Nothing, no services or touts. I refuse to read an opinions during the season. I don't use projections (other than a quick glance at FG's full season stuff from time to time as a guide for unknown players, usually pitchers) No model, no optimizer, no excel. All my notes and charts are hand written. I make a list of players I want to use, then I build and enter everything 1 at a time with the clicks and the clacks.

As for Arrieta there were several factors working against him, off the top of my head:

1) Price, he was very expensive and solid value hitting options seemed more limited than normal.

2) Vegas wasn't as crazy about him/the Cubs as I would have thought. Last I looked he was around -170 with a 7 total. Favorable line to be sure but not the -200 or better 6.5 lines that we've been seeing for some of the big dogs lately.

3) I haven't reviewed percentages but I'm guessing Nola was very widely owned. He's been good and had the cake mu with Atl @Home. He was also much cheaper than Arrieta. Cole had a nice mu @Home vs Col as well, and he was 2K less than Arrieta.


Honestly Nola was my #1 on paper considering price, by a lot. Still, the big elite aces have a gravitational pull for me. I just can't resist overweighting these guys. All that said I was floored he was only 7.5% in the $25 game.


LT- Thanks. The more I dig into BP's the more edge I think there is to be mined there. It's just one piece of the big puzzle though. The more I think about strategy the better I get. It's easy to get lazy, and more for me it's easy to get tunnel vision thinking 1 way is the way, when in reality there are lots of ways to skin this cat.

Low volume day as I didn't care for any of the 3 slates, skipped the 1pm and 4pm altogether.














Day 49

Buyins $1200, Payout $712, -$488

Season +$54,443


This is hard to do if you have any brain activity :




Sun will be an even lower volume day. I don't care for the slate at all and I'm out for the day at 1pm so I'm just going to throw a few hundred bucks worth of stuff together. Back on the attack Monday

Low volume day, as expected. Lots of Thor, who rolled, not much hitting.












Day 50

Buyins $748, Payout $397, -$351

Season +$54,092


I was talking about moving up before my big day Fri, so I'm going to kick that up a notch now. Here's tomorrow:




I just added the Home Run ($100) last week and now I'm adding the Monster ($300). Also the Slam pays $15K to first so normally I'd only play 5% of that, or 30 entries ($750) but I'm bumping that up to 40 entries, bumping the Rally up from 30 to 40 entries as well. I also cut my Squeeze entries down a bit to focus a little more on quality over quantity with my higher stakes games. I'll still max out my 250 games $10 and under as I'll replace the Squeeze entries with low stakes sats, which I wont have to make unique lineups for.

Small loss considering the hitting I used the most LAA, TEX, LAD scored 3 runs combined. Using more Kershaw and Cueto than the pack helped:



















Day 51

Buyins $2335, Payout $1817, -$518

Season +$53,574



Taking my biggest shot tomorrow due to Super Monster:




Not messing with any sats so 1 screen shot will tell the whole story

GL in the Super Monster!!! Take it down!

Gonna give it a try.

Very nerve racking playing multiple $300 entries. It must have thrown me off my game as I ended up with a share of Jimmy Nelson and a Matt Harvey.

Other pitchers: Sale x3, Strass x3, Shark, Price. I debated between Verlander and Nelson for the 10th spot so Verlander went into the $100 game.

Now I go into baseball blackout until at least midnight...

I picked the wrong day for my worst ROI of the year:

First let's finish up yesterday's business:

Day 52

Buyins $5182, Payout lol $209, -$4973

Season +$48,601


I knew things were going to be bad, like I had Sale in around $1500 worth of games, those were going to be total losses, around another $1K+ in Harvey, Karns, Liriano, those were going to be close if not total losses. Still, about half my buyins pitched well. I knew my hitting was spotty at best, but I didn't see much big hitting that I figured hurt me. Well there obviously must have been something. All in all my biggest shot at baseball and by far my worst day at DFS, All is fair though as my last 2 big shots made a bloodbath like this possible. Also, I'm now 0-14 in $300 Monster entries on the season. On to Wed!


