Transcript

Andy Baldacci:
Hey everyone, how’s it going? My name’s Andy Baldacci, I’m the CEO of SaberSim and today, I have Max Steinberg, DFS professional, and one of the partners at SaberSim here with me. How’s it going, Max?

Max Steinberg:
It’s going great, very excited to shoot this video.

Andy Baldacci:
Yes. So this is a fun one. We’re kind of going in a bit of a different direction than we have in some of the other videos and talking about something we really haven’t covered much, but that we think is a strong part of the DFS process. And that is choosing your core group of players, but the way a lot of other touts, a lot of other people really talk about this, frankly, is wrong and can be misleading and can actually hurt your DFS results and waste a lot of time in the process. So what we’re going to do today is just cover the right and wrong way to choose your core plays for NFL. And Max, why don’t we just jump right into this one and just talk about choosing the core plays, how you’re doing it, how you shouldn’t do it, just how you think about this in general.

Max Steinberg:
Yeah. So I think this is what quite a few, I think DFS players, whether they’re using our product or another product will choose core or what they call core plays for one reason or another. And it’s something that I will actually do sometimes, but I think there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. And it has to do with how the players interact with each other, how excluding one play might affect another play. And I think what’s really good about SaberSim is, as we say, everything we do is built on our simulator, right? So we have a simulator. We simulate every game, thousands of times. And what we get is a lot of great data and that great data helps us build your lineups for you. Is when you go to the bill process, if you look under the hood, we have these correlations smart diversity in our ownership fade settings, and all these settings are based on the actual data we got from the simulations and those help us build you really great lineups as a mathematical process.

Max Steinberg:
I’m not going to say anything that you don’t know already. Everyone knows that the quarterback has correlation with his receivers. Patrick Mahomes has correlation with Tyreek Hill with Travis Kelce, with Mecole Hardman, all his receivers. And also something that’s common knowledge is players have correlations with opposing players. Patrick Mahomes is going to have some correlation with some receivers on the other team or if you look at, let’s say DeAndre Hopkins, this is the concept of game stacking, is you choose a wide receiver on one team, and then you may choose a wide receiver on another team, Tyler Lockett. There’s some correlation there.

Max Steinberg:
And one overlooked one as well is maybe running back in defense, we’d use Kareem Hunts. We’re probably going to see that he’s correlated with defense of the grounds, which he actually has a pretty strong correlation and that’s because running backs as a team gets really up in a game, they’re just going to run a lot. They’re going to pound the rock and that’s going to be good for a player like Grandmont. And so the reason that this is important when if you’re actually pruning some plays, if you’re actually choosing core players, is you want to choose core plays that are conscious of how they might affect other situations.

Max Steinberg:
For example, let’s say you were attempting to say, “I really don’t like Kyle Allen,” or something like that or, “I really don’t like Logan Thomas,” that’s a lot of targets. I think he’s washed, whatever. I don’t want to use them. Well, the issue with that is he has some correlation with some players on Dallas. And if you use Dallas players, it might be advantageous for you to use Logan Thomas. And so even if you have some take like that, you want to make sure that you’re not just getting rid of Logan Thomas, even though in some of your Dallas lineups, he’s going to be the optimal play.

Andy Baldacci:
Right because to get upside in lineups and just even putting upside aside, I guess players don’t exist in a vacuum. This is not something where you can just think about the impact they have on a lineup individually because correlations are really what’s driving the upside and how you’re going to stand apart in a lot of GVP. And while you might not like one player, you have to think about kind of the ripple effects that can come from that is removing him is going to remove other players accordingly and maybe those are ones that you wanted more of. And so that’s where just kind of looking at those correlations and making sure not to take too much of a narrow view of an individual player really comes into play.

Max Steinberg:
Right. I actually want to talk about how you should not choose core place first and so, I actually already did a build before this video. And I think if you’ve used our product before, then you’re going to know what I’m talking about here because we let you see the team stacks and the game stacks that you get and most of the time in the lineup seat belt, you’re going to have some sort of game stack in basically every lineup. In this pool of 150 lineups that I’ve created, I had just a rough estimate, it seems like 75% of lineups have game stacks. If you look at the actual lineups, we have this Houston onslaught and we have Davante Adam’s coming back. If we go down further, it looks like we actually really liked Deshaun Watson. So if you have Matt Ryan, oh wait, suddenly we don’t have anyone from this Green Bay, Houston game.

Max Steinberg:
And so what I think is really cool about the quarterback position is if you get diversity through the quarterback position, you end up creating optimal lineups that have wildly different players. If we have Matt Ryan, this lineup is going to look completely different than a lineup with Deshaun Watson and it’s going to look completely different than a lineup with Josh Allen. And so if you end up pruning some of these players at quarterback or wide receiver at tight end, I think what ends up happening is you end up missing out on some of those really what I call good diversity. It’s diversity that you’ve got a diversity in a wide array of players while keeping upside and correlation, all that good stuff you want and the GPP lineup. So in general, I think that when you’re looking at core players, I don’t even touch wide receiver, tight end quarterback or flax. I think that usually it’s really bad idea because it’s really going to be the best way to get that diversity.

