One Man's journey with Colossus

I am new to the DFS arena and find that I am really starting to get hooked. I started looking into it last season and finally took the plunge with a meager 25 bucks this year. That curiosity led me to fantasy cafe months ago and also led me to register here just in the last week. Now I am more than intrigued by the lingo, the people, and the analytics that come along with it. In my short time here I have felt welcome from both the site owners and the members of the site at large which I thank you all for. Now having said all the prerequisite mushy shit as well as kissing everyone's ass on the site I now would like to get back to regularly scheduled programming. I love money, I like the way it feels, I like the way it looks and if you so happen to touch mine I might gnaw off whatever limb you have that came in contact with it. I don't gamble and I don't like friendly wagers. I have been a beast in my season long fantasy leagues because quite frankly I research better than most of my asshole friends do. You drafting that 30 year old running back coming back from knee surgery because you like his twitter comments just doesn't appeal to me. You reach for a QB because there is a run on them right now and you don't want to feel left out I am going to draft the player you should have taken and trade his ass back to you at a premium that makes you feel like a restaurant owner in a Sopranos episode. I play to win damn it and have been damn good at it. I consistently end up in my league championship and I have the reputation in my leagues of a jewelry dealer in the New York diamond district. So it was only natural that I would eventually want to test my mettle at DFF. Shit i'm better than then these highly educated, highly motivated and pissed off friends of mine. I am going to dominate these dumbass people on Draftkings is what I told myself. Low and behold in less than a week I found out I am the dumbass. Now don't get me wrong I posted a respectable 29% ROI on my money this 1st week but the way I was feeling when I started this I thought I was going to double my money, at least that is what the commercial made me believe. Now before all the heavies start hitting me over the head let me state that I am a numbers guy by trade.I understand regression to the mean, I know what standard deviations mean, and I know some of what happened can be attributed to luck. Yes you are a better DFS player than me. No I don't have a 300 page spreadsheet charting out weather patterns, players nutrition schedules, whether or not they just broke up with their girlfriends, or how Rex Ryan teams perform on weeks when he has sucked his wife's toes 3 times(Yet!!!). I plan to be great at this damn it and I know I will be because guess what I will work everyday to eliminate every ounce of systematic risk from my picks that I can. I will scour the internet for whatever information I can find and use that info to kick the living crap out of everyone in my way this is a fact, but this post is not about that. This post is about a journey, a journey I want all you guys to take with me, one that will put Colossus to the test. I am ready to embark on a season long journey using my real money on pure Colossus NFL DFS lineups on Draftkings. There will be no tweaking of lineups for this challenge and I am committing to a meager 25 bucks a week for this(I'm married and Mrs. tlp407 likes nice things). So are you in? If so I would love feedback on how to structure the challenge in regards to bankroll management. I will post my results weekly and we will see how Colossus stacks up in live money games. Who knows if I win enough we may be able to throw a crazy daily fantasy cafe pool party!!!

@tlp407 - First of all welcome and thank you for the entertaining post. As you've found it isn't as easy as it seems, but there are some easier opportunities to win. I highly recommend looking at some of the smaller sites that don't have as many sharks. While the prize pools are smaller, the competition is less tough as well. Take a look at FantasyHub. We have a free competition now that could get get you a free entry to get your jumpstarted.

Finding the right contest on the right site is half the battle. While we have faith that Colossus is the best tool to build lineups in DFS, success all comes down to projections. It's early in the season and the bulk of projections for any site is built around a larger data set than Week 1. Projections become more accurate as the season progresses with more relevant data. So, if you are confident in your ability, adjust some projections or even lock a guy or two you feel strongly about. At a minimum look at Game and Team totals and lock in a QB in the high O/U games.

You also want to adjust your strategy based on the game type. If you are only playing $25/week, I personally think some 50/50's should be in your game mix. Colossus lineups without any modification likely isn't going to win a $1 million GPP 1st place prize, but we have run tests on 50/50's (a small data set) and seen success rates 60%+.

Realistic expectations is important and you aren't going to win every week on one lineup. You may consider 2 $10 50/50's and 1 $5 GPP.

I suggest starting in Daily Academy and specifically become knowledgeable in the types of games - https://www.dailyfantasycafe.com/academy/undergrad... and basic research - https://www.dailyfantasycafe.com/academy/nfl/basic...

I look forward to following along in your journey. Good luck!

Ok guys so here is my initial bankroll strategy for the $25.00 Let me know your thoughts on the games I picked I am open to suggestions I would like to submit by 2pm est today. On another note I will be posting the results of each weekend for the rest of the season the following Tuesday morning. The journey begins tonight!!!!!

