We’re all in the business of making predictions. The more accurate the predictions, the more money we make.
I’m of the belief that the single-best way to improve at daily fantasy sports—the only way, really—is to treat it as a scientific endeavor, testing different theories and strategies and making small but meaningful alterations. Science is marked by making predictions that are not only testable, but also falsifiable. That’s the difference between scientists and astrologists; scientific theories can and do get falsified all the time, with the best left standing.
Science is always evolving, as are the best DFS players, but that’s not possible without understanding where we went wrong in the past. We hear about ‘good process’ a lot, but how is it possible to know which processes are good and bad without evaluating past decisions?
As a side note, this is why I tend to analyze solely evergreen daily fantasy topics as opposed to time-sensitive ones. There’s no substitute for weekly analysis and certainly your choices should be made based on all of the evidence available at the time, but it’s really difficult to look at an individual decision and know if it was good or bad.
Should I have started Sammy Watkins last week? Well, looking at how well Watkins performed is going to tell us next to nothing about the quality of that choice; there’s just too much variance. But it wouldn’t be worthless to analyze rookie wide receivers of similar quality to Watkins and see how they performed against comparable defenses. That has value and allows us to more quickly identify ‘good process.’
With all of that in mind, the value of assessing your playing history is obvious. Here’s how to do it on DraftKings.
Exporting Results
You can export your entire league history on DraftKings very easily. Go to the ‘My Contests’ page and click the ‘History’ button. You’ll see a ‘Download Entry History’ link.
If you click that, you’ll have access to an Excel spreadsheet with all of your past leagues, sorted by sport, data, place finished, points, winnings, and entry fee.
Average Scores
The first thing that users tend to want to uncover is their average scores. I think it’s fun to analyze average scores, but it’s also pretty irrelevant. The scores needed to win a league change all the time (based on starters, salary cap flexibility, actual game results, and so on). Think about how much DraftKings’ scores have changed with the additional wide receiver slot this year, for example, or the loosening of the salary cap.
If you want to analyze how your average scores change over the course of an entire NBA or MLB season, I think that has some merit. But there are better ways to assess your progress as a daily fantasy player.
