If you want to improve at DFS, you need to find the types of contests that allow you to have success and continue to play mainly in those. This enables you not only to have a greater chance of success each week but also to improve in identifying contest specific dynamics and trends.
I am a lower stakes, small-field tournament player. I do not play cash games, and I do not play large field GPP contests unless I am just tossing in an entry for fun. The contests I am playing in typically have 60 entrants or less. These contests are my favorite because you do not need to get as many things right to get near the top of the leaderboard. Finding the right stacks in small fields is a great example of this. Most people do not stack enough in these types of contests and finding the right stacks and leverage points is a great way to vault up to the top of the leaderboard.
Each week I will post my favorite stacks of the week, especially those that are likely to be overlooked in the small-field tournaments. I’ll also provide my results from the prior week and talk about what went right, what went wrong, and most importantly, what we can we learn.
I did not have any luck finding a contest with less than 60 people in Week 1 for the $100 I had planned on entering. In retrospect I probably should have just played in the $50 or $27 tournament I normally play. This was a field of 100 teams, so I tweaked the strategy a bit.
I went with the Lamar Jackson–Mark Andrews stack as leverage off of Jalen Hurts and Travis Kelce. Saquon Barkley was about the only thing I got right in this lineup. I created a unique lineup with correlation. However, looking back, I did not need to get this unique in a 100-player field. I should have simply played the best plays. (I even wrote as much in last week’s article. Kelce was just too good of a play at his price to not play. I should have listened to myself.)
With that in mind, here are some options for Week 2 that combine a potentially low ownership rate with a good likelihood of being the absolute best plays on the slate.