FYI I'm dead serious about the pool party

1. NFL 100K First Down GPP $1.00

2. NFL 1M Playaction GPP $3.00

3. NFL 1M Kickoff GPP 3.00

4. NFL Massive Double up Cash $2.00

5. NFL Giant Double up (Early) Cash $2.00

6. NFL Giant Double up (Afternoon) Cash $2.00

7. NFL 75K Playaction (Early) GPP $3.00

8. NFL 2k Playaction (Afternoon) GPP 3.00

9. NFL 300K Sunday Night Special (Sunday Night) GPP 3.00

10. NFL Sunday Night Double up(Sunday Night) Cash 3.00

Hey Sam I am playing more than 25 bucks a week I just committed that to test Colossus for the full season I am already varying my lineups and will look into fantasyhub. I am a statistics guy at heart and love to test data modeling theories which is why I committed to the full season as I know 1 week in any modeling simulation is not enough to pull accurate data. Again this is just testing out how Collosuss performs in various types of large scale contests which is why I picked the games I did. Thanks again for the knowledge I really feel this is going to be a great journey where everyone learns a lot.

@tlp407 - Ok, cool. Here is our link to FantasyHub if you decide to check it out - Sign up. They just increased their sign up bonus to $300 on first deposit. Just use code "CAFE". Here is a review - https://www.dailyfantasycafe.com/fantasyhub-review

I like your lineup in contests, but would suggest adding a Monday Night only slate. One of our guys had some big success with Colossus on the Monday only slate this past week.

I think a profile picture update is in order!

I was looking for a Monday night one and they don't have it on Draftkings yet but don't worry I will invest the extra $3.00 bucks when they post it I guess no starbucks for me today lol

Good luck on your journey! I thoroughly enjoyed your post, and love things like this. When I first started out playing NFL DFS, I wrote a breakdown of my lineup each week with a recap of how things went/why I selected each player. Obviously using an optimizer, your journey will be a little different. I'd suggest trying to find some single entry contests as well. Maybe start off with some small ones ($1-5) and work your way up. It's a great way to get a true idea of how your lineup/research stacks up with others week to week.

I enjoyed reading your post. I can not wait to see how you progress in your DFS career. The only suggestion I have is you may want to go more cash heavy to start your career. I noticed you were playing in a lot of GPP's.

Great tips and I will definitely add that to the list of challenges I would like to get a consistent list that I use every week so Monday night games and Single entry will definitely added to the list I will do it this week as a matter of fact

Yes I am going with a 60/40 split because the money in this challenge is really to see how Colossus does against a large field. The larger playing fields tend to be GPP on Draftkings unless you want to play with the big bucks. I tried to vary it enough so that the simulation was up against large user fields in order to ensure I was fair to Colossus. The cash games tend to have fairly small amounts of entries and I really wanna test this baby on the largest amount of people possible. I am building out the spreadsheet now and would really love feedback on what you guys would like to see in my posts

I was thinking about doing the same exact thing as you and test a journey with the optimizer for the entire season. Wouldn't mind working with you on testing your theory with my $25 a week too.

Alright guys the lineups are in lets see where we go let the games begin. Also Eugene let me know how we can link up and put our data together

You can contact me at eugene.p.riley@gmail.com

I am about to put my lineups in.

Great stuff here, enjoyed the post. Looking forward to keeping tabs on this throughout the season.

Also starting out, a good tool is to analyze the winning lineups in each tournament. It really helps when going into the next week.

Justin does a great winning lineup breakdown on the site here after contests wrap up.

Are you planning to put the top lineup in every game? Are you going to differentiate for Cash Game vs GPP projections? I think mixing in the top 5 lineupsor so would give a nice sample.

I'll echo Scott's thoughts. I'd mix in more than one Colossus lineup.

Great tips but really this is just a test to see how Colossus fairs using its best vs. the field . This 25 bucks is just test money I have already written it off as gone anyway. I am really curious to see how Colossus fairs with its best overall projections each week if we start mixing in top 5 lineups and adding other variables this is going to become a full time job and I already have one of those lol. I am using the best overall lineup for each game type and I mixed in game slates as well so that I can test it with as many variables as possible without it getting too crazy. Right now I have 8 different best overall lineups 4 for cash and 4 for gpp entered in large games that way I am exposed to as large a test field set as possible. Now what I do need help with if the Mods are listening I'm speaking to you right now lol. I need an easier way to get the top overall lineups in excel format for my games slates. Because right now it looks like it will be me and a bottle of Tito's handmade vodka manually entering all of this shit tonight. I am down to listen to anyone's thoughts and suggestions as I go forward. I really wanna know what you guys are interested in seeing stat wise each week so that this becomes as informative as possible for everyone.

I am in 8 different GPP's and I used the top 8 Colossus line ups to compare.

I owe you an email Eugene sorry about that

DraftKings does have large field double ups you could try it out on if you wanted to mix more cash games in the field.