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ALL the big winners have Jeff Janis single entry tournaments....very f (1 Viewer)

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cgcloutier

Footballguy
He only played once all season for 2 receptions, but yet all the big winners seem to have him in their lineups. These are in single entry tournaments.

No one in there right mind would play Janis unless they wanted a zero.

These people must know how to hack the software during game play to adjust their lineups. How else would you know..what am I missing here?

 
You're missing that Adams was ruled out which meant either Abberdaris or Janis had a nice opportunity. Maybe both if GB went 4 wide a lot. I played 9 FD gpp and had Abberdaris in 1, thought about Janis but didn't use him. Cobb getting hurt sure helped too. But I don't think playing either one of them is that crazy on a short slate.

I played Conley on DK in my one contest there. In the same realm as playing Janis. Almost got 3x I believe, was hoping for more though.

 
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How could the big winners not have Jeff Janis?! He was low owned and scored the most points!!!!! That is how big GPPs work, play a guy you realize 90%+ of the time will do nothing, but is capable of blowing up. Youre not trying for just an above average score to cash a 50/50. It's pretty simple game theory.

 
Because it's rigged dude and it's been this way for 2 years now. Insiders rigging the system. Stop throwing your money away.

 
So salty. If you dont understand why Jeff Janis was a smart play in a GPP then you dont understand the game. Any lineups that DIDNT have a high risk play like Janis, on a short slate like this, were the ones lighting their money on fire. Obviously only the most unexpected scenario would make Janis a winning play, but a $25,000 first place in a $2 GPP is a 12500% return on investment. If they play the game 100 times Janis does that maybe once, but its the 1% fringe performance that is how you actually win an impossibly large GPP field.

 
NixonMask said:
So salty. If you dont understand why Jeff Janis was a smart play in a GPP then you dont understand the game. Any lineups that DIDNT have a high risk play like Janis, on a short slate like this, were the ones lighting their money on fire. Obviously only the most unexpected scenario would make Janis a winning play, but a $25,000 first place in a $2 GPP is a 12500% return on investment. If they play the game 100 times Janis does that maybe once, but its the 1% fringe performance that is how you actually win an impossibly large GPP field.
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Yep.

Below is a direct quote from my article this week...I missed on Janis because I picked Abbrederis, but could have just as easily gone the other way; last week, I recommended Jermaine Kearse for the same reasons (and he, of course, went off this week). The point, though, is to find that guy, as described below:

3) Assume the contrarian role to win. If you want to win a GPP this weekend, you WILL need to have that one player, who is less than 10% owned, but achieves 5X value. This week, fellow FootballGuy Phil Alexander outlined how this strategy played out in Wild-Card weekend in DraftKings' Millionaire Maker on our CrackingDraftKings blog. Use game strategy to try to find that one or two sleeper(s) who have high upside, but will be overshadowed by the likes of David Johnson and Rob Gronkowski. I try to identify a few candidates in the 'picks' section below.

 
eaglesfan7 said:
Nice try but you didn't recommend him.
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He didn't say he did. He said he recommended contrarian plays, which is really the point of GPPs. These guys have explained it to you, but they can't understand it for you.

No one "knew" Janis was going to go off, but the probability of it was far greater than just picking a random dude off a random roster give the injury news with Adams -- someone had to play Adams' spot on the field for 70% of the snaps. Go to the bottom of the standings and you'll see rosters littered with "stupid" plays who scored zero or nearly zero. Those "stupid" plays would have looked just like Janis if they had hit, and you'd accuse those guys of "rigging" the game instead of making "stupid" plays.

As NixonMask noted, it's pretty basic game theory. When the 80th percentile = the 1st percentile, the proper play is to target at least 1 (and really on a 2-game or 4-game slate, really 2 or 3) guys you think very few folks will have rostered in the hopes that he (they) hit. Statistically, your return on investment with that play is great than if you just go chalk and believe that somehow you will stumble on the correct combination out of a small handful of "chalk" players and the other 24,999 won't. Those guys who won were playing for 1st place, not a min-cash.

