For all the varieties of lineups, pitchers and contests I entered, the results were remarkably similar: zero dollars won. Mercifully my $25 50/50 was cancelled, so I saved that money, the other $25 tournament was a seat I'd won earlier in the week and the RotoWire and Tout Wars contests were free rolls. That still left three $10 losses and five $5 ones for a net of minus $55. I started the day with $1100.60 and am now down to $1045.60.
I won't complain too much because I got lucky on Tuesday when my one good pitcher out of 12 lineups just so happened to be matched up with my best hitting stack, but it's annoying to have Tuesday and Fridays as my designated days to play and blog whether or not I like the match-ups on those slates.
One thing I've learned from writing Beating the Book over the years is ideally you'd bet only as often as you see an angle, i.e., you pick your spots, and having to play every game is a handicap for your overall winning percentage. Last night, I didn't like any of the pitchers on the slate so I went with five different ones, none of whom did especially well. I suppose Tanner Roark and Brett Anderson held up fine for their costs, and Kyle Gibson - after giving up five runs early - recovered decently, but my hitting stacks were average at best. (I also whiffed on Carlos Martinez who turned out to be the pick.) In the end, Friday probably should have been a day I skipped, but it's one of the two days to which I've committed, and the Tout and RotoWire contests fall on it too.
But it's not so much that I played Friday and wasted money on lineups I wasn't feeling, but that I missed today's slate. (I can play Saturday if I want, but my life schedule usually prevents it.) My strategy is to pick aces - I would have had Clayton Kershaw in at least a few lineups (we'll see how he does tonight) and probably Madison Bumgarner, who did okay. But I also love getting underpriced preseason stars like Matt Kemp ($2200 Friday) who had a huge game. I'm pretty sure I would have had him in plenty of lineups and also stacked Tigers against John Danks (which looks good right now.) But I suppose DFS would be a lot easier if you got to pick the player and only his best game of the weekend counted toward your score.
I'll be back at it Tuesday if not sooner.