So I'm not really sure how to start this as I can't bring myself to read any boring poker crap to see how these go, no offense. I guess I'll start with a little background, why I'm doing this, and then we'll see.

Background:

First poker- I started playing ol around the time I signed up here. having never played (or read any books about) NL, PL, or any type of tournie poker I was a +30% ROI low stakes SNG player from day 1 just by using some common sense. Quit my job in spring 04 and played for a living until BF. I wasn't good, at all, low stakes bonus whore/RB grinder. I never really worked on my game, but it was a nice way to make an easy, meager living. I always had plans to go for SNE and other lofty goals but they never came close to getting off the ground. Other than a small working roll I was pretty much broke on BF, so I had to get a job (vomit) right away.

Fantasy baseball- I've been a baseball stat nerd since I opened my first pack of baseball cards as a kid. I started playing the sporting news national game in 95, that soon turned into the CDM Diamond Challenge (and this highly competitive great game is still going today) I played that until 2014. The only reason I didn't play last year is I found out in 14 what a grind full time MLB DFS play can be. Anyways, it turns out that obsessing over every detail of the league and playing with the cap all winter, making changes over and over again looking for that perfect lineup turned out to be pretty good DFS training.

DFS- I had heard about DFS several years ago, but I think that's when there was only snapdraft or whatever with double what the rake is now, I believe. At any rate I was under the impression that it wasn't beatable due the the rake and variance and never really thought about it again until reading a thread that popped up in the 2p2 fantasy section before the 2014 season where someone was asking for advice on what site to play. I read that thread and that was enough for me to decide to give it a shot. I deposited $200 on opening day. I don't remember if I won or lost that day but I knew there was money to be made based on structure and how terrible people were. A little over a week later I was down to $80 and deposited $350 more, 2 days later I came in 1st and 2nd in the $2 Squeeze out of 8360 runners for $2K+$1K. Boom! instant bankroll. Despite running most of that down to about $1K total after a brutal May I've never had to deposit non-DFS money again.

My first season went like this-

April: Starting BR $550 (my only 2 real money deposits) to $4K

May: BR $4K to $1K. I was heavily invested in every pitcher that gave up 8+, and there seemed to be a lot of them. I still "knew" I was +EV but I'll be honest it's hard not to have a little creeping doubt when you're getting killed every single night for weeks.

June: 6/1 played 224 $1 and $2 cash games, went 10-214 Rock bottom and I was under a grand, rest of month +$8K quit my hated job

July: starting BR $9K, moved up, ROI came way down from impossible June levels but still made $7K at higher stakes with more volume. BR $9K-$16K

Aug: Month started well but then I had to move, this cost me time and money I didn't want to spend, and was a major distraction, ended the month +$1K

Sep: I never felt comfortable in my new office (I quit a 2 pack a day cowboy killer habit cold turkey the day I moved, maybe that had something to do with it) I ran like ****, probably played like **** too. -$1500 month

MLB Season 1: a very swingy +$15K

NFL- I had to take out for taxes. I still had a decent amount of savings left to live on, but I wanted the least amount of real life stress as possible for my 2015 grind so I left myself with $7K BR. I knew NFL was supposed to be soft as hell but I just didn't feel I could risk any of my MLB roll as it was so small and I knew I could make money from it at MLB, so I skipped NFL

I ended up dicking around a little at PGA and NHL, mostly to kill time until baseball -$300, so I started the 2015 MLB season with my bills paid for awhile and a $6700 bankroll.

April: I was playing over my roll by quite a bit (like 2-3K a day in action) trying to strike while the fire is hot in April. Swingy as hell, up 3k in 3 days, down 3k in 4 days, etc, etc. Break even month. rutroh we're looking at half a MLB season BE at this point, and 9+ months real time, what a pro!

May: Started off just like April and after 2 BE weeks I decided to quit playing cash games on the big sites with no bonus/little rewards to focus on GPP. Victiv was the only smaller site I was playing at the time so it was GPP on FD and DK and a little small stakes cash action on Victiv, maybe $300-$500 a night and another $500 or so on small stakes GPP's. That's when things really turned around for me, won a couple small GPP's on DK for a +1K day, then at the end of the month came in 3rd out of like 6000 in a DK $9 buyin for $1500 and had a good day otherwise for a total over +2K. +$3K month

