When you sign up for a Stokastic+ membership, you’ll gain access to top-tier DFS strategies from experts like Steve “dacoltz” Buzzard and the entire Stokastic team. You’ll also be welcomed into our dynamic Stokastic Discord community, where users and professionals share MLB DFS picks, plus NFL DFS advice and strategy for other sports. Our offerings go beyond just the best MLB DFS projections and pick advice, extending to in-depth fantasy insights from leading industry experts.
Every Thursday, join Steve for a live Q&A session on Discord called Office Hours, where he addresses all your DFS-related questions. Whether you’re looking to refine your strategy or delve deeper into our DFS tools and data, Steve has everything you need. We’ve gathered some of the most insightful questions from this week’s Office Hours into one convenient location for your reference.
Discord Office Hours: Expert MLB DFS & NFL DFS Advice & Strategy
Steve “dacoltz” Buzzard is a DFS expert renowned for his impressive track record of huge wins across multiple sports. As a key contributor to Stokastic’s DFS Sims, Steve’s extensive expertise enriches our DFS tools, data, and strategies. He’s here to share his insights, whether you need analysis on past or upcoming slates or advice on maximizing our resources.
MLB DFS Advice: What Percent to First Changes in the Sims
Lopez521 asked: When selecting percent to first, let’s say my contest is 10%. Can you explain what moving it to 5% or 20% does?
dacoltz: We simulate the set of lineups in the Contest Sim — let’s say it is 100 lineups in this example for simplicity with a $100 buy in. So we start by determining how many points a player will score a bunch of times — we call these simulation iterations. For the first iteration, let’s say Aaron Judge scores 20 points. For every lineup in the 100-man pool, we give 20 points to the Judge lineups. We repeat this for every player. Then we total up the points for each player in the lineup for every lineup. The lineup that has the highest score gets 10% of the prize pool in your first example 10% of a $10,000 prize pool ($100 times 100 entries).
We then repeat this process again and again for each of the simulation iterations. The thing that changes in this process when you move from 10% to 20% is that each lineup that wins gets allocated $20,000 instead of $10,000 or $5,000 in the case of a 5%-to-first payout. That’s the mathematical change. The practical impact is if you move to 20% to first, the simulation is going to see that those lineups getting $20,000 are much more valuable than if they were getting $10,000. As such, it is going to more heavily reward the lineups that get first and not reward the lineups as much getting second, third, fourth, etc., whereas the opposite is the case with 5% to first since $5,000 isn’t nearly as big of a deal as $10,000.
The MLB Lineup Generator is an intuitive and effective tool designed to simplify your DFS lineup creation process. Just select your DFS platform and slate, choose your preferred stack type, set your desired ownership level (chalky, contrarian, balanced, or all), and lock in any specific players. Once you’ve configured your preferences, the Lineup Generator will generate high-ROI lineups and offer insights to help guide your decisions.
Check out the screenshot for an example of a relatively chalky lineup we created for a DraftKings weekday main slate.
MLB DFS Strategy: Hand Building MLB DFS Lineups
ltmercier91 asked: When you hand build, do you start with scrubs you project to have a good game then your pitchers and superstar batters? Or what’s your order of operations there?
dacoltz: I would say first for me is my main stack (mostly a five-man on DraftKings and a four-man on FanDuel). Then I go to the pitcher I want most for that lineup. From there I can tell if the lineup is a chalky lineup or more of a contrarian lineup. Whichever it falls in, I will finish out the lineup build of stack 2/one-offs and SP2 as the opposite.
NFL DFS Strategy: Stacking With Tight Ends, Receivers
ltmercier91 asked: With NFL, what’s your process in picking your main stack? How often do you play tight end in the flex on FanDuel?
dacoltz: The main thing people are doing is letting the wide receivers dictate their stacks instead of the quarterbacks from what I can tell on ownership. This is typically because a wide receiver is more mispriced than a quarterback and optimizers like that value. So what I’ve been a bit more actively doing is letting the quarterback impact my stack a bit more. It gets you some slightly different builds than the rest of the field. The scores for wide receivers that get a few touchdowns are high enough that the price doesn’t matter much, so I am fine taking the chance with them.
[Playing tight ends in the flex] depends heavily on the specific slate. The two biggest drivers are what tight ends are on the slate — like Travis Kelce, George Kittle types or all weaker options — and how much money do I need to save. There were times that the DraftKings pricing in particular was quite tight and saving at tight end was very helpful for that slate, and other times it didn’t really matter too much.
