Mathematics

Daily Fantasy Sports team optimizing - NFL Football Mathematics Part 2

In Daily Fantasy Strategy part 1, we described that when you have a choice, always pick players with the highest potential fantasy points per (salary - floor)  that you can afford.  Be aware of the salary floor and divide out what you think the points per effective salary return will be.

 

Above we have a table showing this calculation for NFL teams that have generated at least 8 fantasy points per game.  The Fantasy Salary is converted to Salary $100 by subtracting the floor salary and dividing by 100.  The value calculation is then fantasy points per token.

 

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Daily Fantasy Sports team optimizing – NFL Mathematics Part 4 – Using VORP Value Over Replacement Player

Daily Fantasy Sport Team Ladder Line with VORP

In part 3, we showed that the Ladder Line provides an easy to visualize graph of how your team is coming together by showing the incremental salary on the X (horizontal) axis and the average points per game on the Y (vertical) axis.  The value (reference part 1 and part 2 ) is the slope of each segment.

 

An optimized Daily Fantasy Team is the team that gives the maximum number of expected fantasy points for a given salary cap.  When the team is displayed on a Ladder Line, you should be looking for a curve that has a steady or consistent  slope for each player segment. 

 

However, to get the ladder line as flat as possible we have to borrow a method from the baseball analyst’s field of Sabremetrics : Value over Replacement Player (VORP)

 

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Daily Fantasy Sports team optimizing – NFL Football Mathematics Part 3 - The Ladder Line

The most important aspect of Daily Fantasy Sports is managing your budget within the salary cap to ensure you are getting maximum value for the salary tokens you have available ( See part 1 and part 2 for how to calculate player value ).

 

To build a winning team you must be able to picture how your team is coming together on your overall goal of getting the most points for your team.  A Ladder Line – sometimes also called a waterfall chart or an accumulator display – is an important tool to evaluate how one team compares to another. 

 

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Daily Fantasy Sports Risk Management – Use the Kelly Criterion to determine bet size

Use Kelly Criterion for Daily Fantasy 50 50 games

Selecting the optimal bet size for a Daily Fantasy Sports game is key to managing the risk associated with the game.   If you bet your entire balance in one game, one loss means you are out of the game until you redeposit.  On the other hand, making a small bet means your balance will grow slowly.

Did you know that there is a large body of research supporting the use of the Kelly Criterion to select the optimal bet size based on two factors (1) prior knowledge of the payout and (2) the probability of success?  Both factors can be determined by the Daily Fantasy Sports player and the optimal fraction of your account balance to wager can be determined.

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