“These Go To 11” – Nigel Tufnel, Spinal Tap
In DFS, we can never know our true win rate in advance – we can only deconstruct it once the dust has settled. The good news is, we can get closer to it though. This can be achieved by increasing volume, or playing a higher number of games.
As a simple example, let’s say that you put together a lineup that ranks within the 95th percentile, so you’ve done better than 95 out of 100 players. You could STILL theoretically play 10 head-to-head games and lose them ALL! This is the nature of a thing called – variance.
Well wait a second here, you made a lineup which was better than 95% of the other players and LOST! That doesn’t seem to be very fair at all! Unfortunately, you are suffering from a common affliction – small sample size.
After all, you may flip a fair coin heads/tails and it may come up heads 3 times in a row, 5 times, or yes, even 10. But 3 million times in a row? (Unless of course, you are former Harvard student, Professor and current Stanford professor Persi Diaconis) A smarter decision than playing 10 expensive games may be to play 100 or even 1,000 games at lower stakes. Doing so will get you closer to your theoretical true win rate and broaden your sample size significantly.
If you go one step further than most and take a moment to post the games yourself using the ‘create’ panel, and utilize the opponent limiting tab on DraftKings, it should diversify your opponent pool in such a way that it reduces variance.
dailydolladfs 