Study a DFS pro: Testosterown (NHL)

One of my buddies was thinking about getting into DFS, dabbling a little bit, hitting me up for some tips on how to get started – and my main piece of advice was simply to avoid the sharps by starting slow and not playing in the highest priced, large GPP on the night. But honestly, and sadly, after eight years of playing DFS I find that’s the best strategy for my ROI as well.

And that sucks. Because $3 contests are lame. In my opinion, one of the things both our major fantasy sites do very poorly, is look out for the needs of the mid-level player. These sites are great at ushering in beginners with cheap contests and free rolls, and great at catering to the sharps, but very poor at assessing the needs of everyone else. A $3, 2,957 person contest with a $500 top prize and a 16% rake is not worth my time. An $8 contest filled with sharps, can be demoralizing and difficult to generate ROI.

All of this makes graduating to the level of sharp a difficult transition to make. It’s a Catch-22, because in order to build your bankroll, you need to be sharp, but in order to be a sharp, you need a bankroll.

As far as I can tell there are only two solutions: quit, or get better. Since most of us love this and have no desire to quit, that leaves one option.

The easiest way to get better, if you aren’t already a member of Awesemo.com is to sign up (shameless plug). Since going on a year long drought, I’ve won four NHL GPPs thanks to his ranks. They help so much, because they cut out the noise and allow you to focus on the simplicity of the model and its results.

But strategy still plays a huge part in developing your DFS game, and one of the best ways to go about developing a successful strategy is to study what the pros are doing and try to emulate them.

So every couple of weeks I am going to do a deep dive into some of the better NHL DFS players both here at Awesemo (Jake, Tom, Eddie, Homercles, Alex), and some of the better players outside the Awesemo website to see what strategy they are using in order to take home the bacon.

Up first, last night’s winner: Testosterown

(I’ve exported Testosterown’s 150 lineups to CSV and posted them below this article if you’d like to take a closer look yourself.)

General trends:

1) Pays up for defencemen.

Testosterown’s top owned player on the night was Roman Josi, who appeared in 88 of his 150 lineups. In fact, most of Testosterown’s top owned players are the top defencmen on the board. Part of Testosterown’s ability to pay up is that because they’re stacking almost every line combo, most of these line combinations leave lots of cash on the table, Ie. Your NYI1 and BOS2 double stack can easily fit in Josi and Letang.

Top-owned defence:

Josi: 88

Letang: 60

Chabot: 22

Ellis: 12

Werenski: 32

Jones: 13

Perhaps the most shocking revelation: zero Torey Krug, zero Shea Weber, one Tyson Barrie.

Testosterown’s conviction plays are on defense.

2) Correlates goalies.

Generally speaking, the only time Testosterown doesn’t correlate goalies, is when they’re double stacking opposition lines from the same game.

Goalie ownership:

Bobrovsky: 67

Varlamov: 2

Anderson: 13

Greiss: 9

Halak: 26

DeSmith: 26

Gibson: 5

Price: 2

Bobrovsky was owned the most, but that was partly because Testosterown was heavily overweight on the CBJ lines. Not sure if that was because of the late Panarin news – thinking there was an advantage to be had on the field, or simply because they liked Bob’s projection.

3) Double line-stacks

This one is obvious, but as far as I can tell, only one of Testosterown’s 150 lineups didn’t employ a double line stack. One out of 150 used a defencemen in the UTIL spot (admittedly my eyes glazed over at times, but I only found one).

The full three-man line stacks were usually without correlated defencemen – but not always. It’s not a rule to force uncorrelated defencemen, simply a result of trying to get in the best defencemen possible, as much as possible.

4) Double-stacks from the same team

This is the second time in the past two weeks (at least) Testosterown’s winning GPP lineup was a double-stack from the same team with a correlated goalie. This might be the most optimal way to attack these GPPs moving forward – because two lines from the same team is probably the least likely stacking combo for a lot of players – unless it’s a really obvious play. Of course if you are not MMEing that can take it’s toll on your bankroll.

Personal takeways:

This isn’t rocket science. Literally anyone can go to a lineup builder and pop in a bunch of 3-3-2 combos with correlated goalies, paying up at defence whenever possible.

I haven’t had a chance to do a deeper dive into all of the pros and their lineup construction, but this seems like the most common, viable strategy for most DFS NHL pros and if that’s the case, then maybe the rest of us can pivot to a sub-optimal method that relies more on, say two-man stacks or PP stacks that will have some differentiation from so many of the 150 lineup MMEers out there.

Or perhaps, if everyone adopts these strategies, their efficacy is lessened and that will force sharps into sub-optimal lineups, which opens the door for new and unique lineup combos, possibly leveling the playing field a bit.

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