DFS NBA Fanduel: Introducing the All New Spreadsheet (Beta) for 3/6/18

After a lot of tweaking and trial and error, the new spreadsheet is ready for primetime…almost. I’m still going to keep it in BETA for the time being to continue to collect data to ensure nothing is out of whack. If you have any feedback, comments or successes please share them with me on twitter @GeoffLambert77.

What’s new about the sheet, you ask? A couple of things. The biggest differences being it now has point projections and a “Return on Investment (ROI)” column. I’ll quickly explain how each one works and how to use it to build lineups.

Projections Explained

The projections start off as a very simple straightforward projections model that you can find at many different DFS sites like Rotogrinders, Linestar etc. However, I then take that simple projection and adjust it based on the “grades” that you are used to on my sheet. An “Average” or “Blue” grade on my sheet is between 20-and-28. The higher a player is over the “Average” the bigger the projection bonus he will receive, and conversely, the lower a players grade is below the “Average” the bigger the detractor he will receive. Fairly simple right? Here is an example:

Player A:

Basic Projection: 38 Fanduel points

Grade: 40 

GoingFor2 Projection: 42.56 FanDuel Points

Player B:

Basic Projection: 18 FanDuel Points

Grade: 40

GoingFor2 Projection: 20.16 Fanduel Points

Return on Investment Explained (ROI)

The first part of the return on investment was already part of the algorithm and it was used in some of the calculations. That metric is determining a players “baseline” based on their current price. I consider a players baseline to be what they need to score to hit “value” in cash games. A lot of veteran DFS players use the term “five times value” when discussing what a player should score based on his price. Or, in other words, five points for every $1,000 spent. If a player cost $10,000 he needs to score 50 to hit value.

While this metric is an easy way to determine how your players are doing “on the fly”, it’s not entirely accurate. If you spent your entire 60k, and all your players hit exactly five times value, your total score would be 300. Well, we all know that is doesn’t normally take 300 Fanduel points to cash in 5050s and double-ups. I know there are exceptions, but 300 is a little high for cash games.

So what I did was collect data over a year of cash games and determined a more “exact” average score to cash in 5050s and double-ups. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 270-to-280, I honestly can’t remember the exact number, but in that range. Please note, I had to adjust it this year with the change in scoring for blocks and steals.

Okay, without getting into all the math involved, basically I’m able to assign a point total to every player, based on his price, that he needs to score in order to give you a full return on your investment. That number is then compared to his “GF2 Projection” to determine if this player is projected to give you a full return. For Example:

Player A

Player’s Salary: $10,000

Cash game baseline: 46.5 Fanduel Points

GF2 projection: 51 FanDuel Points

ROI: 108%

Player B

Player’s Salary: $10,000

Cash game baseline: 46.5 Fanduel Points

GF2 projection: 35 FanDuel Points

ROI: 88%

After determining the ROI, I used the same conditional highlighting that I did for the grades so you can quickly identify players expected to reach or succeed their value and which players will not. You will notice that a good grade does not always mean a player is going to give you a good ROI, or conversely, a good ROI does not always have a good grade. The grades are 98 percent based on non-wavering metrics and are heavily weighted to a player’s last five games, whereas the ROI is tied strictly to a players projection, based on a number of expected metrics, namely minutes expected, recency, NBA points per minute, and a few others.

Hopefully, this makes sense to those of you that care where I get these numbers from. I know there are many of you that could care less as long as it wins you some money.

I’m going to attach the spreadsheet to this post, but for those of you that have never used the sheet before, there is a permanent home location for the spreadsheet that gets updated “near daily”. You can find it’s home location in the Menu under DFS or by clicking Here. You can also find in inside the GoingFor2 App for iOS and Android, which you can download here. The App is the recommended way to view the sheet simply because it seems to load faster in the App, and I will send out notifications when the sheet is live.

We are sponsored by Bovada…

Here is the spreadsheet for today…

NBA FanDuel Spreadsheet 3/6/18 BETA

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