Colossus - Lineup Optimizer

This thread is for everything and anything related to Colossus, the most badass lineup optimizer in daily fantasy sports. We will keep a bug report and development list here for reference. If you have an idea or feature you'd like, please post. It will help us continue to make Colossus the best it can be. All of our tools are optimized for Chrome and mobile-friendly.

NBA Lineup Optimizer

11/6 - Injuries are now available

11/10 - Exclude All Injuries turned on by default

12/23 - Mobile-Friendly

1/2 - Color coding on Positions and Cafe Value

NFL Lineup Optimizer:

9/28 - Defaulted Colossus projections to GPP

9/29 - Added default option to "On" to disallow pairing of QB and RB's from same team.

10/9 - Added Maximum Number of Players Per Team Advanced Option. Defaulted to On and 1 player per team. You can turn this Off or select up to 4 players.

10/14 - Added saving of last settings used (locks, exposure, etc) for the entire week. Previously it reset each day.

12/23 - Mobile-Friendly

MLB Lineup Optimizer

Definitions

Position Color Coding: the color coding of players in Colossus are based on projection value.

Green = Tier 1 player

Yellow = Tier 2 player

Red = Tier 3 Player

Cafe Value Color Coding: the color coding of players in Colossus are based on value of the player

Green = High Value

Yellow = Medium Value

Red = Low Value

I am trying to enter in a value in the exposure box and it seems to be locked.

How do you update the exposure values?

@mahopacs - Click the "+" sign to the left of Advanced Options and click in the Radio button "On" next to exposure. This will allow you to edit Exposure.

Question from user:

I went am trying to generate 10 lineups and it is not working for me.

I went through and I locked players as follows:

1 QB, 8 RBs, 11 WRs, 6 TEs, and 4 DEFs

I then went through and assigned an exposure value to each of the players

For QB obviously I set the exposure to 100% and for the 4 defenses I had the exposure % so it added up to 100% for the 4 defenses (i.e. each defense had an exposure % of 25%)

For RB, WR, TE I assigned various percentages and since there can be a variant number of these positions on a lineup I did not try to make the percentages add up to 100%.

When I clicked generate 10 lineups. I got the following:

1) It only created 7 lineups for me.

2) It put players in the lineup that I had not locked.

Do you know what I did wrong?

Thank you!

Please read the Tooltip next to Exposure on the tool to understand how Exposure works when a player isn't locked and is locked.

The only way you can tell the Optimizer to include players in every single lineup is by locking them without exposure or locking them with 100% exposure.

If you set each defense to 25% and locked them with 10 lineups, that is 2.5 lineups each, which isn't possible. In this scenario Colossus will decide on the .5 occurrences or it won't return a lineup.

The tool you are looking for, which is essentially a Lineup Randomizer that creates a number of lineups from a set number of players and no one else isn't what Colossus is built for. Colossus is built to build the most optimal lineups from projections and constraints. Your settings are too strict at this point to take advantage of the tool and you are setting rules that aren't possible based on salary and locks. We have discussed this Lineup Randomizer tool and do see the value, but it's tough to use Colossus for something it's not and at this point.

7 Lineups generated, because you had too many constraints and based on the way Exposure is defined in the tool, only 7 lineups were possible.

What I suggest is that your players down into smaller groups. If you want 4 bears players in your lineups, Lock the 4 bears players at 100% and add Exposure to a few additional supporting players.

Love the tool.

The colossus tool is failing when you sort by "Cafe Value". Whether selecting to sort by ^ or v the results are not sorted properly.

@pokerrican - looks to be working for me. Please clear your cache and try again.

Feature Request: Currently, Colossus has an advanced option to choose the type: GPP or Cash. Can you add a filter for target FPTS that attempts to find the optimum lineup that projects to hit that target?

@Eboneezur - to clarify, you would like to tell Colossus to generate a lineup that will score 200 points? That may not be possible as all generated lineups are based on projections. The only way to accomplish this would be to edit player projections to what you feel is correct. Colossus provides the most optimal (highest point total) possible with the settings you have.

Let me know if I'm misunderstanding.

@Sam - I am happy with the default projections for now. GPP will give an upper bound on the target FPTS (e.g. maybe 180). Cash will give you a lower bound on the target FPTS (e.g. maybe 140). If I think that I need 155 FPTS to beat an opponent, I want the optimum lineup that comes closest to 155 FPTS. 180 would be too risky and 140 would lose.

Question: can't get the site to save the generated lineups or download them. is this another membership level or something I don't have set right? or is this unavailable at this time. thanks in advance

never mind. used firefox as my browser and works fine

@Eboneezur - Optimal lineup = highest projected lineup. What I think you're asking for is the optimal cash lineup, which in your example is 140 points. If you think you need 155 pts to beat an opponent, then you would need to select some different models or GPP projections or customize your own projections that add higher a lineup with a higher total projected score. There are other Advanced Options that you can play around with that will also provide more consistent Cash game lineups. IE - Maximum number of players per team set to 1.

We have discussed more interactive elements to the lineup building. If you have further ideas, please do share.

Forming a projection is such a black art.

How does Colossus transform a projection to be an integer? I am thinking that the number (e.g. 17.63) is not truncated to 17. I am thinking that it could be rounded to 18. I am thinking that it could be scaled up by 100 to be 1763.

The CSV files that are generated do not import properly into Draft Kings. I tried it just now and while uploading there are errors and Draft Kings asks me to click on a name I think is the one I intended ie. Aaron Rodgers. Once I get through all of the error messages, I close the window and Draft Kings begins to import, then nothing happens (no new lineups generated).

Please update your username. Go to My Dashboard > Edit Profile.

The CSV download doesn't upload to DraftKings.com at this time. It's a way to save your lineups and copy and paste in and or review. We have this functionality in our dev list, but will likely be some time before we can get to it.

So how many locked players is too many? If I lock the players listed on your week 6 plus a few others I have found through research, assigned them percents based on my research is that too many? I love Colossus! I just want to make sure I'm not hindering it's capabilities.

@harrythebullyt - Colossus will notify you if you lock too many players at each position. You can't lock more than the roster position allows. If you use Lock and Exposure together, just don't go over the total % at a given position. IE - don't give more than 200% total exposure to Rbs, 300% total to WRs, etc.

So last week was my first week using Colossus to build my rosters for Fanduel and Draft Kings. I had better results on DK than FD, but I think I may have tinkered too much and overthought my rosters for FD. But... my overall results were better! I went from horrible to about a 15-20% win rate last week playing H2H and cash games.

So my questions are:

1) Which scoring model you think works best for cash/H2H? My best cash lineup had a projection using Vegas settings of 136. It scored 118. I realize that a projection and the actual score are two different subjects. What do you guys think works the best?

2) What is your process for using Colossus? I seemed to get the best Colossus results when I set the fewest restrictions. Basically just removed players that were doubtful or out and changed the scoring projection of 3 or 4 players that I wasn't comfortable with.

This is the best site I have found! Thanks in advance!

Good to hear!

1) Which scoring model you think works best for cash/H2H? My best cash lineup had a projection using Vegas settings of 136. It scored 118. I realize that a projection and the actual score are two different subjects. What do you guys think works the best?