David Does Daily (Fantasy): Paying For Peyton Paid Off

This is the seventh installment in David’s diary about playing one-day fantasy football for the first time. All other posts are listed in this blog section.

This week, I continued to follow my strategy of paying top dollar for quarterbacks and running backs, spending as little as possible on kicking, and looking for bargains at the wide receiver position.

Once again, my top lineup did very well, providing more than 100% ROI, and the other six lineups … pretty much stunk.

Week 6 Results Recap

  • Initial Bankroll: $250
  • Bankroll Entering Week 6: $254.84
  • Week 6 Net Winnings: +$17.30
  • Week 6 Bonuses+$1.80
  • Bankroll After Week 6: $273.94

Here’s a screencap of my results from Week 6 (click to view larger):

[Results from my top lineup are outlined in green.]

FanDuel 2014 Week 6 results

 

The TeamRankings Private Tournament

As I do every week, I also entered the TeamRankings private tournament (more info here) using the screen name teamrankings, as opposed to my personal account, tr_david.

This week, … embarrassingly, I entered a quick “from the gut” lineup early in the week to save a spot in the tournament, and then forgot to update it on Sunday. Unsurprisingly, it did poorly, finishing in 133rd place out of 176 entries.

Good to know my research adds value over trusting my gut, I guess.

Lineup Notes

Here are links to each of my lineups, with a few notes.

Main Head-to-Head and 50/50 Lineup
(137.08 pts, 17-1 H2H, 2 for 2 in 50/50’s, cashed in 3 of 3 tournaments, net +$33 on $25 in entry fees)

Based on the performances of my top lineups in past weeks, I made the decision early on this week to enter my top lineup in both head-to-heads and some tournaments of varying sizes. I’m glad I did, as over half the net winnings for this lineup came from the three tournaments I entered, where I finished 1st of 20, 5th of 100, and 3,557th of 57,471. Without those three tournaments , I would have been negative overall for the week.

For this top lineup, I used the same basic strategy I outlined last week. The main points of emphasis this week were:

  1. Pay for stud QB and RBs.
  2. Use Matt Forte, because the Falcons have been terrible against pass-catching RB’s, and Forte is a great one.
  3. Use the Titans because every defense scores well against the Jaguars.
  4. Don’t spend too much on any one WR, if it prevents me from getting other players I want.
  5. Be willing to spend on DEF and TE if there’s a matchup that looks really juicy.
  6. Try not to spend much money on K.

Once again, it could not have worked out much better, as this lineup earned a positive return in 22 of the 23 contests I entered it in.

Second Head-to-Head and 50/50 Lineup
(100.42 pts, 1-8 H2H, 0 for 2 in 50/50’s, cashed in 0 of 3 tournaments, net -$13.20 on $15 in entry fees)

I thought Matt Forte, Le’Veon Bell, and Golden Tate were the best picks from my top lineup, but I wasn’t really sold on the rest, so I made a second lineup with second choices at other positions. It didn’t do well, for 3 main reasons:

  1. Roethlisberger did worse than Manning.
  2. Martellus Bennett did worse than Greg Olsen.
  3. Most importantly … Wes Welker and Andrew Hawkins combined for 1.3 points on $12,100 in this lineup, whereas Andrew Holmes and Doug Baldwin combined for 30.2 points on $9,200 in my main lineup.

This reinforces the idea that it’s better to spend big money on QB and RB (and to a lesser extent TE) than on WR.

Tournament Lineups

I entered 5 lineups in a large $1 tournament (57,471 entries), in the hopes that one would hit. Only one cashed, and it wasn’t for much. Here I’ll list the main ideas for each, which I then tried to fill in around with solid values:

I’m not sure there’s really a lesson to be learned from these 5 entries. One positive note is that the winning entry in this tournament used 4 players that featured in some of my lineups this week (Manning, Forte, Branden Oliver, Demaryius Thomas), and two wide receivers that were on my short list of possible bargains, but just missed the cut (Brandon LaFell, Mohamed Sanu). So I apparently came pretty close to doing quite well.