June: June 7th I threw maybe $100 or $200 into late only (west coast) $2 and $5 GPP's. I usually diversify a ton, but there was no options here, so I went 100% Kershaw, 100% Castillo (C Ariz). Well there was no hitting in these games and Kershaw was in top form so he and Castillo's HR had all my teams all over the top 100 in both GPP's. I don't think I scored a win, but I was 2nd in 2 $2 GPP's and 3rd I believe in the $5, between that and all my other top 10/25/100's it was a tidy $5K profit, my best day by far at that point. The rest of the month was just steady profit and I hit +$10K for the first time

July: Sun July 5th I took dear old mom out for a steak dinner and while we stuffed our faces I won the $5 late rally for $3K, came in second in the 15K runner $2 squeeze and once again peppered the top 10/25/100 of these games, +$7500, my new best day. Unlike the June score I don't remember the details at all, not even the pitcher but I think Tulo helped a lot, maybe. I'm way more interested in process than results, and while it's fun to jerk it over your scores I just move on, mostly, after a little jerking. The rest of the month was mostly hit or miss with a little hot streak at the end to give me my second +$10K month in a row. Now I feel I'm really on to something.

Aug: I continued my hot streak from the end of July and while I wasn't taking any GPP's down I was just crushing every night. About a week into Aug I had had around 10 50+% roi days in a row and for the first time I really felt like I couldn't lose (and that includes all those years at poker) I'd check box scores, knew I had lost, nope +$800, ugly looking boxs the next night, had to have lost, nope +$1200. That's just about when I started my 20 or so day losing streak. I don't mean a 20 day downswing, I mean losing every day for 20 in a row, seems impossible, but that's the way this beast works. Then I won a small $2 GPP for $2K. Even though it was only a quarter of what I had lost mid month, and my BR was still fine anyway it felt like such a huge relief, just to turn it around. I won the last few days so what started out like it was going to be my best month ever, and what turned into what looked like the worst month anyone was ever gonna have at anything ended up right about BE, heyO

Sep: By the end of Aug I was really turning my attention to NFL, but of course I'll keep grinding MLB, just not as hard. I ran well before football started, and once I started better than expected in football (more on this below) I really scaled back on MLB. There's only so many hours in a day and I was using most of them cramming NFL, a sport I didn't/don't know. Anyways the little baseball I did play I crushed so despite playing half the volume with a quarter of the attention paid I still had a +$5K month to close out the MLB season +$28K. Well short of my goals, but considering I started with a tiny $6700 BR and a 6 week mind numbing BE streak I'll take it!


NFL: This is getting long so I'll try to bang out a part 2 tonight or tomorrow covering my NFL season and a little on why I'm posting this. Also, I know this is real bloggy, that's not my intent going forward, just trying to give some detail.

2015 NFL- so unlike 2014 I felt I had a big enough roll to risk a chunk of it at DFS football. The plan was to carve out $5K from my BR and dedicate that to NFL. I wanted to be aggressive, at least with the first $3K or so of that, but I wanted to play all season even if I was getting killed as a learning experience, and I wasn't going to lose more than $5K total. So the plan was maybe $2K week 1, around 20-25% a week after that, maybe less if I was getting killed. A couple days before the season started RG was promoting Draftpot pretty hard, and they had a juicy bonus (I think 100% up to $1500) so I signed up and maxed that out. As Sunday approached it was very clear Draftpot and Starsdraft (formerly Victiv, bought out by Poker Stars in Aug) were going to have some pretty serious overlay on their big $10 buyin $100K guaranteed GPP's, so I took a shot and invested over $7K total into week 1, about $5500 into these $10 buyin big overlayers

Week 1- Got pretty lucky and hit a couple top 10's the the big $100K's on both stars and DP

Stars +2803
FD +572
DP + 3936
total +$7311

Week 2- The overlay remained so obviously I'm gonna take another shot. Got lucky again, even won the big $5 GPP on stars for $1200 with Fat Eddie Lacy's .9 points, not easy to do. Plus more top 10's in the big GPP's, esp on Stars.

Stars +4727
FD -366
DP +2240
total +$6601

Week 3- I'm in a pretty good spot now because I mentally put that $5K NFL BR back in my MLB BR that I figured there was a good chance I'd lose all or part of, and now I've got a real football BR too. And the overlay was back again, these sites were fighting for market share and willing to pay for it. This time I got really really lucky and took down the 100K on DP as well as a couple other top 10's/

Stars -480
FD +878
DP +18,975
total +$19,373

So yeah I'm pretty blown away at this point, I knew I was getting lucky, but Jesus I made more in 3 weeks than I did in busting my ass all summer on MLB. Gross, but I'll take it. Not only am I excited about NFL now, but I'm really excited about starting baseball with a much bigger BR than I could have dreamed as there's just no way I'm giving all this back.

week 4 -$1999 meh

week 5 -$2228 meh

week 6- Well I'm guessing this is when Draftpot went from a $100K that was filling about 60-70% to a 40K as I didn't even play there week 6. Also Stars decided to push the envelop by raising the 100K that had been overlaying hard to a $200K! I entered my max 200 entries and I think they got 13k/22k. I managed 1st for $20K, 3rd for $8K, and a bunch of other top 25's for just an unbelievable week.

