NFL team's running back, kicker, or defense. A team with a big lead and a strong defensive showing will likely run the ball in the second half of the game, resulting in bigger numbers for the lead rusher.
Correlations: Positive and Negative
The reason it makes sense to stack a quarterback with his wide receiver (or a running back with his defense) is that their performances are positively correlated with each other. This means that the performance of one of the pair is tied closely to the other, and that the direction of the performances is the same (a good game by one usually means a good game by the other).
Players' performances can also be negatively correlated with each other: a good game by one usually means a bad game by the other. For example, taking two running backs from the same NFL game (usually opposing starting running backs) can give a negative correlation. While it is quite possible that one of the two backs will have a big game, it is rare for two backs in the same game to both put up big numbers.
In tournaments, positive correlations are sought after, while negative correlations are to be avoided.
One of the best (and easiest to avoid) examples of negative correlation is a team defense opposite your starting quarterback. If the quarterback has a big game—exactly what you want—then the defense is not going to have a good performance. Similarly, when the defense has a great game, the quarterback probably won't. In general, you should avoid rostering a team defense that faces any of your offensive players.
Which Games to Target; Vegas Is Your Friend
Players who score a lot of points can generally be found in high-scoring games, so that's a good place to look for them. Which games will be high-scoring? We can't know for sure, but we can get a pretty good clue from the sports books. By looking at the betting lines published on any number of sites, you can find both the expected point total (i.e., over/under) and the point spread for every NFL game in the coming week. By doing some simple math, you can calculate the expected number of points a team is expected to score for each game. Here is an example:
Philadelphia (51)
Dallas (-3)
The 51 represents the total expected points for the Eagles-Cowboys clash. Dallas is favored by three points as shown by the "-3" next to Dallas, so by subtracting that number from the total we have 48 points. Divide that evenly to the Eagles (24) and Dallas (24) and adding back the three points that Dallas was given by Las Vegas and we see that the expected points for this game is Cowboys 27, Eagles 24. Now that is not a guarantee by any means of the outcome of that contest, but it is a very good indication of what Las Vegas expects to see as the most likely outcome.
By doing the math for all of the coming contests for the week, we'll see that several teams are likely to be at or near 30 points or more. Those are the teams that should be targeted for offensive players. Taking players in contests with totals near the higher end (usually 50 points or more) is also a good idea. Building a lineup around players in high-scoring games is a worthwhile tactic.