I'm hoping for slightly better results tonight. I made several last minute Sea stacks, they all include dud Cano, but also Cruz, with Lind in most spots used lots of Kaz as well. Yowza, Cano just hit one in the bottom of the 8th, no more duds.. Interesting to see if I had the right guys with them, I used a lot of Martin, c'mon! nope, guess not I had Martin on one Sea stack, Sea minus Lind, those 2 together probably gets me some wins, or at least a big night.



0-15 in the monster:























Day 53

Buyins $2048, Payout $1611 -$437

Season +$48,164


Thur looks like a dreadful day for MLB DFS, not many games, no pitching, rain. Odds of me playing are slim, which sucks. I had good reason to take the day off a week or so ago, but I also needed the break and it did me a lot of good. Despite Tue's results I'm feeling refreshed and ready to roll now so it feels like a waste.


I was going to get into some bull pen stuff but it looks like I'll have a lot of free time tomorrow so I'll try to punch something up.

great season so far, awesome stuff

keep plugging away bro, take your next shot when you think it's good and eventually, you'll hit

"take your next shot when you think it's good"

Yes, this. I knew I was taking a shot Tue and felt pretty good about it at first. Then the more lineups I built the less and less confident I felt in all my "solid" or better pitching options. I try to avoid second guessing and results oriented thinking so I really can't say if I should have scaled back or not, maybe those were the most +EV lineups I've ever built? We'll never know. I've been ultra conservative with my bankroll ever since it became anything worth protecting, and that has served me well. OTOH I'd like to play $25K a week on NFL this year and winning a couple $3 GPP's isn't going to get me there by Sep. I'm not really sure what I'm rambling about here, mostly that I'll continue to pick my spots I guess.



I'm just starting my BP research so I'll start it off with the same chart I've been posting, sorted by innings pitched with my targets noted as in post 132. If I find any to add to the list or anything interesting I'll make notes below the chart as I go:




I downgraded Min to the 2X club, The rotation is a mess, the pen is maybe worse, and they're starting to get worked. I expect that to continue over the summer.

Philly's rotation is better than expected, and the pen is much better than expected. The wheels could fall off for the young starters and/or this pen at any time, but as of now they aren't really much of a target, at least with sp1-3 on the bump.

LAA- I almost moved them to 2X. The rotation is terrible, the pen has decent numbers so far, but they're being worked a lot and there's not a lot of talent there. Here's what they did yesterday:




Cin remains the worst of the worst, I've been targeting the starters regardless, but this pen has me adding shares against them pretty much every day. 1 worn out journeyman "taking one for the team" can result in 5, 6, 7 runs that wouldn't have been under normal game conditions, and getting a big piece of that can be the difference between ramen and steak for a decade.


Checking upcoming schedules now:

Arizona has started their 3rd run w/o a day off of the young season, 5/24- 6/8, 16 in a row. Lot of innings on these arms already, could get interesting into early June, esp with a long game or 2. I'm pretty sure Chaffin had a 0 ERA heading into May, now his line looks like this every time they use him, overworked maybe? hmmm. Here's today:





Cin has today off, then 2 more off days between tmrw and July 6.. nomnomnom

Col has a pretty rough schedule going forward. Today is day 3 of 16 in a row, 23 games in 24 days 6/17-7/10, 4 days off for the all star break, 33 in 34 days 7/15-8/17. I'll take the over on the current 4.12 ERA on Aug 18th, WAY OVER!

Mil has 26 in 27 days 5/24-6/19

LAD isn't a bad pen but they have a pretty brutal stretch: 63 games in 66 days 5/6-7/10. They have today off and 2 more before the ASB. The rotation is banged up and the fill ins can be worth targeting.

