Considering how popular daily fantasy sports have become, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that DFS projections are in high demand. Nowadays, almost every DFS site out there will usually have a set of projections for future events. Even for newer DFS activities, such as esports DFS projections, people want accurate projections.
Daily fantasy sports can often be extremely chaotic, and users will have difficulty knowing what moves to make. Because of this, whatever site can maintain the most accurate, updated, and reliable projections will usually have many visitors flocking to it consistently. The explosion of the popularity of DFS sites has also predictably caused a high demand for DFS services and tips.
With accurate projections, a good user can gain a significant edge over his opponent. Knowing how to utilize projections and use them for decisions down the road is a big part of fantasy sports.
Projections allow players to get an understanding of how formidable their opponent will be, as well as determining what kind of personnel to slot into their lineup.
Should a projection prove to be woefully inaccurate, it can end up being a death knell for someone’s chances in a match.
Understanding DFS Scoring Systems
DFS projections have become very important to the activity, but something participants can often forget is differing scoring systems. When looking over projections, it’s extremely important to know what daily fantasy league projections are.
While it may sound like the differences in projections should be minor and negligible, certain leagues can have special scoring rules that are complete game-changers. Not bothering to look up different projections for different leagues can lead to users completely misevaluating a player’s worth.
For example, in football DFS, DraftKings and Fanduel have completely different rules when it comes to scoring. As such, specific playstyles can be worth more in each league. There may be a significant enough disparity in the projected number of points they’ll score.
Aside from scoring rules, certain leagues can dabble in bonuses while others can institute penalties for being inefficient. In such cases, it’s important to keep track of how effectively a player accumulates stats. While it may not matter at all for eight out of ten leagues, it can significantly impact a player’s production in the other two.
Dealing with Projection Changes
Now, participants shouldn’t expect DFS projections to remain constant. On the contrary, the nature of daily fantasy sports in general means projections often change. Anticipating changes and being ready to accommodate said changes close to game day is very important.
Changes can happen for various reasons, but the most common are injuries, suspensions, or anything that affects a player’s availability or effectiveness. Injury reports are often volatile, as a player can be fine one day and then be out for the season the day after.
In said cases where a player in a lineup suddenly receives a major injury or gets busted for a violation and gets suspended, projections that seemed set in stone can get turned on their head.
For this reason, it helps not to be the early bird and build a lineup at the first opportunity. Teams often procrastinate in releasing bad news, so users may want to wait until the last minute to set their lineups and rosters.
Staying flexible and having backup options is crucial as it allows players to deal with sudden changes in projection a lot better. Even with how advanced analytics are these days, there will be things projections can never take into account. But understanding these imperfections can be the difference between victory and defeat.
How to Make DFS Projections
Making projections is something that almost anyone can do with a good grasp of the sport and an excel sheet. But making accurate projections also requires hours of research and study into teams and past trends, as well as a thorough understanding of the fantasy sport or fantasy esports.
One tip into making reliable DFS projections is to never start with the individual player. To start, projection makers must completely understand the scoring system and rules of whatever fantasy league they are projecting. After that, they can almost work backwards.
From there, they should evaluate the team said player is on. What are their style and tendencies? What level of talent are they surrounded by? In some leagues, they should also ask about the chances of the team’s victory.
Once the projection maker understands the role of a player in their team and how neatly their playing style fits into a league’s scoring system, they can determine a player’s worth in their projections.
Making quality predictions will always be an inexact science. However, with the right level of statistical analysis, foresight built from past trends, and most importantly, a high amount of knowledge for both the sport and the fantasy league, people have been able to build projection systems that millions of users rely on.