Stars +36,431
FD -1056
DP- did not play
total +$35,375

This was slightly bittersweet as it came on the heels of the Ethan mess and the fallout had begun. I'm pretty sure Draftpot planned to run at huge overlay all season, but how were they going to get that easy capital now? And stars went from pushing the envelop like I said earlier in the week to pulling out of every state but 4 on Sun (lol). I was essentially banned from Stars the day before I even had to sweat out the big Mon night game. This was the end of all my overlay and my shot taking. I would have been more aggressive on FD but DFS really looked touch and go for several weeks there (and maybe still does? Well I feel better about playing this summer than I did the last 10 weeks or so of 2015, fwiw) at any rate I was thrilled with my new BR and I'll be damned if I'm gonna have 3 -$5K weeks right before a ban, so I took it easy the rest of the way.

week 7 +2913
week 8 +2823
week 9 +1755
week 10 +1364
week 11 -2011
week 12 +756
week 13 -39
week 14 -139
week 15 -1182
week 16 -979
week 17 -904 (this is 2016, but whatever) these last 3 weeks were all close to -100% ROIers where nothing went right, but I can't complain.
playoffs week 1- Bet $84 got $4 back

My reason for starting this? Several reasons, mostly to hold my feet to the fire (that's probably most of these poker goals threads, right?) Now that football is over I'm gonna take it easy for a couple months. I recently bought The Sopranos, The Wire, BB box sets on Bluray, watching these all again will help kill some time, but after that I go into my baseball war room and don't come out until football starts again. I really live it.

I like to talk DFS and baseball, I think it makes me better. I'm not gonna give the store away, and I'm not looking to sell anything either. I don't mind helping with the basics, maybe more depending on what others bring or if there's even any interest in this. I'm not a math genius, or anything close to a computer guru, but I've got some creativity, and that can go a long way when the herd all likes to bunch together (with a lot of what I think are bad strategies).

My goals:

1- Have DFS remain a thing. That's more of a wish I guess
2- Bust my ass all Summer, 1 or 2 days off, tops, make every cent possible (without being a quarter arcade bitch or a $1 h2h butt pirate, shame on you dirty mfers)
3- win the $25 GPP on FD, twice.

Any questions? Feel free to ask. I'll be adding some content here from time to time as the season approaches, then I'll try to update regularly once we kick off the beisbol.

Ever have any questions about Golf DFS let me know. It's prolly the hardest of all it seems like. I only do big GPPs. It's a fun sweat.

Looks like your doing great, keep it up.

Oh the designer of tommorows course has removed 320 trees that line the fair ways making it easy for long ball hitters this past year.

I kicked around the idea of trying golf or hockey again. I just felt so burned out a couple weeks into football that I knew I wanted an off season this year. Of course I had planned on 2-4 weeks in Vegas in Jan and now I'll be damned if they get a penny from me, so no vacation, except for watching the Sopranos.

So anyways now that the Super Bowl is over I consider it baseball season. I try not to get too bogged down until March but I am reading a lot, starting to tweak my process, and working on a new (more aggressive) bank roll management strategy. Most of what I read goes in one eye and out the other because I already know it, or it doesn't seem relevant. However I do stumble across some interesting articles that give me ideas:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2016s...sing-platoons/

Some of these platoons are uninteresting or don't exist in the real world, and some of the projections are terrible, like Rajai Davis 84 wRC+ v L, he lives well north of 100, but that's all beside the point. I like the idea of building and updating my own platoon table like this, with lots of notes!

I also pour over a lot of stats. A lot of times I don't even know what I'm looking for, just anything interesting really. I save a lot of queries, some so obscure I go back and can't even find what it was that caught my eye the first time, lol. Other stuff just kinda jumps off the page:

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.asp...ter=&players=0

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.asp...ter=&players=0

My biggest off season project is one that I gave up on last year, tracking bull pens. I mean it's easy to sort by ERA or FIP, or whatever, but bull pens change constantly, and I'm also just as interested in short term fatigue as I am in general quality. I'm more interested in a snap shot of what state a bull pen is in TODAY, kind of like a FICO score.

