Tell me about your puppy- underdog fun (1 Viewer)

[greenmountaingoat]

Last year I did a promo with one of the other ff sites. I put in $10 and they put $35 on top of my $10 to my underdog account. I only used "$8" last year and carried over a balance to this year. 

I did two teams last year, one of the $5 1qb/12 teamers and one of the $3 3 team deals.

I got crushed in the 3 teamer. I didn't properly appreciate the positional advantages with that kind of setup and hosed myself.

The 12 teamer, I had Kelce, Chubb, Swift, Godwin, Mike Williams, Brady etc. and had a pretty good run. I was in first place most of the year until Chubb/Swift injuries coupled with bye weeks for my backup RBs, Mike Williams disappeared and Kelce turded for a few weeks. Would have been fun to advance but alas, didn't make it. Dropped to third the last week. 

This year, I've done one (1QB) puppy so far (from the 11) and am in the midst of a second puppy, this one a SF. Both with an 8 hour clock so I can tinker and have something fun to look forward to every few hours. Checking who got picked, thinking about who I might pick.

I sort of hate my 1QB team. Kelce/Adams/Zeke/Dionte/Lamar/Jacobs/Lockett/GWilson/Carr etc. I backed Kelce up with Gronk and no one then he retired. Got a bit of a Raiders stack going but got sniped on Renfrow. Backed up Jacobs with Z White and have Gainwell and Carter to keep me afloat for bye weeks. 

My super puppy is also off to a shaky start from the 1.02. The run on QBs was IMPRESSIVE. I don't play any superflex leagues so I'm learning a bit as I go here. 

1.01 was Allen (duh) so I picked up Taylor. Then the draft went CMC/Kupp/Mahomes/Jefferson/Eckler. So far looking like I'll have some good options to double up at QB for the 2/3 turn then boom. 10 straight QBs before Chase/Stafford/Kelce/Rodgers/Diggs and I got Carr, again! 23, QBs off the board by pick 48. 

I had a choice at the 4/5 turn and decided to take the plunge with Tannehill and Conner so that I can feel like I can just hammer WRs and TEs all the way. I'm hoping these SOBs leave me some WRs there. Not sure why I didn't stack Waller. Probably could have had CEH/Sanders or whatever later. Just feel like having a third, difference making RB would fill in for the lack of QB upside. 

Carr/Tannehill (realized too late they have the same bye week lol).- hope to get lucky with a third QB late for week 6?

Taylor/Najee/Conner (maybe some Conner insurance as my 4th RB?)

8 WRs- TBD

3 TEs- TBD

What are you guys up to out there? 

 

[cheese]

Hello GMG. Thanks for starting this as I don’t see much best ball in the forums and I bet we have more players. 
 

Some thoughts on your construction....

I personally don’t like to handcuff in BB like you did with Jacobs. Some people do it, but I mostly believe in drafting as if players already on my team reach best case scenario. If Jacobs gets hurt, this team is unlikely for real money with or without a handcuff. 
I like Kelce in this format and what you tried to do with Gronk. Lamar and Diontee play week17 which is good, but with no Ravens WR you might need the Raiders game to shootout. I would have tried to find a 49er for that game even if it’s late round like Davis-Price.

One strategy I like a lot is drafting guys who will miss games early. I think you can survive waiting on Hopkins for example while your team is healthy early and then have a value when it matters.  Even if he hurts you, I think his advance rate will be extremely low so if he does blow up in the weeks 15-17, you might be one of the few getting it. My problem is, I tend to go to this well too often in some drafts. You probably only want 2 or so guys like this per team or you may dig too big a hole.  

I find myself stacking Jags a lot.  I have probably done 5-7 underdog teams that ended up with all my late round picks being from the Jags/Texans game.  If you land cooks look for Kirk.  If you land kirk look for Lawrence. If you land lawrence look for marvin.  If you land them all end with Engram. 
I’ll try to post more when I have my teams in front of me. 

