Quote:
Originally Posted by Priptonite
I wish there were an easier way to assess variance vs making bad plays. I think it came up earlier in the thread but it's so hard in DFS to determine if a losing streak is due to suboptimal plays or just variance.
There really isn't an easy way.
Couple things i like to do:
Look at your guys who have a real low percentage owned. Figure out if there was something you missed.
Look at high percentage owned guys who you didn't own. Same thing.
Take a look at players you know are good and compare your LU to theirs. If their picks make sense, good. If they seem out of the blue, you may want to do some deeper digging.
Try and look at close decisions you had, why you picked the one you did, and see how it worked out.
I'll give you an example from last night. I finished on the bubble 6/10 in the DD 109 double up. So here is how i went through my LU:
Pitching: Pitching was a crap shoot last night, any points i won/lost vs the field i'm calling variance
C: had montero. highly owned, performed well. good play by me
1B: Davis. played ok. debated between him and pujols. he played better than pujols. goldy was the guy to own. I definitely understand the thinking here, i decided to save the money. was paying up for goldy correct play, maybe, this is one of those things to kind of keep in mind
2B: not a huge game, but ok. highly owned. ok with it
3B: beltre. played ok. highly owned. thing to look at here is prado put up more points. this combined with goldy outperforming davis makes me think i may have underestimated ARI in coors last night. salary wise, davis+beltre is close to goldy+prado. This may not have been variance and my have been a poor decision on my part
SS: tulo, highly owned, put up a ton of points. 50% owned in the 109, however owings was 30% owned and put up crazy points. this is an obv variance situation.
OF1: parra highly owned, played well
OF2: peralta 20% owned, played well, probalby variance in my favor
OF3: Calhoun also 20% owned, but went 0/3. looking at similar price, dickerson and stubbs both did better. i think calhoun was in a good spot, so i think this was some negative variance, but again, a situation where i may have underestimated coors effect.
Comparing my LU to a couple other good players:
me vs Hoop: only 3 player difference. he had owings
me vs MrW: several different players. he had owings, goldy, and better pitching
me vs Angryfish: 6 players different. i out hit him, but he had wily peralta who got him the points needed to pass me.
so all in all, my guys performed well, maybe a couple spots i could have done better. for the simple reason of tulo outplaying even his ridic salary, but still getting beat handily by owings, i'm going to chalk this loss to variance. Despite that, the common theme for spots i could have improved was i didn't take the coors plays. While I'm not going to make some huge change based on one game, its just a note i'll make to myself to watch in the future.
Comparing to the other good players, 2 out of 3 outperformed me on pitching. Even on garbage pitching days like today, need to work harder at that. Also 2/3 didn't have tulo. I'm sure if you asked them, they would say they were hoping for 15-20 out of owings, not 60+. however they would probably also tell me that even at 48, tulo also way overperformed, and for what could be expected from him, he was overprice.
so thats how i do my game postmortems and try to decide how much variance is playing a role. maybe a waste of time, but i think doing this consistently can be useful.