DFS and Optimizer

Maybe some of you guys can help me out, I've been dabbling in dfs for about 2 years now. NFL has always been my favorite but this year I began playing NBA. I'm a huge fan of DFS but seem to be having a difficult time just breaking through casual double ups.

I discovered the optimizer and lock in some Guys I like for the week, I read the cheat sheets and listen to DFS experts on the radio.

Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong???

Proper usage of the optimizer???

Please help so I can continue playing haha

I've also become familiar with the Academy here on DFC as well..

@Torch88 - can you give us a starting point, so we can provide some specific advice? Maybe we can look at a past lineup you submitted and felt strongly about and we can speak to it. If you have some specific question on the optimizer, that would help...it's just impossible to provide advice without more info.

Apologies for the delay,

So with the optimizer and without adjusting any of it's settings or locking players, picking particular games.. what is an ideal strategy when using this tool?

Are there particular settings you like that we should be adjusting before hitting optimize?

How many players do you recommend locking in before optimizing?

You guys offer an option of putting in your own projections, do you feel confident in the projections that are given, and those would be viable to utilize?

I'm a small fish in a big sea and I'm just lookin to compete with some of the bigger fish! Thanks for your feedback!

Hey @Torch88, I will chime in here about how I use the optimizer and approach to slates.

I start by checking out Vegas and looking for the high scoring games, and also looking for certain spreads that would have an effect on players. Sometimes I will click off certain teams to get rid of players, but sometimes I want to see if the optimizer uses a player from that game I was overlooking.

Researching my core of players is something I bring into the optimizer, so while our process is a bit different, you can take picks or plays from articles/cheatsheets and lock them into a core. Narrowing down the player pool to guys you are on helps out quite a bit. I mess around with various models in the settings as well, and then might edit a player projection based on those. Our projections have been solid, but I do tweak players and might adjust to their ceiling a bit more. Using the floor/ceiling info can help you limit your risk when plugging in players.

The amount of players I lock in really depends on sport and slate, but it can vary from just a few guys I am strongly on and want to build around, or I will narrow down to five guys at each position I am only considering that night and go from there. I add quite a bit of the human element to it still, but that's generally how I get going. Also note that projections are changing as the week/day goes on, so say for NBA you are looking at 2 ET, minutes might not have been shifted around yet for guys on the injury front.

We are here at the forums to help you out, so if you want to chat optimizer strategy for a specific slate in our advice posts, we can gladly go from there.

Thanks so much for taking the time to explain all of that. Extremely helpful..Now i wont feel so blind while using it ha.