How DFS Projections and Ownership Projections Work

Two players with the same projection can be very different plays. One scores close to his projection every night; the other has quiet nights and huge nights. The floor and ceiling show that spread: a low outcome and a high outcome he reaches on a good night.

Cash games (50/50s, double-ups) reward a high floor, because you only need to beat about half the field. Tournaments reward a high ceiling, because only the top of the field gets paid.

DraftDime gives you five sets to build from: Normal (the DraftDime projection), GPP adjusted, Cash adjusted, Floor and Ceiling. GPP adjusted leans toward upside for tournaments; Cash adjusted leans toward safe production.

Pick one, or weight several together (for example 70% Normal and 30% Ceiling). The blend drives the projection and value columns and the lineups the optimizer builds. You can also upload your own projections and blend them in.

Value is projected points per $1,000 of salary. It finds the cheap players who free up money for stars: a $4,000 player projected for 24 points (value 6.0) can be a better use of salary than a $10,000 player projected for 50 (value 5.0).

Next to the projections are each player's last 5, last 10 and season averages, so you can see when a projection sits well above or below what he has been doing.

Click any player for his card: the projection with GPP and cash adjusted versions, salary and value, fantasy points averages (season, last 5, last 10, home or away, against tonight's opponent), his last 10 games against the projection, and the full game log.

Ownership projections estimate the share of lineups in a contest that will use each player. A player at 25% projected ownership is expected in one of every four lineups.

DraftDime projects ownership for tournaments (GPP ownership, the Own% column) and for cash games (Cash own, in the player card). Cash-game fields are smaller and more concentrated, so the same player is often far more popular there.

In a big tournament, a great score is not enough if thousands of other lineups have the same players. Low-owned players who hit separate you from the field; popular players (chalk) who fail sink a large part of it.

Leverage means pairing a good projection with lower ownership. In the DFS optimizer, ownership rules (for example "at least two players under 10% owned") build that into every lineup. The DFS simulator builds its whole field from projected ownership, so it shows how much a popular lineup is worth once you account for duplicates.

Download the whole slate as a CSV for your own models, or use the projections where they are built in: the optimizer turns them into lineups, the simulator turns them into player outcome ranges, and the AI Lineup Builder plans a portfolio around them.

DraftDime projections are available for NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL, on both DraftKings and FanDuel. To see how they turn into lineups, read how a DFS optimizer works and how a DFS simulator works.