Strategy
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2020 MLB Team Preview: New York Yankees
Garion Thorne provides his thoughts on what the 60-game MLB season could look like for the Yankees.
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5 Must Know Facts About Daily Fantasy Football
What are the five things you should know before you dive into daily fantasy football contests on DraftKings?
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Tao of Bales: 5 Important Philosophical Thoughts on Daily Fantasy Sports
Jonathan Bales is a DraftKings Pro and the author of the Fantasy Sports for Smart People book series, most recently Fantasy Football for Smart People: How to Win at Daily Fantasy Sports. I’ve been getting a ton of requests on Twitter to break down some of my thoughts on…
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NFL Cash Game Strategy
"Play the good players." When constructing a cash-game (H2H, double up, 50/50) lineup, that quote is only half-kidding. We want to use the players we are absolutely sure about, the ones with the highest statistical floors – even if it means sacrificing a ceiling. We don’t…
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Important Fantasy Stats for Wide Receivers
I tend to analyze a lot of crap that many people think is inconsequential – things like a player’s hand size or his broad jump or how he feels about eating cereal for dinner. Why? In his book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art…
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Tao of Bales: The Secrets of Daily Fantasy Sports
Jonathan Bales is a DraftKings Pro and the author of the Fantasy Sports for Smart People book series, most recently Fantasy Football for Smart People: How to Win at Daily Fantasy Sports. I think I mentioned this in a past post, but I just finished a book called Zero…
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The Art of Stacking (Or Not) in Daily Fantasy Baseball
Jonathan Bales is the author of Fantasy Baseball for Smart People—a guide designed to help you profit on DraftKings. One of the reasons I love GPP play is because the landscape is constantly evolving. I think you can make a decent argument that there’s no true…
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Daily MLB Tip: Utilize the Vegas Lines
Jonathan Bales is the author of Fantasy Baseball for Smart People—a guide designed to help you profit on DraftKings. The best companies in the world do a really nice job of outsourcing tasks that increase the overall efficiency of the company while aiding in improving their…
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Daily MLB Tip: Batting Order Impacts Base-Stealers
Chicks dig the long ball. I know that to be true because my girlfriend—who magically became interested in fantasy baseball after I qualified for a championship that resulted in a free trip to the Bahamas for us—asks me each morning, "Get any dongs last night?" When…
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My Pitcher Selection Philosophy
Throughout Fantasy Baseball for Smart People, I made an effort to detail how I try to structure daily fantasy baseball teams that will benefit from chaos—antifragile lineups that excel when "things go wrong." Antifragility is of course in opposition to fragility. A wine glass is fragile—it…
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Daily MLB Tip: Handedness Matters
Over the course of a season, baseball stats are fairly consistent. We know that Max Scherzer is going to strike out at least X batters and that Mike Trout will hit a minimum of Y home runs. In a single night, though, predicting performance is much trickier.…
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Identifying Randomness in MLB
I often find myself jumping on players whose price has recently fallen—both batters and pitchers, although mostly the former—due to poor recent play. It’s not that I think that some form of streaky play is impossible—whether it’s due to changes in confidence, health, or whatever. I…
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MLB Tips: Predicting Ownership
Jonathan Bales is the author of Fantasy Baseball for Smart People—a guide designed to help you profit on DraftKings. A huge part of winning on DraftKings is about identifying value. Today’s daily fantasy MLB tip will take a look at a different way to identify that…
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Daily MLB Tips: Ballpark Factors
Jonathan Bales is the author of Fantasy Baseball for Smart People—a guide designed to help you profit on DraftKings. My daily fantasy baseball research is basically broken down into two main categories based on whether or not the data is static or flexible. Examples of the…
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Daily MLB Tip: Emphasize Top of the Order
Jonathan Bales is the author of Fantasy Baseball for Smart People—a guide designed to help you profit on DraftKings. Daily fantasy baseball is a game of processing information. There are a multitude of factors that go into projecting players and creating a lineup. Some of those…
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Daily Fantasy Sports Game Theory: A Preview of My New Book
Jonathan Bales is the author of the Fantasy Sports for Smart People book series—a collection of guides designed to help you win on DraftKings. I wasn’t sure if I was going to write a new daily fantasy book for NFL this year. I sort of pushed…
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When is it Smart to Fade the Chalk?
