If You Ain’t First, You’re Last
Chris E-Sports talks about his $200k win in Week 1.
Wow, what a weekend. By now I’m sure you’ve seen the screenshot and understand that I had one of the best weekends you could realistically hope for. It’s one that I’ve worked for 6 years to accomplish and it’s still surreal. To be fair, 200k doesn’t go that far after you pay taxes, buy 6 TVs, 4 computer monitors, a new rig, some clothes, an entire bar, and a pack of Kirkland white tees. I kid, I kid… I only bought 5 TVs.
It’s important to take a step back after major wins. In the past, after winning I would go way above my normal play and get involved in larger buy-ins than I was comfortable with. And it wasn’t that I was uncomfortable with the cost, it was because I didn’t adjust my strategy for the larger buy-ins. This often resulted in losing days and since then I’ve learned to take it easy, enjoy the win, and then adjust strategies if moving up stakes.
Instead of talking about the lineup, let’s talk about the theory of how to build on short slates. I’ve won over 20 GPP’s (guaranteed prize pools, or, the tournaments with thousands of entries) this year of various sizes and many of those have come on short slates. I approach them almost the same in E-Sports as I do in the NFL. The strong correlations between players on winning teams is the key. First thing, I map out several different scenarios that can happen in the game. How does this game go if Team A wins? What about Team B? In-game two I do the same thing. Now comes the least intuitive part of the process – I understand that I’m going to be wrong. It’s my “if you ain’t first, you’re last” strategy.
Usually we’re trying to be right, we’re trying to pick the players we think will do best. But so is everyone else. So what’s the result? We lose; most people lose. In fact, on a given month only about 15% of players are profitable. The thing that binds most of those people together is they are all trying to be right. We have to ask ourselves “How do I win if everyone else is wrong? How do I build my lineup to go against the crowd?” Don’t get me wrong, if you’re playing a cash game or small-entry tournament you can go with the more “correct” players – the fewer people in the contest the less you have to differentiate your lineup. But when you’re in these large GPP’s you need to be wrong to be right. So what do I mean by that? I mean I’m taking stands that don’t feel good. I’m going underweight on Michael Thomas at home, even though I expect him to do well. The field thinks he’ll do well, and they’ll be on his side. So if he has a bad game or gets hurt my lineup will look different and have an edge.
As the season goes on, I’ll explain this a bit more in the DK Building Blocks weekly article and I’d be happy to answer any questions any subscribers have in regard to how exactly to build these types of lineups. If you haven’t already, you can get access to my DK Building Blocks, our DFS eBook, and our weekly picks and analysis here.
Finally, don’t get me wrong, you lose a lot with this strategy so you need to have a bankroll that reflects the contests you’re playing in. And the fewer entries in these massive GPPs you play, the more off the beaten path you need to be, and the more often you’ll lose, so I’d recommend playing smaller ones to build your bankroll to start.