Cle had 13 in a row, today off, tmrw starts 20 in a row.



oh and:

Day 53

Did Not Play

I'm skipping the monster today due to the $100K Home Run:




Feeling pretty good about this slate as long as the forecast doesn't get worse in a few spots.

just a little pitching tonight to go with all my HR's would have been nice, as is a small loss:

















I had yesterday down as day 53 when it should have been 54


Day 55

Buyins $2855, Payout $2464, -$391

Season +$47,773



4 slates on Sat and at first glance they all suck. I wont be playing the 1pm, I will be playing the 4pm but not much, not sure on the 7 and 10, probably play but not much. No matter what it's going to be a low volume day. I don't remember so many crappy slates bordering on unplayable in the past, esp main slates. If anything I've opened up my pitching criteria so I don't get it, just fluky I guess.


Ariz made some roster moves today, first the fresh cannon fodder:




they also lost 2 starters, ouch:






Just not a banner day for D-Back pitching:




There go the Reds pooping the bed again. Who dat gonna beat dem Reds? everyone:

Colorado Pen imploding as we speak

Yeah, several of our target pens collapsed today (Cin, SF, Col, Mil, Mia. Det really gave it up), a couple good pens too (CHW blew a 7-1 lead in the 9th, Mets pen gave up 9 runs in 7 inn after Thor got tossed, Bos gave up 6 runs in the 8th/9th to lose 10-9)

Low volume day today, good thing too because I used 4 pitchers, Chen at 4pm was the best with this mediocrity:



He was the only guy I used at 4. @7 I used mostly Thor, who got tossed in the 3rd inning for throwing at Utley, with a little Gonzalez (who got bombed) and some Greinke (**** Greinke!) and all Greinke at 10pm. I would have been furious about the ejection if I played anywhere near my normal volume. Lucky break there I guess.






















Day 56

Buyins $839, Payout $469, -$370

Season +$47,403


A lot of games starting late tomorrow so I wont have a few key lineups before lock @1pm, and of course for the 4pm slate the contests are much smaller than a typical slate, even when they should be bigger. So anyways I'll be going pretty light volume again. Honestly this weekend wasn't worth playing.

I wont be around to update tonight so I'll do it next time I get a chance. I had planned on working and skipping all the fun tomorrow but after looking at all 3 slates a couple times each I don't see any reason to bother with it. Instead I'm going to a big party that should have plenty of drunk country girls with big ole fat asses. Giddy up

I should be back in business by Tue, if I survive hillbilly burning man.

Dfs, country girls.

It was nice to blow off some steam this weekend. I feel refreshed (despite this full body hangover) and ready to resume my pre-slump crushing. Speaking of slump, here's Sun:












Day 57

Buyins $874, Payout $65, -$809

Season +$46,594


Day 58

Did Not Play



I'm keeping it simple tonight, 2 games:




Arrieta in Chi and Coors are the pitching and hitting options of the day and both are looking murky at best weather wise. Lots of other nice options though so for now they're crossed off w/o too much concern.


The slump ends here! Giddy up

Kinda needed some of this tonight:




Col's 1-4 hitters (and most obvious stack) that includes 6 HR's and 3 Doubles, nice. The forecast was bad so I had none. It took what I'd call a fantastic day otherwise to salvage a few dollars:




Day 59

Buyins $2000, Payout $511, -$1489

Season +$45,105



I'm not gonna get all whiny here, I mean May was my best month ever, really incredible run (by my standards at least). But man I'm really grinding right now. I'd like to think it's mostly/all just variance but something feels off. After my big win on 5/20 I've had 9 losers (including a couple doozys) and 2 days off to close out the month. I've mentioned unplayable and bad slates several times, the days off and at least both sat's and sun's since 5/20 felt mostly if not totally unplayable, and that just doesn't seem right. so it must be me? Hell, I don't know. I guess I'm rambling now, maybe all I need is some signs of life to get back on track. My main point is to illustrate how frustrating MLB GPP play can be, or DFS in general really, tho I guess the results kinda speak for themselves in that regard.


Oh, fitting that it was Cinci's horrible pitching that did me in tonight:




What an absolute ****show!