 
I'm sorry but NO ONE in their right mind would have ever played Jeff Janis ! Even IF Janis had a chance to play or start how many points would you realistically expect ?? I'd say 3-5 points MAX and that is pushing it. This guy has only had 4 receptions in his ENTIRE career and 2 receptions all this season. Would anybody really think this guy would suddenly explode and help them win a tourney ?? please.... The guy conveniently puts up Julio Jones, Antonio Brown type numbers :loco: ... Oh how nice !! To me that reeks of a system hack somehow ! :ph34r: Heck one person who was winning one of my tourneys was named "cheeto", I CAN SEE WHY !! To make it even more strange is I was in SINGLE entry tourneys and the people who won big money played Janis ... People can talk they are using complicated formulas to me until they are blue in the face. There is NO formula to play a no name bum and hope for a injury so he can suddenly come in and play like Antonio Brown.... Gee, how come I didn't think of Jeff Janis ?! How could I be so stupid?! Janis was such a obvious play I don't know what I was thinking ?! COME ON people.. Until these problems are cured most won't come within a sniff of big money in tourneys. I spent $20 this week in tourneys and made $75 back. I suppose I will have to be happy with that since I was clueless on playing a super star like Jeff Janis.

I think next week I am going to play Carolina Panthers receiver Brenton Bersin !!! Yeah, that's the ticket !! I'm betting my money on him !!

I can see those dollar signs now ! :thumbup:

 
Real_Deal said:
I'm sorry but NO ONE in their right mind would have ever played Jeff Janis ! Even IF Janis had a chance to play or start how many points would you realistically expect ?? I'd say 3-5 points MAX and that is pushing it. This guy has only had 4 receptions in his ENTIRE career and 2 receptions all this season. Would anybody really think this guy would suddenly explode and help them win a tourney ?? please.... The guy conveniently puts up Julio Jones, Antonio Brown type numbers :loco: ... Oh how nice !! To me that reeks of a system hack somehow ! :ph34r: Heck one person who was winning one of my tourneys was named "cheeto", I CAN SEE WHY !! To make it even more strange is I was in SINGLE entry tourneys and the people who won big money played Janis ... People can talk they are using complicated formulas to me until they are blue in the face. There is NO formula to play a no name bum and hope for a injury so he can suddenly come in and play like Antonio Brown.... Gee, how come I didn't think of Jeff Janis ?! How could I be so stupid?! Janis was such a obvious play I don't know what I was thinking ?! COME ON people.. Until these problems are cured most won't come within a sniff of big money in tourneys. I spent $20 this week in tourneys and made $75 back. I suppose I will have to be happy with that since I was clueless on playing a super star like Jeff Janis.

I think next week I am going to play Carolina Panthers receiver Brenton Bersin !!! Yeah, that's the ticket !! I'm betting my money on him !!

I can see those dollar signs now ! :thumbup:
Click to expand...
Then you just don't understand how big GPPs work at all.

The analysis isn't "do I think Janis will likely explode?". The analysis is "since Adams is out, do I think the unlikely chance that Janis explodes is worth a gamble in a massive GPP on a really small slate?". The guy didn't need to explode to be really valuable anyway given his salary.

Bersin isn't available in FD, but if he were and active for the game I guarantee you someone would roster Bersin this week, not because he's likely to do anything spectacular, but because IF he does something big he'll be low-owned AND you have money to pay-up elsewhere. But Bersin isn't a good comparison anyway, since he's the 5th WR (6th if you include Olsen) on a team that doesn't pass much. Jaron Brown would be a better comp -- if Floyd and John Brown are ruled out on Saturday.

 
eaglesfan7 said:
Nice try but you didn't recommend him.
Click to expand...
I never said I recommended him. I made a point about how you MUST roster a player or two on short-slate weekends to win all the marbles--if you had all guys who were > 20% owned (a lot of people did), there was no way you were going to win big money in a GPP. It might seem obvious in retrospect that having those players is key, but too many people build their rosters without game strategy in mind.

