David Does Daily (Fantasy): A Big Week 5 Puts Me Up For The Year

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

I’m crunched for time, so I’ll cut right to the chase: I kicked ass last week. 🙂

I’m playing low stakes, and obviously benefiting from a ton of beginner’s luck, but still — my top lineup, the one I spent a bunch of time on, was a perfect 14-0 in head to head matches, cashed in both 50/50’s I entered, and would have cashed in every tournament I entered (had I used it instead of my actual tournament lineups).

Week 5 Results Recap

  • Bankroll Entering Week 5: $221.72
  • Week 5 Winnings & Bonuses: +$33.12 (my first winning week!)
  • Bankroll After Week 5: $254.84 (above where I started!)

The tables were getting a little large and unwieldy, so here’s a screencap of my results from Week 5 (click to view larger):

David Hess FanDuel 2014 Week 5 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, I simply used my personal top 50/50 lineup. That lineup finished 1st out of 167 players!

Lineup Notes

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

Main Head-to-Head and 50/50 Lineup (145.34 pts, 14-0 H2H, 1 for 1 in 50/50’s) — I used the same basic strategy I outlined last week, with a couple tweaks. My guidelines this week were:

  1. Pay for stud QB and RBs.
  2. If it works out, try to get RBs who are playing against eachother, in the hopes that at least one of the two teams will jump out to a lead and pound the rock all game. (The performance of the two opposing RBs should be inversely correlated, decreasing the chance I get two busts at the position.)
  3. Don’t spend too much on any one WR, if it prevents me from getting other players I want.
  4. Be willing to spend on DEF and TE if there’s a matchup that looks really juicy.
  5. Don’t spend money on K.

It could not have worked out much better. I even accidentally entered some $5 head-to-head contests, and won all of those (I meant to enter 5 $1 contests for a total of $5, but must have had a brain fart when setting up the contests, and set them to $5 each.)

If you include the results of the TeamRankings private tournament, this lineup went 14-0 in head-to-head matches, and 2 for 2 in 50/50’s, for a profit of $38.80 on entry fees of $46.

Tournament Lineup #1 (107 pts, no cash) — Stack on the Giants. Didn’t work well.

Tournament Lineup #2 (129.52 pts, 5th of 100 in tourney, 1 for 1 in 50/50’s) — This was a weird lineup. Basically a QB-less stack on the Saints, with a couple stud WR’s. Not sure what I was thinking, but it worked out.

Tournament Lineup #3 (96.66 pts, 14th of 20 in tourney) — Mini stack on the Texans, plus used the opposing RB.

Resources

I used 4 main resources last week:

I tried to only use players that both RotoWire and numberFire projected to do well. I also checked how the defenses they were facing had fared against their position so far this season, using Football Outsiders team defense data. That team defense check, in particular, is how I settled on Kendall Wright as a cheap WR — Cleveland has completely stunk up the joint against top wideouts this season, and they did so again against Wright.

A Little More Info On Consistency By Position

This week, when looking around for archived FanDuel scoring info, I found a site that I am sure I’m going to use in the future. There is a treasure trove of data here, but I’m most excited about the archived FanDuel salary info:

I already used it to take a quick look at how paying good money for a QB or WR was less risky than paying good money for a WR, at least in Week 5.

Lowest 2014 Week 5 FanDuel Points Scored By A Player That Costs At Least $8,000, By Position

  • QB: 12.64 (Matthew Stafford, $8,800)
  • RB: 8.2 (Giovani Bernard, $8,800)
  • WR: 1.2 (Calvin Johnson, $8,900)
  • TE: 21.6 (Julius Thomas, $8,000 … but he was the only $8K tight end, so not really a fair comparison)

So, yeah — spend money on wide receivers in 50/50 games at your own risk.