 

[massraider]

What's a puppy? Is that a certain kind of format?

 

[greenmountaingoat]

Hello GMG. Thanks for starting this as I don’t see much best ball in the forums and I bet we have more players. 
 

Some thoughts on your construction....

I personally don’t like to handcuff in BB like you did with Jacobs. Some people do it, but I mostly believe in drafting as if players already on my team reach best case scenario. If Jacobs gets hurt, this team is unlikely for real money with or without a handcuff. 
I like Kelce in this format and what you tried to do with Gronk. Lamar and Diontee play week17 which is good, but with no Ravens WR you might need the Raiders game to shootout. I would have tried to find a 49er for that game even if it’s late round like Davis-Price.

One strategy I like a lot is drafting guys who will miss games early. I think you can survive waiting on Hopkins for example while your team is healthy early and then have a value when it matters.  Even if he hurts you, I think his advance rate will be extremely low so if he does blow up in the weeks 15-17, you might be one of the few getting it. My problem is, I tend to go to this well too often in some drafts. You probably only want 2 or so guys like this per team or you may dig too big a hole.  

I find myself stacking Jags a lot.  I have probably done 5-7 underdog teams that ended up with all my late round picks being from the Jags/Texans game.  If you land cooks look for Kirk.  If you land kirk look for Lawrence. If you land lawrence look for marvin.  If you land them all end with Engram. 
I’ll try to post more when I have my teams in front of me. 

Thanks cheese! I'm about 2-3 months into being on twitter it seems like everyone on there is having a lot of underdog fun  @barackdhouse 

I like my SF build better so far. I do this strictly as a hobby for fun so don't do volume. Still in Rd 13 on the draft started on June 23rd.

QBS- Carr, Tannehill, Mayfield

RBS- Taylor, Harris, Conner

WRS- DJ Moore, D. Johnson, Mooney, Renfrow, Woods

TE- Kmet, Henry

With 7 picks left, I feel like I have all the bases covered and looking for some guys to swing for the fences on.  This build is closer to what I did last year. 

Not sure if Jimmy G makes any sense as a 4th QB. He might be available at 14.11 but Allgier/TDP/Herbert at RB or Parker/Palmer/Chark at WR. Feels like a better shot for one of those guys to land a 20 point game into my score at some point makes more sense. 
 

 

[greenmountaingoat]

What's a puppy? Is that a certain kind of format?

It’s a $5 best ball draft on underdog. 
 

cheap fun

 

[facook]

Just food for thought: Week 17 way more important in the huge tourneys than in leagues with finite number of teams, correct?

 

[cheese]

Just food for thought: Week 17 way more important in the huge tourneys than in leagues with finite number of teams, correct?

Definitely. So are stacking and bring backs. 

 

[facook]

Definitely. So are stacking and bring backs. 

Remind me what a bring back is?

 

[cheese]

Remind me what a bring back is?

For instance if you are stacking Jags for week17, drafting Texans so you get points from both sides since you need that game to shootout anyway. 

 

[barackdhouse]

Well let's see. So far I have drafted 32 puppies. 18 in the 1QB format and 14 in the Superflex. Which they hilariously labelled as "Puppy, but Superflex"

So yeah week 17 and a little bit of week 16 correlation is the thing. I'm trying to stack DEN @ KC and SF @ LV and BUF @ CIN for example. CHI @ DET might be sneaky. The best of all though is the battle of Los Angeles, Chargers v Rams.

My exposure among *higher* tier WRs:

Claypool ~35%
Godwin  ~30% kind of regret that
Metcalf ~30%
Bateman ~30%
Mooney ~26%
Aiyuk ~22%
Sutton ~22%
McLaurin ~22%
Juju ~17%
Higgins ~17%
Diggs ~17%
Evans ~17%
Keenan ~13%
Amon-Ra ~13%
Chase ~8%
Kupp ~8%
Deebo ~8%

Among cheaper options:

Doubs 56%
Palmer 56%
Wandale Robinson 48%
Pierce 39%
Crowder 30%
Tolbert 17%
Toney 13%
Chark 13%
Nico 13%
I could go on from here.

