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FanDuel advice: If you have a strategy, stick with it
I let a board game ruin my earning potential last weekend. Don’t do that.
Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
My family likes board games. In particular, we play a lot of Settlers of Catan. (No, really, a lot of it. We're like the Green Bay Packers of ... you know, playing the game the Packers play.) On Sunday morning, my girlfriend, a recent convert, woke up and already wanted to play. It took minimal convincing for the rest of the family, so play we did. (My house is my brother, his girlfriend, my nieces and nephews, me and occasionally my girlfriend, so there are always players.)
This presented a problem for me. My Sunday mornings are devoted to fantasy, FanDuel, Yahoo!, whatever -- I spend a big chunk of my Sunday mornings setting lineups. The biggest part of this is FanDuel, where I will play a huge chunk of lineups Sunday morning.
I would not be thwarted Sunday. I had my laptop out while we discussed gameplay and set it up, setting my lineups quickly. I entered a couple tournaments, then started on 50/50s and head-to-heads (as is my normal strategy). Well, it took approximately no time at all for my brother (not a sports guy) to get fed up with me and demand the computer go away.
This was fair. It’s a small enough table, we were at six players and I’m not the smallest person in the world, so the laptop was too much. I acquiesced. Only two tournaments and two small games into my day, and I was done setting lineups.
It bothered me, because I am a creature of routine, and this was breaking it. But whatever, family time is family time. And when my roster for my 50/50s and head-to-head games put up basically 150 points, I thought I was golden, as it usually only takes 105 or 110 to get money back. And in my 50/50, where half the teams cash out, I did fine. But in my head-to-head, my 150 points were bested by my opponent’s 163.
This happens. It's exactly why I advocate taking a good 50/50 roster and entering it dozens of times. If I hadn't played Catan (or if my brother had been five minutes more patient), I would have entered that lineup (Ryan Fitzpatrick, Antonio Brown and four different players with scores that started with "17")€” in a dozen more small tournaments. The vast majority of those would have yielded me $1.80, $3.60, whatever.
The lesson this week is just to stick to your guns. If you find a strategy that works, use that strategy. Catan can wait.
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