MLB DFS Strategy: How To Navigate Successes and Failures In a Long Season

Mark Kieffer gives some tips on how to be a successful and profitable MLB DFS player in the sixth part of his MLB strategy series.

This is the next installment of my MLB DFS Strategy Series. If you missed the first one about Bankroll Management and Contest Selection you can check it out here. The second installment about Contest Selection and Single Entry success is here. The most recent installment about fading Coors Field can be found here.

Hello, RotoBallers, and thanks for taking the time to read this MLB DFS strategy piece! If you're here, it's likely because you want to be a better DFS player and learn more about how to be a sustainable DFS player who doesn't have to deposit more money in their account every week.

So far in this series you've read about bankroll management and contest selection. Last time I talked about fading Coors Field! Today, going to talk a little bit about the mental aspect of playing DFS during the MLB season: how to deal with cold streaks, hot streaks, and staying mentally fresh during the grind of the season.

The baseball season is long...

Really long - it's like over 100 slates, probably closer to 150 slates, maybe even more than that if you count the split slates on various days. That's five to eight NFL seasons worth of action, all in one season.

I will talk to people who give MLB DFS a try and they don't fare well for a week or so, maybe two weeks, and they say they are out.

It is very easy to get frustrated by the high variance nature of baseball. The best of the best have cold streaks, and I am going to talk a little bit about how to deal with that situation.

How do I deal with being on a cold streak?

This is a tough question to answer because everyone has their own definition of what being "cold" is and it really depends on what type of contest selection they are playing is. Because I am strictly a tournament player, a cold streak for me would be consistently losing for three or four weeks in a row and I have been there.

How do I get through it?

First, it's bankroll management. This entire series and all of my advice is based on the premise that most DFS players "lose" because they don't follow strict bankroll management rules.

Being a tournament player, I play two to three percent of my bankroll in tournaments. I have the confidence that if I stick to those guidelines, that my skills and positive variance will prevent me from going broke.

If you aren't as sure, a great way to ensure you never are broke is to play two to three percent of your remaining bankroll on a given night. For example, perhaps you started with a $1000 bankroll at the beginning of the season and now you are down to $800. I would play two to three percent of the $800, not the $1000, which is $16 to $24 on that night.

The biggest mistake that losing players do, is they try to chase. They play the $20-$30 for a few nights, lose, and then to try to make up for it and play $100 instead. While everyone has a story or two about doing something like that and it working, in the long run, that is a great way to ensure you go broke.

Considering tournaments will pay out 5x, 10x, 20x, 30x, and even more, winning a tournament can quickly turn a down season into a positive one.

Take a look at my daily profit in a season that was overall profitable for me:

You will see that about one-third of the way in the graph, I turned a losing season into a winning one. It all happened in one day, for one GPP. You will also see that I had more losing days than winning days, yet finished the season profitable overall.

Manage your money and stick to strict bankroll rules, never go broke. There is a rapper the kids are into these days named NBA YoungBoy. I asked myself,  "Oh wow, how did this guy get permission to use 'NBA' in his name and not get sued?". Turns out the "NBA" stands for Never Broke Again. That's the mentality you need in DFS.

What about process over results?

Everyone likes saying that and while it's true when you are losing it's hard to know if you have a good process or not. For me, I know my process is good when I have leverage over the field in tournaments. When I can find a stack that has a 12 percent chance of being the winning stack but the average ownership per player is significantly below that. Or when I find a pitcher that is going to be less than 10 percent owned and projects to being one of the top options on the slate.

No one can predict the outcome of games. No model can predict the outcome of games. The games are played by human beings, not robots.

If you put yourself in a position to have leverage over the field consistently, over time your luck will turn around if you avoid going broke.

In a tournament, the main components of a lineup are the Main Stack, the SP1, the Secondary Stack, and the SP2. If you find yourself being uber chalky on all of those components in a tournament, that's bad process.

I get more disappointed when I have someone who I think is going to be contrarian be chalky as opposed to a player not scoring the fantasy points I hoped they would score. When that lineup locks and that under 10 percent play is a 30 percent play, that's when I get frustrated.