Part of my strategy is more rookie heavy in these earlier puppies. By August it will be more chalkish. I expect them to run at least 3 more of these. I didn't include the SuperFlex numbers in this, this is just the 1QB puppy from like a couple months ago at least. I've done a handful of the Best Ball Mania III but plan on waiting until August to hit that heavier. 

Always down to do more puppies, though. I need to get some more balance on some of these names. I don't have any D Henry or Jefferson for example.



 

 

[barackdhouse]

This one is a SuperFlex Puppy but one of my favs and it has the week 17 correlation with DEN at KC and MIN at GB:

Mahomes, Cousins, Mills
Javonte, Gibson, CEH, D Pierce, J Robinson, E Benjamin
Sutton, Juju, Olave, Watson, Dotson, Wan'dale Robinson, Nico Collins, Doubs
Kelce, Irv Smith, B Jordan

Houston stack, Chiefs stack, Vikings stack, and I have Sutton/Javonte plus Watson/Doubs for "bringing the comeback" or whatever the phrase is. Houston vs KC week 15 maybe worth a lil bit, too.

 

[cheese]

Thanks for posting exposures. 28 teams for me so far between Puppy and BBM. I have also played drafters but didn’t include it here. My highest owned player is 50% Kelce which has a lot to do with picking late constantly, but also I think he’s viable as early as 7th. 
 

My other guys that high are mostly late rounders. Marvin Jones, Julio Jones. 
I also have 39% Mahomes mostly because if you pick Kelce late R1, Mahomes early 4th always seems right. I do think if you like Kelce without Mahomes, you might find an unstacked Kelce is somewhat unique. 

 

[Hartliner]

11 Teams drafted so far here are some notable exposures.

QB: Trey Lance 27.3%

RB: Devin Singletary 54.5%

       David Montgomery 36.4%

WR: K.J. Osborn 45.5%

        DeAndre Hopkins 36.6%

        Cooper Kupp, OBJ, Will Fuller, Darnell Mooney, Diontae Johnson, Tyler Boyd, Tyreek Hill all at 27.3%

TE: Mark Andrews 45.5%

My dominant draft strategy is getting my receivers early and then by Rds 4-5 is when I get my first RB like Montgomery. Round 2 is Mark Andrews time if I can.  I also value getting an elite QB. The thinking is with the Elite QB or TE you can just draft 1 backup and use the roster space for the variance in WR scoring so a lot of my teams have minimum 8 WRs. I also switched to slow drafts to pace yourself from not spending too much money.

 

[greenmountaingoat]

For those not familiar, BBM III, the puppy and the SF puppy are structured similarly but with $25 vs $5 per entry- obviously different prize pools. (500k in the puppy,  250k in the SF puppy, 10 Million in BBM3).

Weeks 1-14 you're competing with your draft-mates to be one of two teams to advance to subsequent- 3 individual weeks of Quarter/semi/finals. 

It's half ppr

QB-RB-RB-WR-WR-WR-TE-FLEX. 18 round best ball

Super flex adds a SF and drops a WR spot but is 20 rounds. 

My philosophy on build:

RB- go early if you can. If they stay healthy, they're more consistent than WRs. Going RB-RB to start off gives you a ton of flexibility for the entire rest of the draft. I like a few of the RBs in the third round this year so, depending on your draft slot, you can mix in a WR in the first two rounds if you feel like you're getting great value. 

WR- you need numbers due to the inherent scoring inconsistency so waiting a bit more and having a bit of a blanket approach makes sense. This is news to no-one if you've done a few of these. The 3WR non SF format especially, there will be 6-8 WRs going off the board in many of the 4th thru 10th round. The WR3/4/5 types are critical for backfilling the inconsistency.

