Showdown Difference Between Sports

I hate ties! If you want to be a winner you should hate ties too. With that being said, basketball is my least favorite showdown sport as it is the most predictable sport. There are times you just can not get away from the chalk. This often leads to way more chalky builds and many more ties. Football and baseball have a huge amount of variance and are excellent sports for large GPP showdown contest.

You must play each sport differently, and come up with game scripts and builds based on sport and particular games being played each night. You will want to take more risk in football and baseball. In basketball, you will want to pick a few places and spots in which you can make your lineups different. In basketball, you want to more than likely pay up for the captain spot and spend more of your salary than the other sports.

Basketball Specific Strategies

1. Use your Salary- I looked at over 350 NBA showdowns. In the top one percent of lineups:
   7% of them used at least $48,000 in salary!

Lineup Salary Range	# of top 1%	% of Lineups
$49500 to $50000	145	39.30%
$49000 to $49499	89	24.12%
$48000 to $48999	75	20.33%
Under $48000	60	16.26%

 

2. Pay Up for Captain- There are times in which there are low-salary, high-upside players you can play in captain, a lot of the time in NBA this happens when there are injuries. Over 80% of optimal lineups payed at least $10,000 for captain.
3. Do not Pay Attention to Stacking- For NBA showdowns and one game contest there is not as much correlation and value to stacking. The 3/3 and 4/2 builds were the most successful NBA builds. But game script is far more important. An example would be if you think one team blows the other team out, you might want to include one or two bench players from that team.
4. Pay Attention to Correlations Not Stacks- In NBA, correlations are more important. You want to play players who have positive correlations but even more important you want to avoid negative ones. A good example would be to not play DeAndre Jordan and Jared Allen in the same lineup as generally they show negative correlation.
5. Do Not Forget the Bench- Over 80 percent of optimal lineups included at least one bench player. If you have a high scoring sixth man, you can even play them in the captain spot as roughly 15% of optimal lineups included a bench player in captain slot.

 

 

Football Specific Strategies

Football is clearly my favorite sport for showdowns. Since there is so much variance and individual game strategies, it by far has the biggest edge to players who are willing to be wrong more times than they are right, but win big when they are right!

***ADVICE FROM COACH***

People think they need to be correct more than 50% of the time, or at a very high clip. That is the furthest thing from the truth in large GPP’s. It is about how much you win when you are right. Remember the biggest key to winning big in GPP’s is to finish in the top 1% more than 1% of the time. If you finish in the top 1%, just 2% of the time, and still wrong more times than you are right you will be ahead in ROI! Remember that most of the tournaments are top heavy.

Picking the Right Captain

So, this is always important in all showdowns. But in football there are so many different strategies you could go with this spot. Your strategies will be different in Cash vs GPP’s. In cash, you will want a stable and high floor because you are only concerned with beating 50% of the entries. In GPP’s, you can take more stabs with boom or bust players. I am going to give you some of my strategies that are not as common as others, but how I have won a lot with showdowns at the end of this article. In the meantime, let us review some data.

Position Breakdown

Here is the breakdown from 2019 NFL Showdown (58 slates). This chart shows the averages by position.

Optimal Captain Count by Position:

 

QB – 10-of-52 slates (19.23%); 26.53 DraftKings Points

RB – 20-of-52 (38.46%); 29.25 DraftKings Points

WR – 17-of-52 (32.69%); 28.96 DraftKings Points

DST – 4-of-52 (7.69%); 23.5 DraftKings Points

TE – 2-of-52 (3.84%); 25.15 DraftKings Points

K – 1-of-52 (1.9%); 21 DraftKings Points

A key to remember here is this is an optimal lineup. Sometimes these optimal lineups could be chalky and lead to extremely big, chopped pots. So, do not take this data as the bible and play all number one RBs in the captain spot.  For example, the week the kicker was optimal there was surely less duplicated lineups.

 

NO ONE LIKES TIES!  We Want Unique Lineups

Look at some of the data I found on duplicated lineups vs salary used.

$50,000 – 31.42 Ave. Duplicates

$49,900 – 30.53

$49,800 – 22.72

$49,700 – 22.57

$49,600 – 16.25

$49,500 – 16.62

$49,400 – 13.07

$49,300 – 12.94

$49,200 – 9.68

$49,100 – 10.14

$49,000 – 7.77

$49,000-$48,500 – 6.54

$48,000-$48,500 – 4.63

< $48,000 – 2.16

Of course, we do not want to never use exactly $50,000. Leaving some salary on the table is often key in large showdown contest unless you like to share your prize!

 

Look at Cumulative Ownership

Another interesting data point I found was the total cumulative lineup ownership and the average duplicates. This is a main tool to my main slate lineups as well.

Sub-100% – 1.38 Ave. Duplicates

100-150% – 2.00

150-200% – 5.30

200-225% – 10.04

225-250% – 16.27

250-275% – 26.03

275-300% – 44.42

Having this data is great, but only if we can use it correctly.  Each slate is different, you want to attack it in a separate way.

 

Strategies to Follow for GPP’s

1. Come up with a game plan. This is the number one thing to do. This is not just figuring out the game script, but also an individual game plan.
2. Count the Stars. What does that mean? Take the game and count the blue-chip stars who will soak up targets and carries. General rule is including both QB’s as blue-chip plays.  Let us look at last night’s game (10/11/20).

Blue Chippers:

Russell Wilson ($13,000), Chris Carson ($7800), Tyler Lockett ($8600), Kurt Cousins ($9600), Dalvin Cook ($10,200), DK Metcalf ($10,000) and Adam Thielen ($9800)

Now this game had a lot more than normal. We will want to soak up as many of these guys as possible without being extremely chalky. In a game like this, I often like to play a cheap captain and jam as many of the blue chippers in my lineup as possible. Last night I put Irv Smith ($200) in the captain spot, and it was very successful. But I understand that many times it will not. Remember, I am looking to get as many blue chippers in my lineup while being different. This allowed me to get four or five of these guys in one lineup! The blue chippers will most likely be popular, so you will want exposure, but in a thoughtful way that others may not be doing.

3. Pay attention to Stacking with your Captain. This position is key to your whole strategy, so you want to make sure it correlates well with your lineup.
4. Check Injuries. Who is the backup’s backup? A lot of times people go straight to the backup but not the backup’s backup. This is where a ton of great punt plays come from.
5. No more than two punts per lineup. ($200-$400 salary) We want to be different, but we do not want to burn money. Less than 3 percent of winning lineups had more than two players defined as punts.

 

Closing Advice

I hope this helps you with the rest of the football season. I will be adding a baseball section to the article in time for the world series.

There is so much more to cover. I am putting together many high-level articles and training documents. My last piece of advice is: do not play with your heart! Do not pick players because you like them or vice versa. Just because the best plays of the weekend are going against the team you root for that does not mean you cannot play them. Players that play like that are the fish. Learn to eat the fish not become one!

Until next time! Signing Off  WHO-DEY!