Andy Baldacci:
Yeah. And one of the thing to just add is that when we talk about correlations, it cuts both ways where the more correlations you stack upon each other, the higher upside you have, but it just also adds a lot of risk because while the performance of one player will positively impact another, if one of them does poorly, it means the others do as well. So it makes your lineups more boom or bust.

Andy Baldacci:
And so I feel like just naturally, this is something that I don’t think not people talk about, but when it comes to diversity is that people might say, “Oh, I set my cap for all positions at 70% exposure,” or whatever it may be, but not all positions are the same. They don’t all have the same variants, especially when you start building out those stacks. And it sounds like a lot of what you’re getting at is that one you’re able to get diversity here. But when you talk about the good diversity, it’s diversity where you’re not sacrificing much and to take it, the other side of it, if you really focus on that, it might not be like a bad EV decision, but your swings dramatically increase and you’re not really gaining anything. If you just have a few core stacks and in all of them, they’re all built around that, that could be fine, but your swing is going to be massive and it’s not necessarily better than building out the wider array of stacks. Is that in line with what you’re thinking?

Max Steinberg:
Yeah, I think every week I’m thinking about how do I mitigate my risk as much as possible without sacrificing the EV of my last because I don’t want to run the risk. You don’t want to make a diverse lineup that’s going to be an unprofitable lineup. And so, figuring out how to get that diversity without risking having a negative expectation lineup is going to be really valuable. I think the best way to do that is through the quarterback position through these game stacks because it’s just naturally going to happen in the SaberSim built here and there’s a reason for it.

Andy Baldacci:
Can you walk through a little bit of how you would actually do this? Cause it sounds like what you’re saying is that the positions for football you’re focusing on for choosing those core plays are for the running back and the defensive specialties specifically, can you just kind of walk through how you would navigate narrowing these down?

Max Steinberg:
Yeah. You just got what I was getting at is running back, I think is a really interesting position because a lot of times there’s going to be entries throughout the week where you’re going to get the desk value place. these are going to be a lot of times the highest projected players on the slate. They’re going to be the best value players on the slate. And for me, sometimes I really want to take a stand on some of these running back players is going to be a play that I really like, and I haven’t done much research for this week so I don’t have that play for you in week seven. But usually, there’s going to be three or four players that I really, really like and I want to make sure that I get good chunks of pieces of them in my lineups.

Max Steinberg:
And so in that case, I might actually start by excluding some players and just checking the boxes of some of these running back players that I really, I usually start by just actually sorting by value. So I make sure I just like looking at the best value players and not missing anything or overlooking anything, not just deciding beforehand. And then I’m just going to sort of check the boxes of some players and maybe it’s a projection thing, maybe it’s something else, but for example, maybe I think Houston is going to get killed by Green Bay. And so despite the fact that the projection, the average projection for David Johnson is good and that SaberSim is going to quantify some games where Houston is going to do well against Green Bay, I have some take that I think Houston’s not going to do it all.

Max Steinberg:
If Houston doesn’t do well, Duke Johnson, who’s more of the third down back is going to get a lot of play. So maybe instead of having David Johnson in 10% of my lineups, I am going to just want to make sure that I get more of my core players to guys that I actually want to get leverage on because some of these guys, I might want to get 60 or 70% of the time in my lineups. And the reason I’m okay with that is running back as a lower and variance play, you can have more confidence they’re going to do well, because for most of these guys, they’re going to get 15 to 20 rushes. They’re going to get three or four targets at the very least. And so they’re never going to have those like zero games that you might see from a wide receiver.

Max Steinberg:
So I think there’s some value in choosing some of these running backs as core plays. I’m not giving you specific bets but I’m sure as you’re watching this video, you’re looking at this being like, “Yeah, I really like Aaron Jones. I really like Antonio Gibson.” Okay, well you can exclude some players and make sure that you get these guys more in your player pool for the post-build process.

Andy Baldacci:
You’ve mentioned before the correlation between running back and D, how should that impact the decision to kind of prune the pool a bit? Is that something you’re thinking about?

Max Steinberg:
Yeah, absolutely. So I think these are going to be related to each other because the running back almost always has correlation with their defense. Mike Davis have been a pretty strong pass catcher, pass correlation with the Panthers’ defense. So I think you want to keep in mind in both ways, you say, okay, “What running backs do I like?” You look at defense, you say, “Okay, what defenses do I like?” And then you want to actually go back and say, oh okay, so Washington’s football team offense is really cheap. Well, maybe I didn’t like Antonio Gibson, but obviously if Washing’s defense does well, I want to have Antonio Gibson in my lineups. He is sort of the lead back and he is going to be a good player. So maybe I didn’t like Antonia Gibson, but suddenly I think it would be a massive mistake if you didn’t include him because the Washington D is cheap and I liked the Wash team defense.

