It was around this time last year that I put out my first “Top Ten Worst DFS Players” article, and I thought now would be a good time to do a Part 2….
Daily fantasy is one of my favorite things to do. I like it so much, I even play DFS for sports I don’t even like, like PGA and MLB. Of course, the fact that I run this blog with a lot of DFS content, I love the DFS community as well. I belong to many Facebook DFS groups, I talk DFS on Twitter, and I must have 10-plus Facebook messenger chats blowing up my phone daily. I’m entrenched in the community like few are. I know or have met so many people through DFS, and 95 percent of them are good guys, one percent of them are @$$holes, and the last four percent fall into one of the following categories. The first Top 10 is still the true “Top 10”, so think of this as “rounding out the Top 20″…
The Legend in his Own Mind
We will call him “The Legend” for short. This is the guy that likes to mention time and time again how he took down a GPP “last year”. Now, in all fairness, there are plenty of guys that I know that have actually taken down a GPP or two, but this guy likes to mention it…
All. The. Time.
Each time he mentions it, he embellishes it just a little more. It goes from $2,000-to-$4,00-to-$8,000. His facts never seem to add up, he has no screenshots of this victory and no one ever remembers him posting it when it happened. It’s not that I don’t believe him…well, yes it is, I don’t believe him.
The One-Percenter
Ah, the one-percenter. This is the guy that is forever on the hunt for the “Low-Owned Guy”. He sends screens shots immediately after lock with a picture of his low-owned guy with a comment like, “George Hill 1% owned!”. I think someone forgot to tell him that being low-owned isn’t the end-all-be-all in fantasy sports, at some point, actual fantasy points are needed as well. To add insult to injury, no pun intended, sometimes he will post something like, “Chris Paul is listed as ‘doubtful’, but there is no way he misses this game, I’m going to play him ‘cause he will be low-owned’”.
Cut to three hours later, “Damnit! Chris Paul has been ruled out, my night is over!”
“Hey, one-percenter, look at the bright side, at least he was low-owned…”
The Conspiracy Theory Guy
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Here we have the “Beautiful Mind” of the daily fantasy world. He is the guy that is up big after all the early games have played, and he has maybe one guy left in the late game. He posts his lineup in all the Facebook groups saying, “Looking pretty good!”.
His lineup proceeds to free fall from the top of the leaderboard to out of the money. Now his posts look something like this, “FanDuel is rigged! How can I go from 45 points up to 10 points down in 2 hours? Mason Plumlee had 45 FanDuel points and somehow people actually played him! What? I don’t believe it, FanDuel be on that bullsh*t, they be changing rosters after lock. F**k this. Y’all can keep playing this sh*t, but it’s impossible to win. It’s f**king rigged, I’m going to go play Draft now. They are legit. Peace”
Two days later, he is back to posting his lineups…
The “You Down With G.P.P.? (yeah, you know me)” Guy
There is always one of these guys in every group. These are the guys that claim they “only play GPPs”. They don’t play cash games, they don’t play league games, and they hate head-to-heads. If that were the only thing they did it wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s how they almost look down on you for playing anything but GPPs. Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar…
Randomer commenter: “Is Russell Westbrook worth paying up for in cash tonight?”
The “You Down With G.P.P.?” Guy: “Sorry, I don’t play cash games. I not sure why anyone would waste their time on cash games. I only play GPPs, where the big money is made.”
Okay, if you only play GPPs, more power to you. Personally, I think its the fastest way to go broke, but if you can somehow be successful at it, congratulations. But, don’t act like you are somehow better than everyone that likes to play cash games or smaller, more winnable contests.
I like to compare these guys to the guys at the bar that wear a shirt that’s two sizes too small, stick out their chest as they walk and are as dumb as a box of rocks. While us smart guys are like, “…As soon as he buy that wine, I just creep up from behind, and ask you what your interests are, who you be with, things to make you smile, what numbers to dial…”
Okay, enough with the rap metaphors. I know a lot of my reader base is made up of 20-somethings and all of this probably went over their heads — maybe they’d understand me better if I mumbled. The point is, you aren’t any better than me because you have the bankroll to waste trying to win a million dollars.
The Defensive Player of the Year
“…And the winner of the 2018 Defensive Player of the Year award goes to…” that guy that just can’t take a little constructive criticism. You know this guy. He is the guy that puts out a stat on a guy that he is going to play in all his lineups, and the moment someone challenges him on it, instead of trying to see their point-of-view, he gets “defensive”. Kind of like this…
DPOY: “Look dipshit, Jason Tatum has a higher usage rate when Kyrie Irving is out of the lineup and they are playing literally the worst defense in the NBA. If you’d get your head out of your ass and do some research, you would know that Tatum is the play tonight and it’s not even close”
Random Commenter: “Dude, I only asked if you thought Terry Rozier would cut into his usage now that he is back from injury…SMH”
Now, if this guy starts kicking people in the nuts, we can change the title to the “Draymond Green” guy.
