Dinkmeyer’s GPP Leverage: Week 2

Welcome to the second edition of Leverage for the 2021-2022 NFL Season!

My goal in this space is to make you a better GPP player by highlighting concepts that can help you differentiate from your opponents and climb the leaderboard. Each week I will highlight some of the thought process or strategy that goes into my approach when making tournament lineups. I’ll then use some specific examples from that week to help illustrate how I intend to implement those concepts into my own GPP lineups. The examples I highlight will be in my portfolio of lineups but if you want to improve considerably as a GPP player, mastering the concepts are more important than copying the answers.

In the first edition of Leverage we touched on how to create Leverage on the field with either macro (game stack selection or build structures) or micro (individual player selection) decisions that allow you to differentiate from the field. The specific examples referenced were a mixed bag (as they usually will be). The contrarian game stack I mentioned in NYJ-CAR was a very small hit with both quarterbacks outproducing their salary and Corey Davis-Christian McCaffrey posting GPP winning scores. The rest of the game was underwhelming from a GPP perspective.

We also touched on contrarian options within chalky games with hits like Adam Thielen, Jalen Reagor, Devonta Smith, and Chase Edmonds and misses like Justin Jefferson, Chase Claypool, and Julio Jones. We also talked about pivoting from cheap chalk options like James Robinson, Rondale Moore, Elijah Moore, and Marquez Callaway but failed to find big scores with our pivots like Damien Harris and Marquez Valdes-Scantling. While we’d certainly love an elite hit rate on these contrarian pivots and suggestions, the batting average on recommendations is actually unimportant. What is important is – What do you win when you win?

This is a concept I learned from one of my mentors when I was working in finance. It’s a simplistic statement meant to keep your focus on understanding risk and reward. It’s not important how many times you’re right or wrong, but how impactful being right or wrong is when you’re making an investment. As a GPP player, it’s a concept you familiarize yourself with quickly.

The percentage of lineups you cash each week or what percentage you end up with a positive ROI, rarely moves the needle. What does move the needle is how frequently you’re competing at the very top of the payout structure. There is a ton of “luck” or “variance” involved in where you finish once you get up into the top of the payout structures that ultimately plays a huge role in your short-term results, but getting there is the key. The best way to get there is to find these points of leverage that can allow you to differentiate from the field. When a 30% chalk option goes off, you don’t win much by playing them in GPPs. You win a lot more when you fade them and they bust.

While it’s a simple phrase, keep in mind when you’re building lineups: “What do I win when I win?”

As we look ahead to Week 2, I want to tackle a different concept for tournament players – Late Swap. I think Week 2 sets up as a particularly incredible week to leverage late swap in your favor. Why? The slate has four games with totals between 51-54.5 in the late afternoon portion of the slate. Eight of the nine early games have totals at 48 or below. The best game environments to target all come after we have information from the early games. With the benefit of field exposure projections we have a decent idea of how often players in the late game will be utilized AND we’ll have a bunch of information about how the slate has started off IF we’re willing to utilize late swap.

Late swap is similar to the Monty Hall Problem which ultimately shows you can improve your probabilities at making good decisions simply by taking advantage of new information at your disposal.