Max DaLury Revisited

I heard Max DaLury today on the Rotogrinders Daily Fantasy Fix Podcast while I was at the gym, and I think I vastly underestimated one aspect of his strategy (you can listen to this podcast on Stitcher here, it is 28 minutes long).

I didn't even consider the "stacking" part of the plan.

Max Dalury's Twitter Photo

Max said on the podcast that he normally goes with six players from a team he chooses to stack with.  He was talking about stacking Blue Jays in a night where he won 51% of 888 rosters laid out in tournaments.  When he was pressed as to how he chose the six, beyond the top 2 guys (Josh Donaldson & Joe Bautista), he said he "didn't want to go into that part of the strategy."  This deferral means that stacking strategy is a part of the equation that he feels is too valuable to divulge.  Which clearly tells me that my overlooking this concept is a significant error on my part.

The only other thing he refrained from divulging was how he actually finds the time to enter and track 888 rosters on a given night.

I will venture a guess as to what this means for his "Stacking Strategy," and there are two ideas that may explain it:

• The Cornerstone Concept

I've heard other players who talk about rostering multiple lineups talk about choosing two or three players as "anchors" for their team, while mixing up the other 5 or 6 hitters around them.  Because he was forthcoming with the idea that he did focus on Bautista and Donaldson, it may be that he expands the anchoring concept into the stacking concept when focusing on one team. Pick one or two batters to build around, and make players 3, 4, and 5 change within the team.  If you're stacking the same team in multiple lineups, you probably shouldn't be using the same stack in all of them.  Because the nature of this game is highly random, you need exposure and luck, a lot more than expert prediction skills.  It would make sense that if he had a good read on how to pick secondary and tertiary players with a single MLB team, he'd want to keep that to himself.

• The Volume Concept

I would be remiss if I didn't consider the possibility that there was absolutely no strategy at all.  When you play 500+ lineups, you can cover the vast majority of possible combinations, possibly all of the reasonably likely high quality options. What skill there was may not have been in choosing the players from Toronto to focus on, but rather in choosing Toronto and the weak arm of John Danks to exploit in the first place. If this were the case, he would refrain from revealing this information because it would be embarrassing to say that there's not really any skill to it.

I've noticed that the Max DaLury handle pops up in virtually every Satellite, Step contest, and Qualifier.  This means that it's part of his strategy to get as many free games as he can to make the extremely high volume multiple entry scheme more affordable.

He did say one thing that bears repeating when discussing how he started in Daily Fantasy (This is a paraphrase not a direct quote, but the concept itself is important).

:

The reason you should be playing is because it's fun.  It's more fun to win money, but it needs to be fun for you regardless.

GPP (sic) Lineups

Generally, there are two types of games available on Daily Fantasy sites.  They are normally referred to as GPP and Cash Games.  It is important to note that the lineup strategy differs in each of these games.

I don't like the term "GPP" used in DFS to refer to tournament style contests where you play a lot of people for higher rewards.  GPP stands for Guaranteed Prize Pool, which covers many of these games, but many of the 50/50 games carry the same designation.  Also, many of the non-guaranteed games, like 10 man leagues or just about any winner take all format, should employ similar tactics. Cash games, on the other hand, cover H2H and 50/50's, and this moniker is also a little problematic, as virtually all games are awarded cash prizes (besides special prize games and steps).  The confusing terminology is probably one of the myriad ways the people in the know about DFS try to obfuscate the game to make it harder on new players.  I also think Triple Ups and 3-5 man leagues are sort of a hybrid between the two, and should be addressed by a blended approach.  The divisions are completely based on odds of winning considering the match a completely random occurrence.

If you remove the skill of lineup selection from the game, your odds of winning are (I've included the phrases I like to use to help understand my writing in other articles):

My Terminology	Type of Game	Approx Odds	Odds as Percent
Head to Head	Cash	1 in 2	50%
Hybrid	"Leagues?"	1 in 3-5	33%
Tournament	GPP	20 in 100	20%

Of course this doesn't take into consideration player skill, and some Double ups & Triple Ups add a few more entrants to make it a a true triple up (not $1 to win $1.80, but $1 to win $2) which decreases the raw odds by a small, but noticeable amount.  And, in tournaments, the percent of winners fluctuates depending upon the game, but 20% is a solid rough approximation.  Your skill is, of course, a very important factor to attempt to skew these odds in your favor.

Anyway, I heard a "pro" DFS player named David Epstein (BW5126-not the World Series MVP), who almost exclusively plays Tournaments on the Rotogrinders Daily Podcast earlier this week.  He recently won $100K in a baseball tournament. I'm not saying I learned everything I need to know from the 20 minute discussion, but my basic interpretation of his process looks like this:

• He starts, as all do, by pitcher selection
• He targets 6 of the 8 batter selections with specific players
• He then selects the remaining 2 based on best available, and can play upward of 20 variations rotating the last two slots on a significant number of scorecards.

I wanted to note this because I'm am going to play a few more tournaments going forward to try to understand this part of the DFS universe.  I'll be showing more frequent losses and, hopefully, higher payouts when I win.  The advice from David Epstein, I believe, is a good starting point.  Thankfully, Draft Kings runs a daily tournament called Quarter Arcade, which costs what you think it does, that makes testing ideas possible without punishing your bankroll.  There are also games at very affordable $1, $2, $3 & $5 price points.