Max Steinberg:
And so you want to go through these like this and say like Browns’ defense. You say, “I don’t really like the Browns’ defense. I think they’re overrated.” Well, if you were like Kareem Hunt, then I don’t think that’s a smart move to exclude the Browns’ defense because they’re going to be related. Even if you think, “Oh, Joe burrow, people think he’s overrated or underrated in terms of, if he doesn’t actually have that many turn on for worthy plays,” then you say, “I don’t like the Browns’ D.” Well, then you have to think about, “Well, then do I want to exclude Kareem Hunt too?” And so you really need to think about both of these plays before just taking a stand on one of them because they’re related to each other. So that’s something that I’m going to be going back and forth with when I’m making these core plays and looking at who to play.

Andy Baldacci:
And so let’s go through and just do a quick build and just see what happens. And then I want to hear your take on just what to expect, like what impact does this have in that last step of the build process where you’re doing your quality control and just getting exposures dialed in?

Max Steinberg:
Well, let’s make sure for a second that I actually practice what I preach. So we have New Orleans, I’m using Alvin Kamara. So in New Orleans’ D, Jerick McKinnon definitely want to use them. Let’s see Green Bay D. I think they’re viable. They’re not a very good defense, but Deshaun Watson does turn it over. So they could have a big game. I’m just more worried about what GPP is. Is there a way that this defense has a good game and I think [inaudible 00:14:24]. So maybe I missed a thing or two here, but we’ll just go with it for now and do a quick belt.

Max Steinberg:
And yeah, I think what you’re going to notice actually is we’re probably going to have the builder hone in on some defense running back stacks. We’re going to get a lot of a defense. My guess is it’s going to be Washington and we’re going to get more Antonio Gibson than we probably think because he has that correlation, even when we don’t like him, the SaberSim builder is actually giving you good feedback. But they’re saying if this defense is such good value and Antonio Gibson is such good value, you don’t really have to love either of them that much. What is going to happen is if the defense does well, Antonio Gibson’s going to do well. And that’s going to open up a lot of value for you for the rest of your lineup, which is going to be really, really good.

Max Steinberg:
So there we go. We have Washington D we have Browns’ D. And if you actually look at these lineups, we have Kareem Hunt and we have the Browns’ D. We have Antonio Gibson and we have Washing defense. These are our top lineups. So if we excluded Antonio Gibson, what SaberSim is telling us is we would have excluded actually like one of the top lineups that we could have built. And so, I think it’s really important to consider both running back and defense together when you’re picking this core players, because you might actually be sacrificing more than you intuitively think.

Max Steinberg:
And I just want to talk about the last thing because thinking about running back and why we’re doing these core players is I think it’s all about leverage, is you see our projected ons for some of these players and throughout the week, I think as the slate shapes up, these are going to change and you’re going to see some players who are projected at 20, 25, 30% ownership. With that, if we like a player a lot and we want to have him and be a positive EV play for us, that means we have to get him either in more optimal lineups than the field, which we’re going to do at SaberSim. But we also want to get him more than the field and so let’s say I really like Kareem Hunt. Well, his ownership by the end of the week might be projected at 20%.

Max Steinberg:
If I really, really like him and really wanted to take a stand on him, if I limit my running back player pool, it’s really easy to just raise as many exposure and suddenly get him 70% and have a lot of leverage on him. Maybe I really like Antonio Gibson, it’s really easy to raise him an exposure and get 40% Antonio Gibson. If we didn’t limit our player pool, it’s possible that we might have to build more lineups in order to do that. But with this, we’ve built a great pool of lineups that allows us to do what we want to do in the post-build process very, very easily. So I think in general, the reason that I’m picking these core running back players to get that leverage and it’s a really easy in the post-build process to get it while building some really good lineups.

Andy Baldacci:
Awesome. And we covered a lot today on this specific concept, but if you want to dig into any of our other videos or strategy guides on football strategy in general, we have a ton of content @sabersim.com and also on our YouTube channel, so be sure to check that out. And if people have questions, Max, what’s the best way for them to ping you or reach out?

Max Steinberg:
You can find me on the SaberSim slack channel, or you can tweet me @MaxJSteinberg and happy to answer any questions.

Andy Baldacci:
Awesome. And if you guys want to try this out for yourself, if you want to play around with SaberSim and see how it works and really dig into some of these concepts today, we have a free three-day trial, which you can check out at SaberSim.com. If you don’t like it, cancel your account. You will not get charged a single cent. So you really have nothing to lose there. Go in, check it out, play around with it and see if it’s right for you. But I appreciate the time. Max, it was great chatting today and I’ll see you guys later. Good luck.

Max Steinberg:
See you.