Master Lock
This guy uses phrases like, “lock this guy in” or “so-and-so is a lock tonight” or “Bryce Harper is a lock for two HRs”. The biggest issue with him is if you actually tried to “lock in” all the guys he claimed to be locking in, you wouldn’t have enough salary to fit them. He claims so many “locks” each day that he is bound to get one right, and when he does the whole world will know about it.
“Boom! Triple-double for Russell Westbrook. I’m glad I locked him in tonight. I hope everyone took my advice”
No shit, you locked in Westbrook? Way to go out on a limb genius. Let me guess, tomorrow you’re going to lock in Clayton Kershaw against the Padres?
The No. 1 Contender
This guy is the older brother to the Defensive Player of the Year, but instead of getting defensive about his own picks he attacks everyone else’s picks — and not in a constructive way. His posts will sound similar to this…
“Dude, do you even watch basketball? Why would you play Kyrie Irving at $10,200 when you can have Kemba Walker for $8,600 and a better matchup? And why Tyler Ulis? That guy is terrible. Yeah Devin Booker and Elfrid Payton are both out and he is minimum salary, but you will get more points if you rostered ME over Ulis. If you wanna throw your money away, I’ll give you my PayPal account and you can send the money straight to me.”
And then, to take it a step further, if there happens to be one or two guys in the facebook group that everyone respects and is nice enough to share his plays with the group, the No. 1 Contender gets ten times worse…
“Are you serious? Why does everyone even listen to you? You clearly have no idea what you are doing in MLB, you should stick to NBA and let the professionals handle baseball. You’re a phony trying to get everyone to play “your” picks while you play something else entirely.”
To add insult to injury, he will post his winning lineup later that night, and all the guys he claimed were dumb plays, somehow made it into his lineup.
The Next Big Thing Guy
Okay, this guy is funnier than he is annoying, but after you have seen his posts and comments too many times, he will start to irk you as well. This is the guy that no matter what sports season we are in, he, “can’t wait for (insert out-of-season sport) to start”. His posts look like this…
“Another losing night in the NBA. This resting sh*t is getting out of hand. I can’t wait for MLB to start, at least I will know the lineups beforehand”
and then…
“Damn, the late game is postponed due to rain! My night is over, I stacked the late game. Man, I can’t wait for NFL season to start. They play in any weather — rain, sleet or snow.”
and then…
“Damnit, Sammy Watkins is out for the game with a concussion and Le’Veon Bell is out with a sprained ankle. I had 100 percent exposure to Bell and Watkins was in my best lineup so far. I can’t wait till the NBA starts. That’s my best sport!”
The “Money Back Guarantee” Guy
Ah, the “money back guarantee” guy. This is the guy that sends nasty, unprofessional, emails to FanDuel or DraftKings, in the hopes to get his money back because one of his players got ruled out after lock. He goes on this long Facebook rant about how it’s unfair, he should be able to late swap his players. Or, he blames the NBA for not forcing teams to put out legit injury reports. Sometimes he will blame the tout that he follows on Twitter for recommending the said player.
Basically, anyone and everyone that he can place the blame on, he does.
But, this is the same guy that two nights ago was posting how lucky he was that he didn’t roster Tyreke Evans, who was 50 percent owned, and because he faded Evans, he won $300. You can’t have it both ways. Sometimes you benefit from the late scratches, sometimes you don’t, but it’s not Fanduel’s fault, it’s not DraftKings fault, and it sure as hell isn’t the NBA’s fault. Besides, if you are that upset over the $2 you lost in your Double-Up, you probably shouldn’t be playing Daily Fantasy to begin with.
The “I Told You So” Guy
In Part 1 of this piece, I had the lineup providers as the “Worst DFS Player“, and they still are the bane of Daily Fantasy Sports — but you can avoid them. You don’t have to buy their lineups or respond to their excessive attempts on Twitter to get you to buy a lineup, and most Facebook groups will ban them the moment they get wind of a lineup provider in their midst.
But the “I Told You So” guy can’t be avoided so easily. He technically isn’t breaking any of the Facebook group rules by throwing it in your face that he “told you” Westbrook was going to have a bad game. It’s bad enough that you are already upset because you lost money, but as soon as the “I Told You So” guy says those terrible four words, “I told you so”, you want nothing more than to jump through the computer and strangle his a$$.
And the worst part of it. The absolute worst part of the whole thing is…he did tell you so.
Thanks for reading, I want to say thank you to everyone that helped me come up with a second list of “Worst DFS Players”. I couldn’t possibly name all the people that helped me brainstorm this article, but let’s just say, I have enough material to do a Part 3…
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