Tournaments are sucker bets

I don't like tournaments because the raw odds of winning better than 3x your money, generally doesn't merit the risk.  A typical tournament gives you about a 1 in 10 chance of winning 3x (or better) your money, with only a 2 in 10 chance of breaking even. Whereas, in a Triple up, you start out with a 1 in 3 chance of tripling your money and/or winning anything, however, I would be remiss:

-If I didn't admit that tournaments are an important part of DFS.

-If I didn't admit that I played them once in a while.
-If I didn't admit that pretty much all DFS bets are sucker bets.

Anyway, I played one last night, and won, And won 5x the entry fee.  I don't know if I'm just posting this to brag; I hope I'm not.  Considering the reflective nature of my project here, I want to examine the match to see if there is anything to be learned:

My Roster is on the left and the overall winner is on the right.  It was a limited late night slate, and the only game I played last night on Draft Kings. Three things that probably ought to have been obvious become, well, more obvious.

• Pitching is the key to victory

As in all games, the pitching choices pretty much set your tone for the night.  In tournaments, even more so.  But it's more about getting a good performance from an underpriced pitcher.  The reason I played in the tournament at all is because I really thought Rubby De La Rosa was the best play of the night.  I thought he has decent stuff and was facing a weak hitting team in San Diego in the wonderfully spacious PetCo Park.  He was the guy I built my roster around and didn't feel comfortable enough to take that kind of stand looking at only an 80% return in a H2H.  I was right and wrong, as it appears that Roenis Elias did have a better night.  But the principle is sound: to compete in tournament, you need a value pitcher to do well.

• Great Players are a part of any victorious lineup.

I've been so focused on value lately that I've been ignoring how good the Paul Goldschmidt's and Mike Trout's of the world have been.  Most of my recent losses have come from the other guy getting good games from predictably good players.  The purpose of shopping for value players is to be able to roster a superstar or two.  A team of value players will perform pretty much like what you'd expect them to, maybe a little above expectations, but rarely well above them.

• A Great Night from a Hitter can offset a great night from a pitcher.

In the picture above, 5 players (Steven Vogt, Ben Zobrist, Justin Turner, Albert Pujols, and Buster Posey) scored as good as a good pitcher for half the price.  4 of them scored 30+ points.  This means you can make up for inferior pitching with a hitter.  However, the idea of predicting a 20 point night out of a hitter is far more difficult that predicting a similar outing from a pitcher. Guessing Corey Kluber strikes out 8 over 6 innings is easier to be right about than hoping to get a Grand Slam out of Giancarlo Stanton. The high cost of pitchers stems from their predictability, more than than from their production.

• Superstars can let you down

In the battle, Mike Trout only scored 11.  Yasiel Puig and Carlos Correa did nothing.  Not to mention the unpictured outings by James Shields and Sonny Gray in other games.  It's still a bit of a crapshoot, and getting a big name stud hitter doesn't guarantee a big name stud outcome.  Grabbing these players is important because of the potentiality of an awesome night.  The odds of Stanton carrying your team are much better than Andre Either and light years greater than getting that sort of production out of Brock Holt or Cameron Maybin.

Or maybe I'm just bragging about winning last night. If a life unexamined is not worth living, I say, a DFS contest unexamined is not worth playing.  This type of exercise focuses my mind for the next foray, I hope you find a little value in it.