NBA DFS Strategy for Winning Single Entry GPPs
Everyone wants to know how to score a takedown in daily fantasy sports. The reality is, provided you’re using the right approach, it’s actually pretty simple.
It’s important to not get “simple” and “easy” confused, of course. Anytime you win, there is a certain amount of luck involved. And beyond using a lineup optimizer, there’s often your own personal strategy that has to be embedded into your process.
My NBA DFS strategy is fairly simple, and I recently broke down how I scored a $1k takedown in the following video.
If you want that condensed even further, here are my biggest NBA DFS tips for winning a single entry GPP.
Tip1 – Do Your Research
I’ll get to the impact and importance of a good DFS lineup tool, but you probably will want to put in some time and research to make sure you’re updated with any given slate you’re playing.
This includes, at a bare minimum, researching and knowing the following:
- NBA Game Odds
- Player Injuries
- Starting Lineups
- Roster Changes
- Matchups
Most NBA DFS lineup tools will honestly do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. However, they can often under or over project player ownership or overall projections, so you still want to make sure you’re in the know.
Starting every slate with a look at the latest NBA odds and injury report helps formulate a solid baseline to operate off of.
Tip 2 – Use a Good Lineup Tool
This is arguably just as important or more important then my first NBA DFS tips, especially since the top shelf NBA DFS tools take basically everything into account.
A really good one is DFS Hero, which produces an ideal set of core plays, offers AI sims, and checks virtually every other box when it comes to ownership projections, matchup ratings, player projections, and so much more.
You try it out yourself and get a 15% discount if you sign up now.
Tip 3 – Take Advantage of Ownership and Projection Discrepancies
Using your DFS tool of choice, start taking note of player ownership and projections. Based on your own research and news trickling in throughout the day, you should be able to start pinpointing underrated plays.
With the DFS Hero tool specifically, you can increase or lower player ownership, or hit their “like” button to boost a player’s projection so they pop more when the system is run.
You don’t want to go out of your way to override good lineups the system is churning out, but you also don’t just want to eat all of the chalky plays for a given slate.
Tip 4 – Avoid a Duplicate Lineup
Why don’t you want to just play the options that appear to be the best? For one, because they’re not always actually going to hit. And just as important, even if they do, if they’re high-owned, you’ll end up with a lineup that a lot of other people have.
That extra bit of research – and targeting lesser owned players – can give you a massive edge. It also helps avoid your lineups getting duped.
Usually this is less of an issue in big GPPs and it’s more a showdown thing or something you’d worry about for Nascar or MMA. However, in single entry tournaments, you’re facing fewer people and they’re all using good DFS tools.
That means they’re typically as sharp as you, and maybe sharper. So it’s crucial to take extra steps to differentiate your lineups.
Obviously you want to still eat good chalk and use the players that are going to hit, which is what keeps this from being an exact science (or easy). To me, that’s the toughest part about this process.
It isn’t identifying the best plays. Everyone is going to know those for the most part. It’s identifying which of those chalky plays to fade, and what other overlooked options have a solid chance of hitting and low ownership.
Tip 5 – Play Single Entry Contests with Higher Fee and Fewer Opponents
Lastly, we’re talking NBA DFS single entry strategy, so one last tweak you can do is to pay a bit more for your entry, and also make sure you’re facing fewer opponents.
It’s single entry, so you’re automatically increasing your odds of cashing due to facing individual people and their personal favorite lineup. But if you up the entry fee you increase your potential winnings, and if you lower the amount of people you face, you increase your odds of winning.
Neither of those things guarantee a win. The bigger the entry fee and the smaller the field, the sharper the competition is likely to be.
That said, if you put in the time and research and make the right calls after utilizing DFS tools correctly, you’re consistently going to give yourself a chance to cash, if not even score a takedown.
Hopefully this look at NBA DFS tips and strategy with single entry tourneys helps you out a bit. For daily breakdowns of each slate for NBA DFS, NFL DFS, and MLB DFS, be sure to subscribe to The DFS Build.
Writer at Daily Fantasy Fade
DFS Keanu has been covering fantasy sports, DFS, and props for the better part of a decade, all while fighting The Matrix and a litany of assassins.
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