Real_Deal said:
I'm sorry but NO ONE in their right mind would have ever played Jeff Janis ! Even IF Janis had a chance to play or start how many points would you realistically expect ?? I'd say 3-5 points MAX and that is pushing it. This guy has only had 4 receptions in his ENTIRE career and 2 receptions all this season. Would anybody really think this guy would suddenly explode and help them win a tourney ?? please.... The guy conveniently puts up Julio Jones, Antonio Brown type numbers :loco: ... Oh how nice !! To me that reeks of a system hack somehow ! :ph34r: Heck one person who was winning one of my tourneys was named "cheeto", I CAN SEE WHY !! To make it even more strange is I was in SINGLE entry tourneys and the people who won big money played Janis ... People can talk they are using complicated formulas to me until they are blue in the face. There is NO formula to play a no name bum and hope for a injury so he can suddenly come in and play like Antonio Brown.... Gee, how come I didn't think of Jeff Janis ?! How could I be so stupid?! Janis was such a obvious play I don't know what I was thinking ?! COME ON people.. Until these problems are cured most won't come within a sniff of big money in tourneys. I spent $20 this week in tourneys and made $75 back. I suppose I will have to be happy with that since I was clueless on playing a super star like Jeff Janis.

I think next week I am going to play Carolina Panthers receiver Brenton Bersin !!! Yeah, that's the ticket !! I'm betting my money on him !!

I can see those dollar signs now ! :thumbup:
Click to expand...
I'll try one more time to explain why he was a decent GPP play...

1) Davante Adams was announced as 'inactive' earlier in the week.

2) Because Adams was inactive, it appeared that Abbrederis would get the start opposite Randall Cobb.

3) Cobb, who generally runs out of the slot (but hadn't vs. WAS and wasn't going to vs. ARZ), was going to be matched up against Patrick Peterson, the league's best coverage CB.

4) The WR(s) opposite Cobb were likely to get a lot of overflow targets when Peterson had Cobb blanketed.

5) The gamescript called for GB to be playing from behind, so 3 WR sets were not out of the question for GB, which would have Jeff Janis on the field more often than usual.

6) The game had the highest Vegas total on the weekend.

7) Janis was listed at the site minimum across the industry, so his value was intriguing, given this set of circumstances.

There is nothing in those seven points that is inaccurate. It's OK to say you didn't see it...nobody will think less of you if you were amongst the 99% of people who didn't have him (including me). But saying that the game is rigged because 1% had him is simply not accepting the facts that were in front of us all entering the weekend.

 
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Daily fantasy podcasts were talking about Janis and Abbredaris. They guy they dismissed was Kearse, who I thought made more sense based on the matchup.

 
Thank you John Lee for explaining this more clearly.

I can see why Janis was played in large tourneys. This is my first year playing FD and it's been a learning experience. At the start of the season I was not winning much at all. Now i'm winning on a pretty consistent basis. Granted , I'm not winning $25K, but i'm making more than I spend.

These big winners are treating this like the lottery and playing a few low owned % players in hoping they strike gold.

Now I can see more clearly why this would be done in very large tourneys containing like more than 25,000 people. How about the smaller leagues 250 people or less ??? I would think this would be a bad practice right ??? Or should FD be played like that in any size league??

 
Sorry for answering for John, but when you put a puzzle in front of me I compulsively have to answer it. Completely understand its annoying, and you want Johns answer not mine. I had to do the math myself though, figured Id share in case anyone wanted it too.

The math is really difficult, changes wildly week to week, and is largely impossible to predict ahead of time. If you start with a simple permutation on this weeks small slate of two games, decide to play all chalk and say 3 QBs are playable, 5 RBs, 7 WRs, 2 TEs, 2 defenses, and 3 kickers there are 75,600 different possible lineups. From there you need to be able to predict ownership in order to get a feel for exactly how far outside the box you need to get. If you were to play the most popular player at each position and say their ownerships are as described below:

QB: 40%
RB 1: 75%
RB 2: 50%
WR 1: 80%
WR 2: 66%
WR 3: 60%
TE: 40%
Kicker: 40%
Defense: 40%

The likelihood that someone has that exact lineup is .3%, not 3%, but .3%, so its still very unlikely. If you have 172,000 entries though that lineup can be expected about 524 times. That scenario is the definition of negative EV. You would need a contest of atleast 658 people to expect that lineup to duplicate. That isnt really true though, the reason is at the end.

If you change the 60% owned WR to a guy like Janis, who lets say is 1% owned then youre looking at 8.7 duplicate lineups expected in a field of 172,000. To get to the point where you expect to have a unique lineup in a field that large youd also need to swap the 75% owned RB with a 25% owned one, and the 80% WR with a 25% one. In a small field, or with lots of options like during the regular season full slate contests you really dont need to get all that cute to get to the point where you expect a unique lineup. If anyone is interested I coded a quick excel spreadsheet to do that math for me, youre welcome to it if you want it.

