This article is part of our Ask the Shark series.
How do you predict ownership percentages and utilize this to your advantage in cash contests and GPPs? - David Ugolini, @DavidUgi
Many top-level poker professionals win with a superior ability of "playing the player" more so than the cards in their own hand. Out of all the aspects of daily fantasy sports, predicting player ownership in a field of opponents is the only comparable skill. For cash contests, accurately doing so allows you to "block" high upside plays, and in GPPs, gives you opportunities to differentiate your lineup with potentially massive leverage over the field.
Raw statistics, projections, betting lines, injury reports, etc. are all static pieces of information. They can give you insight into the players to roster, but are also available for use by opponents just the same. The difference between how one person weighs a certain piece of data versus how another person weighs it (or even considers it at all) is what defines player ownership in a contest. The more weight people place on a piece of positive data, the higher the expected ownership of that player, and the opposite is true on the negative side.
For soccer DFS, the cheat sheets that RotoWire publishes for a slate definitely give a great view of the relevant information that most will weigh highly in their player selections: betting lines to target attackers on favored teams in high total matches, goal-scoring odds to target forwards more likely to get one in the back of the net, clean sheet odds for goalkeepers most likely to gain bonus points, corner numbers to target the set-piece takers on their given teams, crossing stats to target wide players with safe floors. Hopefully you're utilizing this information to construct your lineups, but your opponents may be referencing all of it, some of it, or none of it whatsoever.
In cash contests, your goal should nearly always be to construct the most optimal lineup that figures to place in the top 55th percentile if the slate played out infinite times (a.k.a. removing statistical variance). For this reason, it is most beneficial to select players who will actually carry the highest ownership. Fortunately, you won't have to go too far out of your way to do so, as what you figure to be the best plays likely are what many others do as well. If this isn't the case, and you're consistently failing to roster the highest-owned players in your cash contests, it is a fundamental flaw in your game and likely the cause of your negative ROI.
Identifying the consensus best plays, aptly referred to as the "chalk," not only benefits you in cash contests, though. It is also the primary skill that separates average GPP players who place over the cash line on a regular basis and great ones who actually win them. There's a reason why some of the best cash players for years in DFS have switched focus to GPP play with exemplary results; you can't leverage the high-owned plays without consistently knowing them.
Unlike cash contests, in GPPs you're actually looking to embrace the variance by preying on the few times that the chalk fails to produce. A 50 percent owned forward putting up a mere two points gives you a huge opportunity to leapfrog half the field with a lower-owned forward who can beat that score. The greater the point difference and the lower the ownership, the higher the leverage and the more likely it puts you at the top of a GPP. However, understand that this is a high-risk, high-reward strategy because if the chalk indeed produces as expected, half the field will now have leverage over you, which in turn makes it highly unlikely that you'll even cash in the contest at all.
Predicting ownership and "playing the player" in daily fantasy sports is a skill that is very difficult to consistently execute with the proper balance. Roster too many low-owned contrarian plays in one lineup and you may need a million-to-one miracle series of events to actually win. Roster too many high-owned chalk plays in a lineup and you're unlikely to crack the top paid places in a GPP. It's the combination of strategically differentiating in the right spots for leverage while playing the consensus chalk in the right spots alongside it that typically takes down a big payday.
If you would like to submit a question for this weekly column, feel free to either post it in the comment section below, tweet it to me @blenderhd, or email me at jordan@fantasyflush.com.
