We’ve got another 4 gamer on the docket for Thursday, as Draftkings simply refuses to put the 7 am EST games on the slate. Lock instead is at 9 am EST, and the games are:
Big (54% implied win probability) vs VP
Astralis (62%) vs G2
Godsent (64%) vs North
Fnatic (57%) vs MiBR
A quick note on North, Aizy and MSL are out, Kristou and Kreaz are in. This will be their 3rd match as a roster, they got obliterated by Furia in their first game and beat Nemiga 2-1 in their 2nd match (they did win Train 16-2 and Nuke 16-9).
Pricing/Ownership
It’s been a while since we’ve had a slate like this. The most expensive player on the whole slate is Syrson at only $8.4k in the flex. On days like today I like to limit my player pool quite a bit more than on slates with tight pricing. On a slate you really need to scrounge for value then sure, maybe play some Sanji at 5k and pray he doesn’t have to drop so many guns for Jame that he can actually score 45-55 DK points. On a slate like this though, you want 70+ upside from all 6 of your players.
Unfortunately, most of the teams on this slate are fairly balanced scoring wise, but I’m still comfortable eliminating a few players. Players I’ll be X’ing out of my player pool are:
Sanji, Lucas1, Leo_drk, emi, Tizian, K1to
Players I’m currently borderline on, I’d get rid of them if I was playing 20 or fewer lineups but will likely leave in for MME:
Golden, JW, Flusha, Amanek, Nexa, Qikert, Glaive, Magisk
That’s 14 out of 40 players on the slate, or 35% of the available players, if I’m running a low number of lineups. This leaves me with 26 players to mix and match to try and get the best possible combination.
Another thing the loose pricing typically does is minimize ownership on the underdogs. However, this slate might be a slight exception as Big and Fnatic are almost in coinflips and G2 have arguably the biggest DFS star on the slate in Niko, and really aren’t that big of underdogs themselves. Plus the last time these teams met G2 won and Astralis just lost to Godsent. All of that is to say I think it’s likely only North who will be significantly underowned. You don’t need the savings provided by all their guys in the $5k range, so it’s likely very few people click their names. The only downside with North is that all 5 players project basically the same, so picking which one(s) to play is a nightmare. Kristou frags well for an IGL so even he can’t be ruled out. In fact, he top fragged in their win against Nemiga. Still, I’ll be playing a high percentage of North. In addition to being underowned, Godsent have proven time and time again that while they can beat anyone, they can also lose to anyone.
Fnatic could also come in a bit underowned in their matchup against MiBR, especially after kNgV’s huge game in MiBR’s last match. I expect most of the attention to go to both sides of the G2/Astralis game and Godsent. This could leave Fnatic and Big potentially underowned. I’ll have quite a bit of both teams.
Lastly, I do think Niko and G2’s popularity will take a bit of ownership away from Astralis. I like Device and Dupreeh quite a bit even though each is likely to have decent ownership. If they’re paired with North it should still be plenty unique.
Top Captains
Even though I like North a lot on this slate, I don’t really love them at captain. This is again because of how evenly/unpredictably they spread out their kills. Since you don’t really need the savings, I’d rather do something like lock in Syrson at captain with different combos of North 2 stacks in 5 lineups than run a bunch of different North captains. If Big wins you know that it’s very likely Syrson does well, whereas you can’t really say that about any individual on North.
My favorite captains are, Krimz and Brollan; Syrson and Xantares, and Device and Dupreeh. That’s the the majority of my captain ownership will be. I’ll mix in a bit of Zehn, kNgV, and maybe some Yekindar and Jame as well. I’m going to stay away from Niko captain, save for maybe a couple of entries in MME as a hedge, I think he’s going to be overowned. He’s been super inconsistent so far with G2, he’ll have one great map and then do nothing on the other two. Just look at today vs Furia, he went +16 K-D on Mirage only to follow it up immediately with a -9 on Nuke. Of course it’s always possible he crushes for two straight maps and puts up 100 (flex) in a sweep, but his bloated ownership will outweigh the chances of that happening for me.
Anyways, that’s it for me. Good luck on Thursday!
