The dynamic game of Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) requires much more than simply knowing the sport for which we’re entering contests to be successful. We must be adaptable, precise, and open to learning from previous endeavors, the latter of which will be the primary focus of this weekly written piece. Game Theoretic methodologies will allow us to analyze and dissect the previous week’s winner of the largest and most prestigious Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) tournament on DraftKings – the Millionaire Maker. These same tenets of Game Theory, which can most simply be explained as the development of decision-making processes given our own skill and knowledge, assumptions of the field based on the cumulative skill and knowledge of others playing the same game, and the rules and structure of the game itself, will allow us to further train our minds to see beyond the antiquated techniques of roster building being employed by a large portion of the field. Approaching improvement through these methods will give us insight into the anatomy of successful rosters and will help us develop repeatably profitable habit patterns for the coming weeks. We’ll start by looking at the previous week’s winning roster, extract any pertinent lessons for future utilization, and finish with a look ahead towards the coming main slate.
Winning Roster
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Lessons Learned
Causality
Causality is defined by Merriam-Webster as a causal quality or agency, the relation between a cause and its effect between regularly correlated events or phenomena. This relationship amongst interacting agents plays a crucial role in numerous games, particularly those with governing constraints such as those found in Daily Fantasy Sports. In DFS, all rosters are confined to a $50,000 salary cap, meaning roster construction becomes a delicate dance between range of outcomes and salary. That much is mostly understood by the field; however, this idea of causality goes largely unnoticed and underutilized in the theoretical balances of roster construction.
Analyzing the winning roster in the Millionaire Maker put into play by DraftKings user deathstarcanteen can help to illustrate these principles, particular considering many might look at the roster and be immediately put off by its construction.
There were just two running backs and five wide receivers priced at $8,000 or more on the Week 7 main slate on DraftKings. There were also numerous chalk running backs that carried shaky floors due to their yardage-and-touchdown archetypes. If we combine those two truths, we’re left with a slate where the salary equation had multiple paths to disappointing as the running back position was riddled with fragility and the wide receivers on the slate had fewer sheer numbers at the top. Enter causality.
It’s best to visualize this process by envisioning the game tree for the Week 7 slate. A game tree is simply a representation of all the possible outcomes of a particular game with each decision node represented by an additional branch on the tree. In NFL DFS, this game tree is borderline infinite. But we know there will be an optimal path on every iteration of the game tree. The optimal path for salary allocation for Week 7’s slate ended up being to spend salary at the quarterback and tight end positions – by why and how are the important questions to ask here. In order for that to be the case, the running backs and wide receivers needed to fail to return top-end GPP scores on the slate while the mid-range wide receivers also had to return meaningful GPP scores.
These cases ended up coming to fruition, which allowed the optimal path for salary allocation on the game tree to bias towards salary spent at quarterback and tight end. But here’s the kicker – double elite tight end is a technique that hits at a frequency greater than its utilization by the field because the field generally scoffs at its use. The causality, or interaction of agents within the constructs of a salary cap, meant fewer high-priced running backs and wide receivers had to fail on the Week 7 slate for the optimal path on the game tree to shift to salary spent at quarterback and tight end.
There were many factors at play that had to fall into place for the double-elite tight end to approach optimal, but many of those indicators were present heading into the slate. A simple “if-then” thought process will help to fill in the gaps in this discussion. It goes something like this:
IF the fragile chalk at running back failed, THEN it is likelier that similarly fragile plays at lower ownership and lower salary return comparable, or higher, returns. And IF there were fewer high-priced wide receivers due to only 11 games on the main slate and they failed to return GPP-viable scores, THEN the mid-range wide receivers, the ones lacking comparable top-end upside but are capable of returning solid salary multipliers, gain increased value. Also, IF the pay-up options at running back and wide receiver fail, THEN high-priced quarterbacks and tight ends gain increased viability. Finally, IF double-elite tight end has a hit rate higher than its utilization rate by the field, THEN the roster construction carries intrinsic leverage. All of those came together on this slate to return a clear path to first place without introducing suboptimal play, which DraftKings user deeathstarcanteen put together masterfully on the Week 7 slate. We will never know for sure the thought process that led to their $1 million hit, but the roster itself is backed up by the theoretics.
Looking Ahead
Before we examine a few potential plays for the coming Week 8 main slate, it’s important to understand that we now have a full 13-game slate as opposed to the 10-game and 11-game slates of the previous two weeks. That makes a lot of the theoretical aspects covered during the previous two weeks relatively obsolete as those were more tailored to shorter slates with fewer teams, and players, in play.
The Elites
There are four offenses on the Week 8 main slate that are actively designing an offense to exploit the recent defensive tendencies found in the league, primarily the shift to a 2-high base. Those offenses, and their associated offensive play callers, are Bobby Slowik in Houston, Sean McVay in Los Angeles, Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco, and the ultimate, Mike McDaniel in Miami. Furthering the appeal of these four offenses is their concentrated nature.
Nico Collins and Tank Dell account for 51.9 percent of the Texans’ air yards this season. Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua have seen a combined 63 percent of the team’s targets since Kupp returned from injury in Week 5. Deebo Samuel’s absence leaves most of the offense in San Francisco to flow through Brandon Aiyuk, Christian McCaffrey, and George Kittle. Finally, Mike McDaniel’s Dolphins emphasize generating mismatches in multiple levels of the field, which has primarily left the volume flowing through Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, and the backfield. Unsurprisingly, only the Ravens, Cowboys, and Chiefs carry Vegas implied team totals greater than the Texans, Dolphins, and 49ers, while the Rams are implied for only 19.25 against the stout Cowboys defense, likely due to their struggles in the red zone this season (the Rams have attempted the most field goals of all 32 teams this season).
Absence of Value
The field could struggle to identify value on the coming slate, which is likely to lead to more balanced roster constructions in play this week. That would theoretically place increased leverage on the wide receiver priced in the sub-$6,000 range. Christian Kirk, Nico Collins, Drake London, Diontae Johnson, Christian Watson (if healthy), Rashee Rice, Romeo Doubs (if Watson is limited or misses), and Elijah Moore immediately jump off the page in this tier of player pricing.