WRs taken by round in the puppy I did: 5/6/5/8/6/6/6/6/3/7. It dries out quickly so be ready for it.

TE- Heard on a pod this morning that the advance rates on TEs were higher for 3TE late builds. I didn't intend to do this but I didn't like the prices on the TEs that were in range of where I was picking. Idea being that if you have a Kmet-Henry-Hooper-Allie Cox build your odds of a TD on any given week are not appreciably different from a Kelce-Hooper build. So you're able to get a decent upgrade on your WR or RB core if you hold off there. Lotta big TE weeks come from the TE 14-24. 

QB- get a guy you really like at ADP and build stacks around him if you can. 

The more advanced stuff out there this year on philosophy is the stacking and correlation with likely high scoring games in week 16 and 17 to get the big prize.

I'm more of a "this is neato, I'm going to try to get $7 and win my heat." kinda guy. 

 

[Ilov80s]

Unfortunately for reasons I do not understand, Underdog stopped working in Michigan around late May. It says it’s no longer legal. I don’t get that since all other forms of online gambling are legal here. 

 

[cheese]

Unfortunately for reasons I do not understand, Underdog stopped working in Michigan around late May. It says it’s no longer legal. I don’t get that since all other forms of online gambling are legal here. 

The Midwest is crazy. Ohio can play draftkings DFS and underdog best ball, but not draftkings best ball. 

 

[Ilov80s]

The Midwest is crazy. Ohio can play draftkings DFS and underdog best ball, but not draftkings best ball. 

Yeah I don’t get it. Underdog worked last year, I played a ton. I event got in one real early draft this April. It was legal before we had legal online sports betting. 

 

[IndyCasey]

Unfortunately for reasons I do not understand, Underdog stopped working in Michigan around late May. It says it’s no longer legal. I don’t get that since all other forms of online gambling are legal here. 

And Indiana is bizzare as well. I can play underdog via an app (on my phone, ipad, etc.) but when I attempt to log in via a browser I get a message stating Underdog does not offer web access in IN. They did last year. Not sure what changed.

 

[greenmountaingoat]

My son’s in town for the week, had him draft a puppy this afternoon with house $.
 

Very excited to track his team with him this year. 

 

[BroadwayG]

Through 30 BBM3, 144 Puppy 1, 38 Puppy Superflex, 37 Puppy 2 and have about 25 slow Puppy 2 ongoing.

Highest exposures are Duvernay, Landry, Hopkins, Gibson, Gesicki, and H Henry

 

[barackdhouse]

10 BBM3, 18 Puppy 1, 14 Puppy SF, 6 live Puppy 2 and 41 slow Puppy 2 (with about 30 still going).

It is a new exercise for me to have a ton of slow drafts going at the same time. I am only doing live drafts this year for BBM3, FFPC BBT, and generally any other formats for season long tourneys. Live is better. But the Puppies sell out in just a few days and I decided I really wanted to attack Puppy 2 and the only way is to slow draft. I don't use the autodraft function so I am actually manually choosing each pick, and it has been working out much better than I expected on both mobile and PC (from a management perspective). 

As for my new exposure post Puppy 2, it will be another week before I know but I am really trying hard to stretch my biases here in late July and go in different directions than before.

Still find myself drafting a ton of Fields, though. I am definitely in camp "week 17 and 16 correlations matter" and here is one example of a recent slow Puppy 2 that I completed:

Burrow, Fields
Javonte, Breece, Singletary, Herbert, Jamaal Williams, Zamir
Chase, Higgins, Mooney, Chark, Crowder, Duvernay, Shakir
Hockenson, Knox, Hurst

I'm not saying this team is anything special but it is the best recent example I have done where week 17 and week 16 are correlated strongly.

Buffalo @ Chi week 16 - 7 players
Buffalo @ Cin week 17 - 8 players
Chi @ Det week 17 - 6 players