The first basic principle we learn when starting out in DFS is that in order to be profitable, we must be able to find the players that have the ability to score the most points of the night, fit them under the allotted salary cap, and have them in the correct type of contest. What if I told you, that only part of this was true. You see, there are two very different types of players. You of course, have your more conservative cash game players. Kevin is what I would call a cash game player. He doesn’t concern himself with ownership percentage when it comes to building his rosters during the NFL season because for what he is trying to accomplish, it really doesn’t matter that much. There is nothing wrong with that if that’s the way that you are good at thinking. Some of the top players in the industry, like Kevin, are great cash game players. They will play a majority of their bankroll in Head-2-Head games, 50/50 tournaments, and double ups. Most of the players that I know that are successful at this make at most 3 “cash game” lineups. These are focused on players in good matchups, that have a high floor, with upside. Notice, there is nothing in there about how much a player will be owned. This is vitally important. He’s focused on buying players at a discount to build his roster. I’m sure if you ask Kevin, he has a threshold of what he will pay for every player, and except for in rare circumstances, does he break that threshold. You have to have 3 things in order to be a profitable cash game player, the ability to identify value within good matchups, the ability to consistently put together a great roster that can beat 50% of the field, and proper bankroll management.

Want to try a month of DFS Army VIP Membership for free? Check out this great offer!

There is nothing wrong with being a cash game player. If you are just starting out, this is what I would suggest you try to accomplish first. There is a general theory surrounding DFS right now that cash games have become harder and harder to beat. And where I agree with this to a point, I have come to disagree with it for the most part. No matter what, we’re still needing to beat 50% of the field consistently to become a profitable player, the difference is now, with all the information out there for us to use, the average DFS player has become smarter and smarter. Which means that you have to rely more on your ability and skill to be able to accomplish the things in order to become successful.

The second type of player would be your tournament player. This is a player that has to have two more weapons in his arsenal. The ability to identify lower owned players, and the ability to withstand long swings in their bankroll. These are two skills not easily learned, and being that I’m more of a tournament player, I can tell you that I have a harder time with the latter than the former. For the last year, I have been very good at identifying lower owned players and the ability to define what the “chalk” is and decide whether or not I want to avoid it or not. That in itself is always a tricky thing to learn or teach for that matter, but I’m going to do my best. As we saw in yesterday’s “Boomer’s Baller’s”, Choppodong and I put in a picture from the movie “Glen Gary Glen Ross” where Alec Baldwin was holding a picture of “Brass Balls.” You need to have these in order to be successful in tournaments. For the NBA, it usually means fading one of the “elite” players like Kevin Durant, DeMarcus Cousins, or in the case of yesterday, LeBron James. Each sport is different. Each position in that sport is different. At least for me. For NBA, I don’t mind having a player in my lineups that is 50% owned, as long as the situation is one that is just not worth taking the risk for. Russell Westbrook, without Kevin Durant in the lineup for the OKC Thunder, is the perfect situation. I’ve won with Westbrook being 70% owned in my lineups before. He put up 87 points that night. That to me, is a situation that I just don’t think is worth fading. I have enough confidence in my ability to find lower owned players that I can offset that ownership percentage through out my lineup.

However, there are ways to get around knowing where the crowd is going to be. I’ve talked a lot before about finding low owned players. And the general way to do this is to listen throughout the day to the “chatter” on where the crowd is going. Who players think are going to be in the best position. Listening to podcasts, watching twitter, reading articles, are all great ways to do this.

As many of you may have heard, we have revamped our research methods for the NBA here in the DFS Army. We have started to only use one source in order to bring you what we feel are the best plays of the night and the ability to exploit the matchups that not a lot of people are looking at. We now use only this source as all of our information to give you information in “Boomer’s Baller’s” and through my daily Cheat Sheets. This source is Fantasy Labs. When you first sign up with the DFS Army you get a couple of E-Books to go along with your membership. One of these is written by a great mind in the DFS industry, Jonathon Bales. If you have yet to read these books, I would recommend doing so as soon as you can because there is a ton of information in them that can make you a better player.

