The 2021 Fantasy Football World Championship begins on Sunday, December 19, live from Miami, where a collection of the world’s best NFL DFS players will be in attendance to compete for a historic $2.5 million top prize. This event is the crown jewel of the DraftKings Championship Series, and the list of competitors in the event includes names like “Awesemo”, “BigT44”, and “theWhistlesGoWooo”, who have been featured on the recent DraftKings series Chasing the G.O.A.T. — where three top-rated fantasy MVPs journey to take down the 2021 Fantasy Football World Championship. In preparation for the event, we spoke to David Bergman, aka “theWhistlesGoWooo”, to talk about the upcoming tournament and his experience being a part of this new show.
The DraftKings Championship Series is the king of competitions, minting 100 millionaires in the 2021-22 season. For more info on the series and all of the events, visit our DraftKings Championship Series Information page.
The 2021 Fantasy Football World Championship is a unique event in terms of the dynamics of watching the results unfold in person and obviously also because of the money at stake, so while David acknowledges there’s a special level of excitement for this particular weekend, he still generally views the strategic elements as similar to those of his usual Sundays.
“The thing is, I’m playing against them every week anyway,” he explained in response to the idea he might have to deploy different strategies for a live final. He did raise an important difference, however, where not everyone playing has accumulated the same number of tickets to the contest. David managed to snag the full nine-ticket maximum for the upcoming weekend, while “Awesemo” will have seven and “BigT44” will have just one. Nonetheless, he’s certainly not overlooking his fellow G.O.A.T. chasers despite the advantage in number of entries:
“BigT has one, but like, he’s as dangerous with one as I am with nine!”
It’s clear that David holds himself in high regard as far as his own skill set is concerned, but he also has a profound level of respect for his fellow competitors, extending well beyond just the two guys he’s sharing the TV spotlight with. It’s probably obvious from the trademark “Wooo!” that corresponds with his now celebrity-like username, but he’s always enjoying himself whenever he gets the chance to participate in a live event.
“Someone in that room is gonna win $2.5 million dollars...that’s crazy. I'm just excited to be there. You know at the Tournament of Champions, when “pettytheft” won the million, I was just so happy to be sitting in the same box as him.”
David spoke about some of his strategies and how he might try to come up with a game plan for his nine entries, though with the seemingly never-ending NFL news cycle it’s likely he’ll be making his decisions close to the start of the contest. Still, though, he prefers to talk about the overall excitement of competing against the best in the world.
“I don’t think my chances of winning are that different in this slate than it is on a regular slate, only because you’re playing against the best people.”
As mentioned above, David is one of three DFS players currently being featured on the DraftKings series Chasing the G.O.A.T. Alex Baker, aka “Awesemo” and Tony Niehaus, aka “BigT44” are the other two, and it’s clearly exciting for David to find his place between two players who are stylistically at opposite ends of the spectrum, where Alex has a highly mathematical approach and Tony has a more sports-specific knowledge set.
“Since I’m newer to playing DFS I tend to watch lineups more closely than they tend to while they’re watching contests go through...if you sit down with Tony during basically any night he’s glued to his phone watching sports, he’s just a huge, huge sports fan. “Awesemo” is basically hands-off, he’s like ‘whatever happens on a night happens on a night’”, and I’m more just like watching sports so that I can watch how DFS ends up unfolding.”
David added that he’s still in the learning process and watches games in part to see if there’s additional information he can pick up that can be added to his DFS game. He also spoke about how he’s become friends with Alex and Tony and the three of them chat more regularly now, though all of them are constantly playing DFS and making sure they have time to set their lineups. There have been parts of the Chasing the G.O.A.T. filming process where they’ve been encouraged to have conversations about other topics, but inevitably they wind up back in the same place every time.
“Undoubtedly within three minutes, all we do is start talking about DFS.”
David did say that one part of the show he was especially fond of was a “cannonball contest” that actually was a real-life activity and not a DFS contest. You can see all of that and more on the upcoming episodes of Chasing the G.O.A.T.
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All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests.
The contents contained in this article do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. All customers should use their own skill and judgment in building lineups.
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