I’m clearly fascinated with game theory’s role in daily fantasy sports tournament success, and I think that’s really the next frontier of research. I think it’s natural to dismiss game theory or a contrarian style of play and say, "Well you just need to pick the…
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Daily MLB Tip: Consistency Affects Optimal Style of Play
Jonathan Bales is the author of Fantasy Baseball for Smart People—a guide designed to help you profit on DraftKings. Warren Buffett once said, "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." I think that’s pretty sound advice for pretty much all aspects…
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MLB Tips: Use Away Bats in Cash Games
Jonathan Bales is the author of Fantasy Baseball for Smart People—a guide designed to help you profit on DraftKings. Every day of daily fantasy baseball is different, so there are no everlasting rules like "Always pay for pitching" that make sense in every situation. The answer…
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Daily MLB Tip: When to Punt Pitchers
I’ve discussed the importance of paying for top pitching quite a bit this season. In both 50/50s and GPPs last year, winning teams paid more (a few hundred dollars, on average) for pitching than teams that didn’t cash. Top pitchers are more consistent and have higher…
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Tao of Bales: Be Extreme
I like to play this game with people where I ask them something ridiculous to see how much they’d do for money. Like "Would you eat a live worm for $50" or, even worse, "Would you vote for Trump this year for $1,000?" The answer is…
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2020 Fantasy Football: How to Select Which Contests to Play, Manage Bankroll on DraftKings
Winning in DFS isn’t simply about picking the right players. Game selection is a huge part of it as well. Game selection is a complicated topic because everyone should have different goals. The overwhelming majority of people should be playing DFS football for pure fun. A…
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How does scoring change in playoffs?
Of all of the daily fantasy sports you can play on DraftKings, I think football is the one through which team success is most accurately reflected on the individual level. Whereas an NBA player can produce elite fantasy numbers even if his team doesn’t score a…
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What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About DFS
I majored in Philosophy in college. I did that for the most ridiculous reason you could ever possibly imagine: I like it. Crazy, right? How in the world can someone have a successful life without majoring in Business? Please excuse me while I answer 100 angry…
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5 Ways to Become a Better DFS Player
A little while back, I published an article called "11 Rules for Winning at Daily Fantasy Sports." The post contained rules that I stole from an article from one of my favorite writers—James Altucher. I love taking ideas from one field and applying them to another,…
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Which stats matter most for WRs?
I tend to analyze a lot of crap that many people think is inconsequential – things like a player’s hand size or his broad jump or how he feels about eating cereal for dinner. Why? In his book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art…
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How to Become a Great DFS Player
Succeeding on DraftKings is about identifying which players are going to perform the best over the course of just a single game. For the most part, you don’t need to worry about injuries or how a player is going to produce down the line; you just…
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Solving the 50/50 Multi-Entry Dilemma
You and your buddies are at a bar watching the game. Your team is down by four points with one minute left and they’re lining up for an onside kick. One of your friends asks you if you think your team is going to recover it,…
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How many lineups should I play?
There’s not too much discussion about the merits of multi-entry in DraftKings tournaments-most people agree that you can enter a GPP a bunch of times and still maintain a positive expected value-but there’s a fierce debate over how many lineups you should construct for cash games…
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Consistency and Cash Games
One of the most overrated stats in all of football is yards per carry (YPC). The stat is pretty much useless because it’s so affected by outliers. A running back can be having a poor game of 15 carries for 45 yards (3.0 YPC), then break…
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How to Win the Millionaire Maker
Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night and said to myself, "Holy crap, DraftKings is gonna make someone a millionaire on a $27 entry." No really, I think the Millionaire Maker is about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen-cooler than wearing foam…
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How to Allocate Your Salary Cap
When it comes down to it, winning on DraftKings is about figuring out where and how to spend your money; you need to properly allocate your $50,000 salary cap to the right players. Individual player evaluation is of course a big part of that, but I…