Strategies On How To Win At DFS Hockey From Day One

Winning in DFS can feel daunting, but with the right strategies, you can win. And win big – be it beating up on your friends, getting on a GPP or a 50/50. Here are some key NHL daily fantasy (DFS) strategies that can help you win from day one.

Building Your Lineup The Right Way From The Start…
When building your lineup each night it is important that you get your lineup built in a way that will allow you to get the most bang for your salary bucks each night. 

1. Always start with your goalie. Goalies are typically the most expensive players on any given night. You should pick yours first.
2. Always try to have at least one “stack” in your lineup. You will want to try and pick two line-mates that you think can be a part of lots of points that night. If you can add a defenseman who can factor into the points, then you will have a nice base of points to start with.
3. Do everything you can to kind value. You often hear about finding value, but why is THAT important to building a winning DFS ticket? Getting a player into your lineup that is priced towards the bottom of the offerings who can contribute points can be a difference-maker up and down your lineup. Not only did you get points but the money you saved on that player will allow you to get other higher-cost players into your lineup who are just much more likely to put up the numbers night-in and night-out.

What is Vegas Saying?
On a night where there is a full slate of games, it can be difficult to understand which games you want to pick your players from but Vegas betting lines can give you some needed insight. When you go and look up the betting lines, you can find the implied goals scored on any given night team by team. These are estimates put together by the oddsmakers and while they aren’t going to be completely accurate, they can be used as a guide to get started. You should understand though, that other “pros” will use this benchmark as well, so if there are only one or two teams that stand out, you are at risk of a large portion of the population of players using the same players (AKA “chalk”). This is advantageous in cash games, where there are less total players, and you will all share the same success. However, in GPP’ you don’t want to share too much of the same money, so you may wish to find differentiation elsewhere.

Try to Avoid Using the Team you Cheer For As A Basic Rule
We all love our favorite teams and our favorite players but one of the most common mistakes that new DFS players make is they want to use their beloved team too often, or too much of that team. While your deep knowledge of that team can be helpful at times, your own bias can lead you to the use of players in bad matchups because you have so much faith in them, or missing better matchups because of it.

Follow the Streaks
One of the biggest keys picking players and finding values is to understand the streaks. You don’t want to pay top dollar for a player who is among the league leaders in scoring but doesn’t have a point in a couple of weeks. Before you build your lineup you should see how each team has performed, and how each player has performed in the previous seven days. This will help you understand which players are currently playing well and which teams are not. You can correlate this information to start building your lineup that night. 

Understand the Strategic Differences Between Cash and GPP Games
Choosing the type of DFS game you want to play can be easy, but if you want to win it is important to understand the key differences. 

1. Cash games have fewer players, so you should try to play using a safer lineup. You should try to play a goalie who should get the win that night, and you shouldn’t hesitate to use the highest scoring player. If 40 percent use those players and do really well, then you are going to be in a really good place, and you will be on the right half of the cash line. But if you don’t use that player and everyone else does, it is going to be really hard to make up that separation that a large portion of the field has used.
2. When playing in GPP games, volume matters. Most GPP games will have more than a thousand lineups entered. To be successful you’re going to need to have some separation. One of the ways you can achieve this is by looking at the shot volume stats in two ways. Which goalies should face the most shots and which players should in turn shoot the most shots. For instance, if you pick a goalie who makes 50 saves, and they let one in, they are still going to have scored a lot of points. Their failure rate will be higher but the reward should it payoff is much higher than a goalie who might only see 25. On the skater side of things, getting a player who might shoot 6 times per game is advantageous because their chances of scoring a goal, or multiple goals, and giving you a big night are also much higher.