It's silly for me to sit back and tell you the best way to finish in first place in a big FanDuel tournament. First off, I've never finished in first place in a big FanDuel tournament. Second, there's no real secret or ability: You just have to get lucky.
Fantasy football advice week 14: FanDuel lineup tips and strategies
You think there’s some smarty out there who would have advocated Ryan Fitzpatrick last week? Nope, sometimes it’s luck.Click here to use FanDuel promo code SBNATION9, get 100% deposit bonus
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Sure, you have to be smart as well. Pick a bunch of running backs against Baltimore and defenses against Denver, and you aren’t getting anywhere. But you also aren’t going to be able to pick the best possible lineup in a tournament of 30,000 just because you’re smart.
For example, in last week’s big tournament, I got 105.1 points out of my quarterback and running backs, which is flippin’ great. At receiver, I used T.Y. Hilton, Justin Hunter and Malcom Floyd. Now, Hilton made sense, because I was pairing him with his quarterback against a putrid offense, and Hunter and Floyd were both logical bargains in good situations.
The problem was that the Colts’ touchdowns largely went to Donte Moncrief and Coby Fleener; Keenan Allen came alive instead of Floyd, and Hunter ruptured his spleen and hit the IR. After 105.1 from my top guys, my receivers got me ... 27 points.
Meanwhile ...
Shout out to the guy in my @FanDuel tournament who has 222.62 points without Rob Gronkowski or Demaryius Thomas seeing the field yet.
— Daniel Kelley (@danieltkelley) November 30, 2014 Dude ended up winning the tournament with 251.22 points. Here’s his roster:
Hey, we both picked the Bell/Mason combo. But this guy entered a huge tournament with a roster that depended on Ryan Fitzpatrick, and I can’t advocate any strategy that would get behind that.
No, any advice for FanDuel or a similar game is not “how to get rich.” It’s “how to make a few bucks.” Take Bell and Mason, for example. The winner chose them. I finished 4,387 and chose them. Eight of the top-10 rosters in that tournament chose Bell; eight chose Mason. Across the tournament, 27.5 percent of rosters had Mason, and another 19.4 percent had Bell. They made sense. Bell was $9,200, but against a very generous New Orleans run defense, he was a guy you could count on at the top of your roster. Mason? He was only $6,000 despite some good production of late, and his salary just hadn’t caught up (it’s $7,200 this week). Any advice I give would have included them (and, in fact, did).
The best rosters last week also fell into DeAndre Hopkins (eight of the top 10 rosters), Kenny Stills (seven) and the St. Louis defense (nine). All three made at least a little sense -- Hopkins and Fitzpatrick have paired well together; Stills’ looks went up when Brandin Cooks got hurt; the Raiders are terrible -- but there wasn’t anything obvious that made those guys better options than, say, Odell Beckham Jr. or Mike Wallace or the Giants’ defense.
Advice and smart play will miss on occasion. It’s the nature of the beast. But being smart in weekly fantasy gets you to a place where you should make some money, and if things go right, you could get to where rxess wound up.
But please, don’t invest in Ryan Fitzpatrick. That way lies madness.
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