I mean you're playing massive slate gpps, variance is going to be huge. Hell being up 45k this season, which started like 2 months ago? Feels like you've been doing very well in the variance department.

Do you play any other sports btw?

Yeah, my season in a vacuum has been all I could have asked for so far, and I think I do a decent job of keeping emotion out of it. That said running like this does take a bit of a toll after a while. For better or worse I've made this my life for the time being and that just amplifies things.

As for other sports, just NFL, and speaking of variance I ran insanely hot there last season in my first attempt (approx 140% ROI on $50K action). I learned a lot and feel like I'm probably going to be a decent winner going forward, but there's no doubting just how ****ing lucky I got. Also, and it was for small $, but I ran close to -100% over the last 3 weeks. I've been thinking more and more about that as the season approaches. What if that was weeks 1-3 instead or 15-17? No way I make 70 grand in that case, probably a losing season. I don't know how common losing NFL seasons are for the top players, but I bet it's more common than we'd think.

I used 100% deGrom in the early and 100% Max in the late, that worked. The hitting, no.


















Day 60

Buyins $2300, Payout $1348, -$952

Season +$44,153


Thur's slate is pretty rare in that there's no aces going but enough mediocre guys in + match ups that I feel pretty good about playing normal volume w/o any big guns. I'll be loading up on hitting.


Once again I'm feeling a lot better about my game after reviewing lineups and %'s tonight. There's so much follow the herd, with a big dash of idiotic FPS. I don't usually have time to review a lot as other than checking my results at the end of the night I move on to the next day at lineup lock. Anyways I need to do it more often when I'm in a funk as it's always a confidence booster.

It seems you have a lot of entries submitted before lineups are released. How do you manage substitutions if you find out one of your guys is out for the day (or if you find someone of good value you didn't know was gonna be playing and want to add him)? Quick player replace seems kinda worthless unless the guys you wanna switch out are exactly matched in price. Do you just manually edit a bunch of lineups? I feel like that's gotta be really difficult, especially if a 10 PM game's lineup gets released shortly before 7 PM start.

I delve into process a lot in posts 55 and 57.

A few posts later I give an example of when global swap doesn't really work



Swap works better than you might think most of the time. I use it almost every day and 9 times out of 10 it's swapping in a guy I was already using, just upping my shares. And I rarely leave more than 200 or 300$ on the table even with swap.



Long story short the whole thing is a lot of work. I'm doing a lot of guessing on who's playing and where they'll hit in the lineup and adjusting on the fly.


"or if you find someone of good value you didn't know was gonna be playing and want to add him)?"

This is the most interesting part of the question as it's the only thing that's ever really problematic. I start mapping out the next days slate as soon as I sit back down after lock, so I know what pitchers I'm using and I have a big list of everyone I think will be playable. I use this list as if they are playing when I start building lineups that night or early the next day. This is where it gets tricky because I just can't use players that play once a week or back up C's, etc. I can make adjustments, but there's no need pre-building with guys that probably wont play, or even 50/50 types really. I'm not swapping out 20 dudes a day, that would be a disaster.


So take Chris Heisey from yesterday, bench warmer hitting leadoff for Wash at min price. This was an east coast game so no problems, but he would have been very valuable say @Ari (or even the pitchers parks on the coast vs a weak starter at that price). If the lineup came out at 6:30 or later in the Ari example there's no way I'd have as much of him as I should.


All in all it's a pretty minor glitch. There really aren't any must plays, and I'm all over the players that come closest to it.

After seeing the Bal box score I wouldn't have thought it was possible not to have a big night, oh it was possible:















Day 61

Buyins $1655, Payout $826, -$829

Season +$43,324


As you may have noticed I've dropped the $300 Monster for now. That was a fun -$4500/-100% ROI adventure. I'll pick it back up when I get the BR close to where it was on May 20th. I'm not thinking about dropping anything else unless this goes on for another week or 2.


I feel good about tomorrow'a slate, lots of rain though. a quick look ahead to the weekend looks like even more rain.