There are times when I want to say that Draft Kings runs the best DFS site out there. They have Great Software, they get the baseball game right, they have a special Section for beginners, and good customer service. What stops me from ever giving this endorsement is that they have this one SERIOUS drawback. As a matter of fact, this one problem on Draft Kings is 10 times more heinous than pretty much all of the other DFS website's quirks combined.
It's a entirely different game Sunday than it was last Sunday. DFS proponents like to liken the DFS game to Golf when talking about it as a game of skill. This change Draft Kings instituted would be like take then total Yardage of Round of Golf at the Masters, keeping that constant, but dividing it out over 20 holes instead of 18.
Well, anyway, you used to be able to field 5 drivers around an easily understandable average pivot point of 10K. The new pivot is $8.333 on 6 drivers. There are no drivers below that $8000 who Vegas feels has a better than 100 to 1 chance of winning.
Plus, with the extra car in your lineup, you chances of picking a driver who gets into a crash goes up 17%..
Draft Kings has also removed any scoring for Pass Differential, leaving only Place Differential as a place for scoring for drivers who aren't among the few who lead laps or have fastest laps.
Anyway, the focus of the NASCAR game has changed, here are some bullet points:
Draft Kings like to change the game around to maliciously screw with their paying customers.
I don't know why they do this: It's more subtle in baseball, they do odd things like decide arbitrarily to add SS eligibility to Tyler Saladino, who has played 1 career game at that position, while taking away eligibilities from guys like Chris Davis, Billy Hamilton, Dee Gordon, etc. This subtly changes the game. But I'm here to talk about Draft Kings screwing with Fantasy NASCAR. What I saw when I went to check values in a preliminary look at this week's race in Pocono
Draft Kings decided to screw with the players of this game by changing the number of drivers from 5 to 6.
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| Note: these are not my picks; I wanted to see what kind of lineup I could make if I took Harvick & Busch. |
Nothing subtle here. No corresponding move up in dollars alloted for a lineup. Sure, there's significant adjustments in the Driver salaries. But that's just another difference you'll have to come to learn and understand.
It's a entirely different game Sunday than it was last Sunday. DFS proponents like to liken the DFS game to Golf when talking about it as a game of skill. This change Draft Kings instituted would be like take then total Yardage of Round of Golf at the Masters, keeping that constant, but dividing it out over 20 holes instead of 18.
Well, anyway, you used to be able to field 5 drivers around an easily understandable average pivot point of 10K. The new pivot is $8.333 on 6 drivers. There are no drivers below that $8000 who Vegas feels has a better than 100 to 1 chance of winning.
Plus, with the extra car in your lineup, you chances of picking a driver who gets into a crash goes up 17%..
Draft Kings has also removed any scoring for Pass Differential, leaving only Place Differential as a place for scoring for drivers who aren't among the few who lead laps or have fastest laps.
Anyway, the focus of the NASCAR game has changed, here are some bullet points:
- As the top driver almost always scores 100 points, whereas good drivers score in the 40-60 range, there is much more emphasis on picking the winner of the race than there was before.
- Kevin Harvick is $3367 more expensive than the midpoint salary. The cheapest Drivers (Timmy Hill & Travis Kvapil) are prices at $5600 only $2733 from the mean. You draft Harvick, you have to pick two subpar drivers to balance.
- The value plays for your sixth position are probably going to come from the last row of the starting lineup. Learn to love the last row. Cole Whitt has historically returned .294 FFP/per $100 of salary, good for 13th best per $100 just behind Martin Truex and ahead of Matt Kenseth.
- Scores will probably be lower going forward. Some will field a fleet of average racers, where a good day will probably be around 250 points (6 drivers at 42 points). However, a stars and scrubs lineup will be necessary for tournaments because 100 points from one driver is like 2.5 good drivers.
- You're lower end priced drivers will have there scoring point value almost exclusively determined by where they finish the race. Lineup position will be a more critical factor for choosing drivers with salaries below $8000.
- You may want to field different lineups in tournaments versus head to heads, as in other DFS games. Up to this point, this was kind of unnecessary.
- This is only the first of many Draft Kings changes to NASCAR DFS, if past performance is any indication. Don't get too comfortable going forward.
On the plus side, if you never played before, you can start this weekend because everybody is basically back to square one.
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