The problem is that that math doesnt really work for DFS purposes, each position is not truly a unique event. If you play Cam this weekend you are likely going to play Olson over Gronk, and youre almost certainly not going to play the Cardinals defense either, even though simple probability formulas are going to assume you will with an equal likelihood. I dont think its possible to predict that ahead of time with any kind of certainty either. Im sure theres more complex formulas ( and I have a rough idea of how to long form it in a spreadsheet thatll Ill add to) that would do a better job, but theyre well above my head.

 
The first time I won a GPP I was celebrating in RotoGrinders chat and some guys started making fun of my winning line up saying it was ugly and I was just lucky. Exactly. That's how you win big GPPs. Pretty lineups almost never win and when they do you are splitting it with a lot of other people. Pretty line ups are for cash games.

 
Does FD or DK give the user any way to download everyone's GPP roster at game time so that you can re-check the winners lineup afterwards?

 
NixonMask said:
Sorry for answering for John, but when you put a puzzle in front of me I compulsively have to answer it. Completely understand its annoying, and you want Johns answer not mine. I had to do the math myself though, figured Id share in case anyone wanted it too.

The math is really difficult, changes wildly week to week, and is largely impossible to predict ahead of time. If you start with a simple permutation on this weeks small slate of two games, decide to play all chalk and say 3 QBs are playable, 5 RBs, 7 WRs, 2 TEs, 2 defenses, and 3 kickers there are 75,600 different possible lineups. From there you need to be able to predict ownership in order to get a feel for exactly how far outside the box you need to get. If you were to play the most popular player at each position and say their ownerships are as described below:

QB: 40%

RB 1: 75%

RB 2: 50%

WR 1: 80%

WR 2: 66%

WR 3: 60%

TE: 40%

Kicker: 40%

Defense: 40%

The likelihood that someone has that exact lineup is .3%, not 3%, but .3%, so its still very unlikely. If you have 172,000 entries though that lineup can be expected about 524 times. That scenario is the definition of negative EV. You would need a contest of atleast 658 people to expect that lineup to duplicate. That isnt really true though, the reason is at the end.

If you change the 60% owned WR to a guy like Janis, who lets say is 1% owned then youre looking at 8.7 duplicate lineups expected in a field of 172,000. To get to the point where you expect to have a unique lineup in a field that large youd also need to swap the 75% owned RB with a 25% owned one, and the 80% WR with a 25% one. In a small field, or with lots of options like during the regular season full slate contests you really dont need to get all that cute to get to the point where you expect a unique lineup. If anyone is interested I coded a quick excel spreadsheet to do that math for me, youre welcome to it if you want it.

The problem is that that math doesnt really work for DFS purposes, each position is not truly a unique event. If you play Cam this weekend you are likely going to play Olson over Gronk, and youre almost certainly not going to play the Cardinals defense either, even though simple probability formulas are going to assume you will with an equal likelihood. I dont think its possible to predict that ahead of time with any kind of certainty either. Im sure theres more complex formulas ( and I have a rough idea of how to long form it in a spreadsheet thatll Ill add to) that would do a better job, but theyre well above my head.
Click to expand...
Thanks for doing the legwork...Good stuff here. I would have answered with far less math (and gotten to the same place), but numbers make it difficult to disagree...

Wadsworth said:
The first time I won a GPP I was celebrating in RotoGrinders chat and some guys started making fun of my winning line up saying it was ugly and I was just lucky. Exactly. That's how you win big GPPs. Pretty lineups almost never win and when they do you are splitting it with a lot of other people. Pretty line ups are for cash games.
Click to expand...
A lot of haters on the internet. Anonymity makes everyone an expert or tough guy or both.

I've always said this about making a GPP lineup: "If you are entirely comfortable with your lineup, it's probably not a good GPP lineup."

AquaBliss said:
Does FD or DK give the user any way to download everyone's GPP roster at game time so that you can re-check the winners lineup afterwards?
Click to expand...
No...and it's a sore spot in the industry. FD will allow you to see everybody's roster, but you have to toggle through them, 10-at-a-time, which is effectively impossible. Because of late swap on DK, rosters are 'fluid' and subject to change as the day progresses.

