DraftKings Week 7 Cash Game Breakdown
There’s often a sentiment among DFS players that if it’s “hard” to put together a lineup then it might be a good idea to have less money in play -- this thinking is especially prominent after a week when many of the most popular plays performed below expectation.
The main problem that I see with this line of thinking is that it doesn’t consider which games you are playing. In my opinion, when salaries are tight, or it’s “hard” to build a lineup, your exposure to cash games should increase and your tournament play should go down.
To highlight why I believe this to be an optimal approach to game selection, let’s consider two extremes.
Imagine a game where there were no salaries and everyone had access to the entire player pool. In this game, every player would have a roster full of studs and it would be a race to see who had the top scorer at every position. This game would be full of volatility, therefore anyone playing should enter contests that reward volatility, namely GPPs.
Now, pretend there is a DFS site that had a time machine and players were priced perfectly based on the results of the upcoming week. If no one else had access to that time machine, the best forecasters would want to play as many games as possible on an even playing field. In other words, they wouldn’t want to introduce any variance into the game such as tiered payout structures -- just win by being a better forecaster than the next guy as many times as possible.
The latter scenario is closer to the situation that we currently find ourselves in. Except for late-week injury news or other changes after pricing is released, DraftKings salaries have been quite tight this year. If you’ve been playing the same game mix all year, it might be worth considering going with a more cash-game-heavy approach to game selection, assuming you have an edge over the competition (if you’re a 4for4 DFS subscriber, you probably do).
In addition to this tip on game selection, you can follow this set of DraftKings cash game guidelines, which serves as a friendly reminder for what you should be looking for when building your cash game lineups. As always, be sure to take a look at the “Other Players I’d Consider in Cash” section, as you should never be blindly placing a single lineup into any contest.
QB Kirk Cousins $5,900 @ DET
Having exposure against the Lions passing defense feels like a must at this point. Detroit’s defense ranks dead last in completion percentage allowed (73.7%), passing touchdown rate (8.3% of attempts), and fantasy points per pass attempt (0.71). Things don’t get any better for the Lions in the red zone -- opposing offenses throw on 69.8% of red zone plays (the highest red zone pass rate against any defense) and convert 43% of those looks into scores (the second-highest red zone touchdown rate allowed in the league).
There’s a decent chance that the Redskins will get Jordan Reed (concussion) back this week, but it may not matter. Kirk Cousins has the highest red zone expected value of any quarterback this year and is due for positive touchdown regression on the relatively young season.
Continue reading for more of TJ's top cash game plays.
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