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Daily Games Review: Trust Tracker

I use the Trust Tracker to publicly track the usefulness – or lack thereof – of the recommendations I made in my most recent Daily Games Cheat Sheet article.

For a more detailed introduction, check out my first and second posts here and here.

Players are measured according to their p/K (points per thousand dollars spent). Depending on their p/K and the approximate number of points needed to win a 50-50 league that night, players are rated as either "helpful", "competitive", or "harmful".

On a normal night with a full slate of games (roughly 10 or more), you will need to score between 240 - 250 points to win a 50-50 league. On those nights, a p/K of 4.8 or higher is helpful, a p/K between 4.0-4.8 will keep a roster competitive, and a p/K below 3.5 is harmful.

Those are our baseline benchmarks, but it is important to adjust my analysis so that it reflects the night in question. While there is always variation from contest to contest, the scores required to win each one on any given night are usually very closely grouped, regardless of entry cost. Last time I wrote the Daily Games Cheat Sheet, Thursday, November 6, the scores required to win most contests were between 180-195 (76% of the 240-250 range). As such, I will proportionally decrease expectations for this analysis:

  • Scores above 3.6 p/K are helpful
  • Scores between 3.0 and 3.6 p/K keep a roster competitive
  • Scores below 2.7 p/K are harmful

In last Thursday's article, I recommended 9 players for use (technically I named 10, but Tim Duncan rested the second night of his double-header, as was announced only about an hour after publication):

  • Six players (66% of those recommended) recorded p/K values above 3.6.
  • Two players (22%) recorded p/K values at or above 4.8.
  • One player (11%) recorded a p/K value between 3.0-3.6.
  • Two players (22%) recorded p/K values below 2.7.
  • The best recommendation was Nicolas Batum, who recorded a p/K of 5.3. He registered the 2nd highest p/K in the league Thursday night.
  • The worst was Kostas Papanikolaou, who suffered his worst night of the season, scoring only 8.5 fantasy points and managing only 2.0 p/K.
  • Because of the slow night, I also mentioned two other players for potential use. I described Brandan Wright and Boris Diaw as "not terrible options, but I don't 'recommend' either." Wright's p/K was at the borderline for harmful, hitting 2.7 on the nose. Diaw, coincidentally, hit the target for helpful, coming in at 3.6 p/k.

Overall, 77 percent of my recommendations were of competitive value or better, 66 percent were actively helpful, and 22 percent were damaging.

The team that I entered Thursday on DraftKings was created using only players highlighted in my Thursday article. It scored 195 points for an overall p/K of 3.9. (Having recommended only one PF, Duncan, who took the night off, I was forced to use one of Wright or Diaw; I chose the latter.)

Season total:

Through four articles this season, I have recommended 55 players for use.

  • 33 have been helpful (60%)
  • 40 have been competitive or better (73%)
  • 10 have be harmful (18%)

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