If you are on a cold streak right now, hopefully, that can give you a sense of whether you should stay the course, or whether there is a flaw in your process. To be good at this, you have to be willing to ask yourself that question all the time.

Let's talk about the opposite side of the coin: hot streaks!

Hot Streaks!

I used to play poker frequently. It was once easier to play poker than it is now but that is neither here nor there. A saying that I heard once when I was playing at a table was "the quickest way to go broke is to get good cards".  If you've played poker, you probably understand what they are talking about. You get Pocket Kings, bet a ridiculous amount of money to be called against Pocket Aces. Or even worse, a lower pocket pair (such as Jacks) that hits on the flop, or turn, or river, to get cracked.

I haven't heard this phrase, but I would say based on stories and observation, a quick way to go broke in DFS is to have some success.

Imagine the scenario: you play in a $20 buy-in tournament and win $5,000. Congratulations! Except congratulations aren't enough. You are thrilled to get $5,000 but you look at what the $555 tournament prizes are, and there are only people entering and the top prize is $20,000. You go "YOLO" and you don't cash. Now you have $4445. You are still balling, so this time you enter it again, and poof, you bust and are now at $3890. You notice you can enter up to six lineups in this event. You don't want to do that, so you decide to just enter three lineups instead. I think we can see how this all plays out. Now you are at $2225, tilting from the fact you just had $5,000. Maybe you do one last YOLO and think that will be the night, maybe you cash out and are tired of the ups and downs, but either way that big night a week ago leaves you with a different feeling inside.

Would you like to know how to avoid it?

Bankroll management! Again!

Let's say under the previous scenario, you were at $1,000 for your bankroll which is why you were playing $20. You win $5,000 and now you are up to $6,000. In that scenario, if you want to go up in stakes, I would be comfortable with playing six times the buy-in. Two percent of $6,000 is $120, which is six times higher than $20. I would NOT play in a single $120 buy-in event, but that all comes back to contest selection: expensive contests tend to be sharper and tougher than lower-cost contests.

My point is that a big win can open you up to playing in some higher stakes, and getting more action while keeping it fun and preventing you from going broke. Remember, we went to be like Youngboy: Never Broke Again.

What if I am just tired?

That is a great question and I have been there. The season is a grind. If you are looking at probable pitchers, the weather, Vegas lines, etc., for days on end, weeks on end, months on end, you are going to get mentally fatigued. Take care of yourself. Take a break. Go outside. Talk to family. Hang out with a friend. Eat Nachos. There is more to life than DFS.

What I really love about the MLB season is because there are so many slates, I only play ones I like and avoid ones I don't.

This is being published on June 7th. There are only three Major League Baseball games being played today and the main slate is just two of the games on DraftKings. This is the perfect day to take off from DFS and do something else to take your mind off of it. You might find yourself coming back on Tuesday fresher to a 15 game slate.  And if not? Then take Tuesday off as well and you will see that Wednesday has a nice 12 game slate all queued up for you.

There are about 16 weeks left in the season, the game isn't going anywhere. Take care of yourself.

I always use nights off like we are facing tonight, to reflect on where I am, how I am doing, and assess my performance, but if that's too much for you, then don't do it.

Final Thoughts

Slow nights such as two-game slates are opportunities for us to step back and analyze how we are doing. It is also an opportunity to fade playing DFS and enjoy a different aspect of life, as we may come back sharper and more locked in the next time we play a larger slate.

The best way to get out of a cold streak is to continue to follow good processes such as finding leverage over the field in tournaments and stick to strict bankroll rules. Instead of playing two or three percent of your starting bankroll in tournaments, play two or three percent of your remaining bankroll in tournaments to ensure you won't go broke. Even with reducing the amount of money played, one good tournament performance can turn your entire season around.

Hot streaks are tricky as well because oftentimes we get comfortable and tend to be more fast and loose with our cash. Bankroll rules will allow for you to up stakes as you win, but it will be an amount proportional to what you are winning.

Regardless of how we are faring this MLB DFS season thus far, we should all take the mentality of the rapper Youngboy and make sure we are Never Broke Again!