When we starting first using FL, it was a lot to take in all at once. The information and the ability that this tool has is second to none in the industry. This is leading me to the part of why I’m only using one source. You may have noticed that everyone in the industry that provides content goes through hot and cold streaks, they all have their strengths, and weaknesses as well. By using only one source for my daily content, I cut out the thinking of the crowd. I’m not allowing any outside knowledge to cloud my judgment when making lineups either. The more you try to absorb through the day, the more that your head becomes a part of the crowd. You’re subconsciously talked into playing players in your lineups that you wouldn’t have normally played and where that can be a good thing at times, I’ve found that unless you know how to take that information and think for yourself, it generally ends up being a bad thing. Since we have started using Fantasy Labs, we have found players with ownership percentages in single digits, that have gone off for 50+ fantasy points, that were being overlooked by the crowd. Using only FL has allowed us to put together consistent player pools for you to choose from while narrowing down your options. I have stopped worrying about telling you if a player is going to be lower owned in tournaments because what I have found is that we don’t need too. By cutting down the player pool and not giving you 20 point guard plays of the night, we are giving you the opportunity to be more consistent in your roster building. Now, with that said, there are going to be players that are not listed that are going to have good nights and ones that are listed that won’t have good nights. It’s just something that is going to happen.

Capitalizing off the Chaos is a concept I starting thinking of a while ago. I used it more for MLB than with NFL and NBA, but if definitely holds true here as well. Let’s take last night for example. Al Horford was less than 6% owned and scored over 50+ points last night. He was one of the players that at a mid-level price tag, would have been vital to helping you place high in GPP’s. Why was he so low owned? He was going up against Golden State. There is a matter of thinking in the NBA DFS World that the crowd tends to not like to pick on certain teams. We can use this thinking and go against the grain at times. To do it this way we have to know what the “crowd” is thinking. Which I just spent some time telling you we don’t need to do. Confused? Good! Let me clear it up. If you take My cheat sheet from yesterday and start to build a roster, you start to understand where I’m going. What do most people do when they pay up for one point guard? They try to save at the other. I paid up for both of mine. In comes Stephen Curry and Kyle Lowry. LeBron James was a secondary play yesterday and my “Brass Balls Fade of the Night” as long as Kyrie was active, so when that announcement was made, I pivoted to Carmelo Anthony. LeBron, 30.1 FDP. Anthony, 40.7. The funny thing about this is that Carmelo didn’t play most of the 4th quarter. So with Lowry and Curry and Anthony we have automatically made ourselves different than most of the field. With almost 150 FDP out of three positions, we will take that anytime. This lineup ended up finishing at 309.4 which was about 15 points below the cash line. The reasoning was that Giannis Antetokounmpo was 55.7% owned in this tournament. He ended up with 69.4 FDP last night. The higher a player is owned, the more the cash line fluctuates when he scores. Having a player owned by over half the field that wasn’t in this lineup was the reason I didn’t cash. Would I do it again, knowing the ownership percentage? Yes. The reason is that no matter what his ownership percentage, the odds that he hits 69.4 again, no matter the opponent, are in my favor.

By using only one source, Carmelo Anthony was at 12% owned, Andrew Wiggins was at 8% and Hassan Whiteside, who was also in the winning lineup, was at 9% owned. DeAndre Jordan was under 1%. Without spending most of my day listening and trying to analyze who everyone else likes, we have found a consistent way to find lower owned players that have the ability to Capitalize off the Chaos and help us compete more consistently in tournaments.

Join the DFS Army

Do you want access to the most advanced Daily Fantasy NBA cheat sheet in the industry? How about the chance to talk player picks and lineups with our NBA DFS Pros and like-minded players? DFS Army VIP Members get all of that PLUS access to our best in the industry NBA projections, the NBA Research Station, and the DFS Army Domination Station optimization tool. Go to DFS Army VIP membership and use promo code 20-OFF to lock in at 20% off the monthly membership fee. You won’t find a better deal or a better DFS team!

Want to try a month of DFS Army VIP Membership for free? Check out this great offer!