With a Stokastic+ membership, you’re tapping into top-notch advice and strategies straight from the pros, like our perennial winner Steve “dacoltz” Buzzard and the rest of the Stokastic crew. Plus, you’ll be part of our Stokastic Discord community, where our users and pros bounce DFS advice and questions off of each other. It’s not just MLB DFS we’re talking about here. We’re diving into all things fantasy, with insights from the minds who’ve hit the big bucks.
Every Thursday, Steve will hold court on Discord, ready to tackle your burning DFS questions. Whether you want to dive deep into strategy, explore our tools or fine-tune your game, he’s got you covered. Here we will cover some of the best DFS discussions and advice from this week’s Office Hours.
Discord Office Hours Recap – DFS Advice & Strategy
Steve “dacoltz” Buzzard is a name you frequently see at the top of the leaderboards in all sorts of DFS sports, and he is one of the masterminds behind Stokastic Sims. He has weekly Office Hours on Discord to answer questions and give DFS advice, whether it’s about any slate past or future or advice on how to use our tools and content.
Below are some of the best questions and answers from this week’s Office Hours with Steve “dacoltz” Buzzard.
MLB DFS Advice: Allocation of Funds
heyimdrew95 asked: My question is on allocation of funds and how you go about it. Do you say, “OK I’m going to play X amount for this week, day or month”? Then does that further break down into each sport and even further? I saw you in the mega 8 that’s, like, $888 in MLB, and I couldn’t stomach something like that.
So is it a set-in-stone thing, or do you go more throughout the week based on a big win?
dacoltz: So my process for allocating funds may not be the best for everyone. I basically enter most of the contests and will either max-enter or do 1% to 2% of the entries into that contest if I don’t particularly love that specific structure. I try not to deviate my play up or down based on recent results, and I do think this is important because I don’t think you want to play over your head because of a recent win.
If I have a really poor couple of months, then I may adjust down my play, but it takes something extreme. But like I said, that may not be right for everyone. What I would say is a good strategy is determine 1) How much you are comfortable playing. If you aren’t comfortable playing in the $888 or max-entering the $15, maybe try max entering the $1 or single-entering the $15. If you aren’t comfortable with the amount of money you may lose, then you won’t build the best lineups. For example, maybe the best play on the slate is a 1%-owned catcher that you never heard of. But if you aren’t comfortable with how much you might lose, you might not be willing to take that chance. So find how much you are willing to lose in a day, in a week, in a month, etc., and use that as your first point.
2) I would also figure out which sport you are most comfortable with playing and again allocate your money that way. If you are more comfortable with MLB than NBA, maybe you should play 75% of your money in MLB and 25% in NBA. The main thing is to know yourself, how you feel about your own finances, your style of play, etc., and go from there.
One of our best deals here at Stokastic is our MLB Lineup Generator sale. For a limited time, you can get seven days of MLB Lineup Generator for just $3 when you use the promo code MLBLGWEEK!
The MLB Lineup Generator is one of our easiest-to-use but also most effective tools we offer. All you need to do is select the DFS site and slate you plan to play, choose your stack type, the level of ownership you want from your lineups (chalky, contrarian, balanced or all) and players you wish to lock in. Once you’re satisfied, Lineup Generator will churn out high-ROI lineups and give you the information to determine how you want to proceed.
Check out the included screenshot for an example of a lineup that we generated for a DraftKings weekday main slate.
MLB DFS Strategy: Building Your Own Pool in the Sims
boggsy5668 asked: Do you think there’s an edge with building your own pool to simulate within the Sims for MLB? I build around 1000 to 1500 lineups that I would play using projections and the tools on Fantasy Cruncher but was just curious on how that would translate into the Sims.
dacoltz: I think that is definitely reasonable. However, I would be careful with it though. The Contest Generator is trying to replicate what the contest looks like, and it is trying to find the lineups that are the best at beating that pool of lineups (your opponents). Let’s say now that you build 1,500 lineups in Fantasy Cruncher, and all but 150 have Aaron Judge in them. The Sims are going to see that Judge is 90% owned, and it knows that he fails a lot. So it is going to say that the highest-ROI lineups are the ones that don’t have Judge in them, and it might end up fading him completely or all but a few. It’s told you how to best beat your set of lineups, but that isn’t the set of the lineups that the field will play and maybe Judge will be a good play if he’s really only 5% owned. Long story short, it is possible, but you need to be careful.
MLB DFS Strategy: Using High Stakes Tickets
ghostmantis asked: I have a couple 555 tickets do you have any recommendations on the best slates to use them on?
dacoltz: Personally, if you can use the $555 ticket at any point in time, I would tend to wait until the contest is the biggest. This gives you the opportunity to win the bigger amount and also gives you the chance to play against the most people possible since the more people that are entering, it is likely that more of them aren’t as skilled. So I would probably use it when it is $100,000 to first and $400,000 total prize pool. You could be aggressive and wait for an even bigger one, but they may run the bigger ones at different prize points, etc.
MLB DFS Strategy: Failsafe for Winning $300K — Does It Exist?
mak9177 asked: I need to make $300,000 by the end of the day. I have $75 dollars to invest in MLB this evening. A failsafe plan would be appreciated.
dacoltz: Man, winning $300,000 in MLB in a day sounds tough. I would 1) enter the $15 contest. If have two of them in a day, you can enter the day and night slate. Do that on both FanDuel and DraftKings. 2) Choose a pretty contrarian stack that the Top Stacks Tool likes for both slates. 3) Find a pretty chalky pitcher for both slates that you like. 4) Go all in on similar one-off players … no time for diversification for this $300,000 plan. Winning all four of those contests should give you $400,000, assuming they are running $100,000 to first, so you could tip me the $100,000 you don’t need.