That said, I think one of the by-products of regulation will be the elimination of late-swap and the release of CSV files containing all roster information when games lock. I don't have any inside information to suggest that is true, but transparency is something that has been sought after by legislators and AG's.

 
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John Lee said:
No...and it's a sore spot in the industry. FD will allow you to see everybody's roster, but you have to toggle through them, 10-at-a-time, which is effectively impossible. Because of late swap on DK, rosters are 'fluid' and subject to change as the day progresses.

That said, I think one of the by-products of regulation will be the elimination of late-swap and the release of CSV files containing all roster information when games lock. I don't have any inside information to suggest that is true, but transparency is something that has been sought after by legislators and AG's.
Click to expand...
I couldn't agree more. I would almost assuredly never download a big GPP, but just knowing I could would probably be enough for me because I know somewhere someone would absolutely be downloading everything.

 
NixonMask said:
Sorry for answering for John, but when you put a puzzle in front of me I compulsively have to answer it. Completely understand its annoying, and you want Johns answer not mine. I had to do the math myself though, figured Id share in case anyone wanted it too.

The math is really difficult, changes wildly week to week, and is largely impossible to predict ahead of time. If you start with a simple permutation on this weeks small slate of two games, decide to play all chalk and say 3 QBs are playable, 5 RBs, 7 WRs, 2 TEs, 2 defenses, and 3 kickers there are 75,600 different possible lineups. From there you need to be able to predict ownership in order to get a feel for exactly how far outside the box you need to get. If you were to play the most popular player at each position and say their ownerships are as described below:

QB: 40%

RB 1: 75%

RB 2: 50%

WR 1: 80%

WR 2: 66%

WR 3: 60%

TE: 40%

Kicker: 40%

Defense: 40%

The likelihood that someone has that exact lineup is .3%, not 3%, but .3%, so its still very unlikely. If you have 172,000 entries though that lineup can be expected about 524 times. That scenario is the definition of negative EV. You would need a contest of atleast 658 people to expect that lineup to duplicate. That isnt really true though, the reason is at the end.

If you change the 60% owned WR to a guy like Janis, who lets say is 1% owned then youre looking at 8.7 duplicate lineups expected in a field of 172,000. To get to the point where you expect to have a unique lineup in a field that large youd also need to swap the 75% owned RB with a 25% owned one, and the 80% WR with a 25% one. In a small field, or with lots of options like during the regular season full slate contests you really dont need to get all that cute to get to the point where you expect a unique lineup. If anyone is interested I coded a quick excel spreadsheet to do that math for me, youre welcome to it if you want it.

The problem is that that math doesnt really work for DFS purposes, each position is not truly a unique event. If you play Cam this weekend you are likely going to play Olson over Gronk, and youre almost certainly not going to play the Cardinals defense either, even though simple probability formulas are going to assume you will with an equal likelihood. I dont think its possible to predict that ahead of time with any kind of certainty either. Im sure theres more complex formulas ( and I have a rough idea of how to long form it in a spreadsheet thatll Ill add to) that would do a better job, but theyre well above my head.
Click to expand...
This is good stuff and really expands on something I've said about NFL GPPS for awhile. I really think that the race towards "uniqueness" is somewhat overblown on full slate competitions. You typically won't see ownership percentages anywhere near that high during the season in the NFL. With 14 games, I think you can approach uniqueness rostering nothing more than 25%-owned players (those are very highly-owned percentages for NFL mid-season slates). The math on 9 players all 25% owned (assuming not interrelationship, which is impossible as you note) is 1-in-262,144.

Small slates, however, really require some reaches at multiple spots because of the significantly higher ownership percentages.

If folks want to see the phenomenon highlighted to an extreme (compared to NFL), they should play around with some $1 NBA contests. 80+% ownership is not uncommon when there's an "obvious" must-play and you can oftentimes build a cash lineup comprised entirely of 40+% owned players if you choose. I typically suck at constructing GPP lineups, but I'm forcing myself to piddle away my cash winnings in NBA on them to learn. I think it will make me a much better GPP player in the NFL next year.

 
AquaBliss said:
Does FD or DK give the user any way to download everyone's GPP roster at game time so that you can re-check the winners lineup afterwards?
Click to expand...
Draftkings has a csv download but does not show players whose game has not started yet, so you would need to download after each slate of games start to verify nothing is changing after a lock.

 
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