This looks really interesting, sick job so far man, so it seems poker being banned (BF) was the best thing that could happen to you with you only making small amounts playing poker?
Good luck in the future, was wondering if you'd play Soccer either?

It's hard to say as I did have to work a square job for almost 3 years. It would have been much better if I understood what DFS really was on BF as that's when it was starting to take off and it could have been a nice transition. As is I'm much better off today than I was the day/month/year before BF, so no complaints. I feel like my potential earnings are almost unlimited, sans a second BF.

Just MLB/NFL as of now.

Sub'd. I am looking forward to reading this.

Is there a reason you don't do any NBA?

What advice do you have for a rec player that is trying to make a little money at this? I don't have much free time, maybe an hour a day to put into research. I just like having a reason to watch the games.

Would any DFS research tools be worth the money?

Subbed as well. I play only NFL but would like to get in others.. Up $13k in NFL past two seasons.

NBA- Several reasons I don't play NBA. I busted my ass April- NFL week 17 last year and I simply needed a break for my mental health. I don't know the sport or any of the players. From what I understand (I read everything btw, I try to keep up on all industry news, trends, current group think, etc) it's the easiest sport for the high frequency trader types. That ain't me and I'm not interested in going against them in a solved game. I mean they think they've solved MLB, and maybe they have vs the fish, but I see a lot of what I think are horrible lineups and strategies from these guys, so **** em.

Just a little general advice- I think an hour is fine as long as you know the league. Learn the league as best you can, and learn how to spot the value plays. Finding the guys priced 2300 that should be 3000 is how you play Kershaw/Trout or Cam/Odell, etc. A lot of the fancy strategies and trick plays I read about are laughable horse****, FPS. Find the value, get the money. Also, GPP's allow for some pretty huge upside for a small daily investment.


I'm sure some of the premium services are worth the money, but I'd guess many more are just total garbage. There's so much free info out there I can't imagine paying for anything. Fangraphs for baseball is everything I need. I'm not good enough at football to give away my "secrets" lol, but there's a ton of great free content out there.

I've been waiting for the big sites to release opening day salaries and contests to post an update here but they're taking forever. I was bored tonight so I'm getting started w/o them. To actually start building MLB DFS lineups you NEED salaries, and seeing the actual lineups doesn't hurt either, point being this is very preliminary. Also, opening day is really weird because you have so many aces going. On a typical June day there's very little chance I'd play Lucroy v Bum or Cruz v Hamels or Prince v Felix. I just don't take shares v those matchups, well OD is a different story.


Pitching: There's so many great options and as a GPP (tournament) player I'll have at least a little of everybody decent. Pitcher pricing and the availability of value hitting will go a long way in determining weights.


Pitching to target: Only 8 out of the 24 pitchers have been announced by managers, so I'm making 16 educated guesses that will mostly turn out to be right. On a more typical day I'd break the pitching down into 5 tiers, but seeing as these are mostly aces with no total bums going I'm gonna keep it simple and use 3 tiers:

Do not want (to hit against)- Kershaw, Scherzer, Sale, Price, Kluber (or whoever for cle) Arrieta, Kuechel, Grienke. So for the first 3 I'd just never play anyone against them. I'd need a compelling reason to play someone v the next 5, like say if Calhoun were near min priced I might have a little, or if Simmons were min priced and hitting 1 or 2 for whatever reason. SS is gonna be ugly OD so I'd have some of that. This mostly eliminates SD, ATL, OAK, CLE, BOS, LAA, NYY and Col hitters from consideration.

Would rather avoid- Most of these would be in the do not want tier on a more typical day. Tanaka, Bumgarner, Felix, Hamels, Ross, Richards, Gray. Tor @TB play a game the day before OD so this is their 2nd starters. I'm guessing Odorizzi for TB and if so far from ideal matchup for Tor hitters. Some of these guys I'll end up with little or nothing against, others I'll use some fillers based on price/lu slot/weather, and I might even target a couple of these guys a bit. Like typically I'd never play anyone v Felix or Bum, but opening day weather, Mil righties, Texas lefties, and weather proof road hitters parks will have me stacking against them a bit.

Targets- Phil Hughes, Tillman, Jimmy Nelson, Tehran, Nola (or whoever goes for philly), (w/e goes for Tor as Stroman should go sun before OD), de la Rosa, DeScalafini.

