Player Value Fallacy
Terms like player X has met or exceeded value on a night are thrown around by industry experts every single day in daily fantasy sports. But this term is a misconception and the whole idea of placing an arbitrary value on a player on any given night is ineffective at best especially in large field GPP type tournaments. This is a more effective tool when trying to build a proper heads-up team but should not be used to build a large field tournament entry. A player’s value is generally calculated by these experts by taking the percentage the player counts against the salary cap times the target number of points scored you want from your team. The formula would be (Player Salary / Site Salary Cap) * Target number of points scored. The target number of points scored can fluctuate whether you are playing GPPs or Heads-up games or any other type of game. This number will also fluctuate based on who you ask and what they are looking for. This is the reason trusting people who say player X has met or exceeded value is not a good place to begin because you do not have all of the information for why they are saying they will exceed value. This number they are referring to is an arbitrary number that they are using as a one size fits all stat. Saying player X has or has not exceeded value is steering new players in the wrong direction. The idea to try and find players that will exceed their value in a GPP type tournament specifically is not a good strategy. This is even more apparent on a site that has a rigid roster structure where you have to play two power forwards and two small forwards etc. In a heads-up matchup this is more effective but for large field tournaments it is ineffective and we will demonstrate below why that is the case specifically on Fanduel.
Example
We will take Carmelo Anthony’s performance two nights ago on January 28th, 2013 against the Boston Celtics as an example. Melo was priced at $10,800 and after destroying the Celtics for three quarters he sat out the fourth and finished with a stat line of 24 Pts, 9 Rebs, 4 Ass, 4 Stls and 3 Tos good enough for 45.8 FanDuel points. It could be said that Carmelo Anthony met value if you were looking to score around 255 FanDuel points which would be an acceptable headsup score but would not get you in the money of any GPP on most nights. Due to the rigid roster structure on FanDuel you are forced into playing two and only two power forwards so on some nights even if Player X meets or exceeds value if player Y at the same position exceeds his value at a proportionate rate that is much greater than player X then it does not matter that player X has or hasn’t exceeded his value. It only matters that at that particular position you are at a distinct disadvantage to everyone who played player Y over your player X. This is the case two nights ago with Melo and Boris Diaw. Even though it can be said that Melo “reached value” on this night, because Boris Diaw came along and put up a stat line of 22 Pts 11 Rebs 4 Ass 3 Tos 2 Blks for 42.2 FanDuel points at a price of only $3900 he left the owners of Melo at a distinct disadvantage at the power forward position which also handicapped them from making the proper plays at all other positions. This is why using the arbitrary number of a player exceeding or not meeting value is meaningless on any given night. Not only do you have to take into account that specific players performance to determine if he met value you also need to take all other players at that position into account to get an understanding of what that value even is at a particular position on a particular night. What if, for instance, no shooting guard “meets value” on a given night. This is why the entire tier of position players needs to be taken into account when assigning a value grade for any particular night. We caution all players that blindly listen to an expert talk about playing player X because he will meet value tonight. This is not a good metric of measurement and is not an effective tool when constructing your lineups.
