If you missed my entries post Sunday, read it here.
An Unexpected Win
After the Sunday Night Football game, I thought a loss on the week was inevitable. I had Martellus Bennett as my tight end on every site and he performed far below expectation. I also faded Spencer Ware on Fanduel, choosing to play Lamar Miller and Martellus Bennett over the more popular combination of Spencer Ware and Jordan Reed. This choice, combined with a subpar game from Dak Prescott, and I figured I had no chance to recover and book a win on the week.
Luckily for me, as terrible as the last 4 Sunday football games went for me, the first Monday night game went perfectly. Antonio Brown and DeAngelo Williams, two players I owned higher than the field, both scored 2 touchdowns and racked up a ton of fantasy points to save my weekend.
source: quoteaddicts
The start of the first MNF game was bad for me: on the first drive, Jordan Reed was targeted 4 times and had 3 catches, surpassing Martellus Bennett's fantasy total in less than 5 minutes. Giving up hope on winning for the week, I decided to review everything that happened that weekend and keep a private journal of my mistakes and things I can do better. I analyzed each site and wrote down everything I learned from that weekend.
Immediately after my analysis my players started crushing and Jordan Reed went mostly invisible for the remainder of the game. So not only did I gain knowledge from thinking I would lose, but I didn't actually end up losing and had a great first week of the season.
Draftkings
I included golf in my Sunday entries writeup, so I'll include it here.
Golf Results: +$3788.06
NFL results: +$13713.49
Fanduel: +$11258.39
Yahoo: +$6662.90
Some slates ended before Monday and there is no results uploading site that takes yahoo, so I had to do some spreadsheet work on a .csv file and total everything up. Won on most of the slates and profited!
Fantasyaces: +$5262.29
Fantasydraft: +$6288.76
Overall (including golf): +$46973.89
Very happy with my week 1 overall results. Including my last two weeks of golf before this week, some bonuses being cleared, and the frequent player points gained, my $60k downswing from this summer is basically over and I'm right around my peak winnings.
But again, I try to separate results from process. I did some things I think I can improve, and the difference between a win and a loss is often miniscule. As of halftime of the first Monday Night game, I was barely winning money on the weekend. The second half of one game accounted for most of my profits. Winning is never assured, and I'm not blind to the luck I had at the end. I was probably 20-25% to have a losing week coming in, and based on my buyins, my profit expectation was likely about half of what I actually made. This was a fortunate week, and they won't always go like this, and I am going to have to retain the positive mindset I have right now during the unlucky weeks too.
I also noticed a lot of other high stakes players and regulars making what I think are large mistakes. For instance, Saahil Sud, the #1 overall ranked Fantasy player (he plays the most buyins and is successful at both cash games and GPPs, and rankings are volume based) played a kicker on fanduel who isn't even in the league right now. Other players missed must plays. I'm extremely confident heading into the rest of the season and am going to work very hard in future weeks and refine everything I do so that the gap between myself and other DFS players gets wider, not shorter. If you aren't getting better, you're getting worse, and I'm just happy that I got better on a week that I also won.
My name is Ryan Daut and I'd love to have you as a follower. Click here to go to my page, then click in the upper right corner if you would like to see my blogs and articles regularly.
I am a professional gambler, and my interests include poker, fantasy sports, football, basketball, MMA, health and fitness, rock climbing, mathematics, astrophysics, cryptocurrency, and computer gaming.