LineStar NFL Takeaway - Week 8: How Much/Not Enough

📝 @zeroinDenver 🎯

Welcome back, everyone. Again, it's your dude, ZeroInDenver, here to try and bring some insight into NFL DFS contests. If you're new, this is where I do some analysis on NFL DFS contests and do analysis on what might work and what might not in terms of strategy and lineup construction.

This week is a continuation of last week. I'm continuing to dive into the LineStar tools and explain a few spots where I see people running into trouble and asking questions in the chat.

This time, I'm going to look at the techniques that I use to "fix" exposures when I get too much or too little of a specific player.

Strategy

Removing a Player From The Pool

Using settings I talked about last week (LINK), I'm going to walk through my process of building, adjusting, and rebuilding 150 lineups.

To start, I'm using the Stars & Scrubs model (one of my favorites). Here are my exposures:

So here's the first problem:

I have way too much Gronkowski. In fact, I don't think I want any Gronkowski. In that case, there are two ways to remove a player from your pool.

1. "Hate" the player in the app

2. Lower the player's projection to 0.

Both steps can be done by going into the projections page, locating the player, and then either clicking the "Hate" button OR clicking the -2%/-5%/-10% button to lower the player projection to 0.00.

I run the build again, and this is fixed. No more Gronk. After each build, I'll go through and see what players I want to remove. I'll make sure I get all the players I don't want out of my lineups before worrying about what everyone else is exposed at.

Fixing Too Much Of A Player

Right now, there are no individual exposure settings in LineStar. Personally, I leave player exposure wide open at 100% in settings and adjust my builds as needed.

To fix this, I do one or more of the following:

Manually Edit Lineups

I find it very beneficial to look at each lineup the build spits out for me. I know this can be time-consuming, but it's worth it. I hate to watch a lineup go off except for 1 or 2 players that I never would have played anyway if I hand-built the lineup..

So take this lineup for example. Ignore how it scored, but instead think of how confident you would feel playing that lineup?

For me, I see 3 players under $4K. I think that's asking a lot out of the studs to carry in the lineup. I would probably consider swapping Kupp, Henry, or Robinson.

Lower player projections:

Sometimes this is enough to lower exposure. Using Kupp as an example, I went from 100% Kupp to 79.3% Kupp by lowering his projection by 20%.

Increase projections of other players at the same position:

On DraftKings and FanDuel, you have 3 WR spots and one FLEX spot that could possibly be filled with another WR. With that many spots, it's likely that you're going to see a WR highly exposed in your lineups, especially for a player like Kupp that was projected higher than the rest of the field in week 8. To get WR ownership a little more spread out, I ended up increasing projections of Chris Godwin, Deebo Samuel, A.J. Brown, and Robert Woods.

Keep in mind, as you lower or raise player projections, this will affect the exposure of other players, sometimes in ways, you might not like.

For example, I lowered Kupp's projection by 20% and increased Godwin, Samuel, Brown, and Woods by 20%. The good news is this lowered my exposure to Kupp, but I also ended up with 87% Derrick Henry and Godwin, Samuel, Brown, and Woods were still all under 40% exposed in my lineups

It's a constant balancing act.

Build separate sets of lineups and merge:

This is usually my favorite method and the most effective because there's much less trial and error.

In this example, let's say that I want 80% Kupp in my 150 lineups. That means 120 lineups with Kupp and 30 lineups without.

For my 120 lineups, I'll hit the "Love" button on Kupp's card, and build a set of those lineups. For the 30 lineups without Kupp, I'll hit the "Hate" button on Kupp's card.

Then I'll merge those two sets together:

Fixing Not Enough Of A Player

This is harder to fix, and still requires trial and error. The same techniques usually apply.

Increase player projections:

I usually start by increasing a player's projection by 10% and run another build. Still not enough? Increase by 10% and run again.

Still doesn't work? Look at who else you're getting a lot of. You may need to lower the projections for that player to build a little more balance. For example, if I want more Robert Woods and less Cooper Kupp. In that case, I'd lower Kupp's projection and increase Woods's projection.

LOVE a player

You can always click the "Love" button on a player's card on the projections page. The catch is you may get that player in every lineup.

WTF it still doesn't work! #RIGGED

So you've been changing projections, loving players, and hating players, and you're still not getting the players you want in your pool...

Here's the first thing I'd check:

I usually keep Min Projected Points in settings around 7 or 8. This immediately limits my pool. It's going to remove a lot of bad players, but it's also going to eliminate most DST from my pool as well. Lower that and see if that fixes things.

NOTE: This is one of the biggest reasons why you're not getting a DST in your lineups in Showdown or "single game" slates.

Have the optimizer build around the players you want

I'm not going to snowball you, getting the optimizer to put all the players you want into lineups can be time-consuming and a frustrating trial-and-error process.

Here's an example:

I want Stafford, Woods, and Godwin in ALL lineups. I ran the optimizer, and I got all of those players, but almost never together.

In that case, I'm going to start a new builder by going into the Lineups page and clicking the Builder button. This will build a new lineup with no players selected. Add in the players you want and click the Optimize Lineups button. This will build as many lineups as you requested with those players selected.

I know this was a long one, but, thanks for taking the time to read. If you find this useful, please let me know.

Also, I don't have all the DFS answers. I'm trying to learn, just like you. So if something looks off, doesn't make sense, or you have a better idea, please let me know.

Thanks again for reading and I'll be back next week!