Obvious monster plays:

C Davis/Machado
Harper
Posey
Votto
Goldy/Pollock
Sano maybe
Correa maybe, mostly due to short being so weak

Less obvious plays I like depending on price/lu slot:

Belt/Crawford just because I hate short for this slate
Dozier/Rosario
Schoop/Trumbo
Dan Murphy
Suarez (if cheap and listed at short)
ODUBEL!
Wellington Castillo
TB's lineup is gonna suck but decent mu for Longo, maybe Miller/Lomo/Forsythe depending on price/lu slot

Disheartening news out of NY today:

http://www.legalsportsreport.com/913...ny-settlement/

Long story short the big sites pulled out of the NY state market today pending legislative clarity. I think this helps explain why the sites are a couple weeks late putting up MLB opening day contests as this has probably been in the works for weeks.

I'm not in NY so this doesn't change much for me, except 10% of the player pool just went poof. It looks like more states are on the right track than on the wrong track right now, possibly even NY as there's a bill in the works. Despite this news, and losing Texas, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Nevada over the last 6 months I'm more and more optimistic that DFS will remain a viable thing, in most states. Some states, probably 10+, hopefully less than 20 are going to prove to be a lost cause though, imo.

Subbed - excellent work so far!

And just like that Fanduel has baseball up! contest sizes looks good, not great:

$250K Slam ($25 buyin)
$200K Squeeze ($2 buyin)

Those are fine

$50K Rally ($5 buyin)
$20K Line Drive ($10 buyin)

are a little weakish

Then again it's kind of a weird slate as there's only 1 1PM game, 1 2PM game, 1 3PM game with the rest starting 4-10. There should be 5 slates and on a non-opening day day this all day slate would be pretty useless and probably 1 I'd skip in lieu of playing the 4pm only, 4-10. 7-10. and 9:40 and later. Seeing that's it's OD I'll be playing them all.

I'll be digging in all day but at first glance the salaries are pretty soft. My first crack ended up Kershaw and all hitters I listed above as guys I wanted to play.

Also, Mil announced it's OD starter today and it's awful Wily Peralta instead of avg Jimmy Nelson, so bumping those SF bats up even higher.

Indiana joined Virginia today as the second state to pass a law making DFS expressly Legal

http://www.legalsportsreport.com/923...fs-regulation/

It looks a lot like the VA law:

18 and up

No college sports (not sure if that was included in VA)

$50K fee, or loose change to FD/DK, deal breaker to most if not all others


It might not be perfect but I'll take it here and in as many states that want to join in as possible. This is pretty much best case other than the status quo, imo, and who knows how long that will last where it still exists.


That was cross posted from the DFS industry thread in the fantasy section. I'm pretty giddy as I've thought it was possible I'd have to pick up and move with no notice to play out the whole baseball season this year, and now that threat is gone.

couple more adjustments, because I'm OCD:

Hellickson going OD for Philly, bumping up Cin hitters

Santana going for Min, he and Hughes are apples and oranges

GL this year in MLB. I'm MrFantasy from RG and I'm hoping to get more involved with MLB this season myself. I mostly broke even at it last season and it was a learning process for me. You're mostly on FD, right? How do you feel about them getting rid of the negative and 3x'ing the scoring system?

Hey MrFantasy, I definitely recognize the name from RG, good poster.

As of now I only have money on my FD account and as long as I can get enough action down at the $2-$25 GPP's that isn't likely to change. It's a pretty big jump from $25 to $300 though, so it mostly depends on how I'm doing and the size of the $5 and $25 from day to day. I'm done with all the secondary sites for now, sadly.

I slightly prefer the no neg for outs, but really it's such a small thing, same for the DK changes. The 3x'ing actually makes no difference, so of course it stands to reason that RG would be up in arms

As pathetic as this sounds I have a couple friends who played on DK more last year because they were getting higher scores. They are pure recreational type players so seeing a bad lineup get a 20 is more discouraging than getting say a 80-90 on DK even though both lineups did equally as bad. It will likely bring some softer games FD's way.

I hope you keep up with this PGC thread as we could use some more DFS content over here at 2+2 and I'd also like to hear some insight from a winning MLB player.

I'm getting antsy for opening day, seven and a wake up. Think I'm all set for the 1pm slate with:







and a little pissing into the wind for Sun's 3 game slate:



Lots of editing to do but still I'd like to see a sun night game/mon slate as well.

So from the looks of it you'll be doing all GPP's. Once we get through the first few days and it's not all ace pitchers going for every team how much exposure will you typically have on your pitchers?

Yeah, GPP only

It varies a lot from day to day but typically most of my entries are spread among the top 4-6 arms going that day (this depends more on match ups than price). Weights are all about my confidence levels. With value hitting plays being so abundant I rarely see a reason to gamble at P, so I rarely do.