Fantasy Football Daily - An Interview with DraftKings Millionaire Maker Russell Miller

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

Fantasy Points subscriber -- and new millionaire -- Russell Miller (@rmillerDFS) joins Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) and John Proctor (@JohnnyP135DFS) to discuss his winning Week 2 lineup, his strategies for large-field DFS tournaments, and more! SIGN UP FOR FANTASY POINTS WITH CODE GURRIFIC25 AT CHECKOUT FOR 25% OFF: https://www.fantasypoints.com/plans#/ Want to join a high-stakes dynasty league -- or any other high-stakes league? All new FFPC users get $25 off their first FFPC league of $35 or more, including dynasty orphans, using our affiliate link: https://myffpc.com/cms/public?affid=fantasypoints FANTASY POINTS PROJECTIONS ARE LIVE FOR ALL STANDARD AND PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS! Interested in playing Best Ball in 2023? There's no better place than Underdog Fantasy. Use our code FANTASYPTS to sign up for a new account at Underdog, and not only will you get a 100% deposit match up to $100... but you'll get a Fantasy Points Standard subscription for only $5! https://www.fantasypoints.com/underdog --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, you are listening to the Fantasy Points podcast. We are recording my time 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I just woke up. Our producer, Trey, just woke up. Our special guest today hasn't gone to sleep. John Proctor is here, brand new baby, so he's frequently up this early. And this is like a super special show. We're here with Fantasy Points, subscriber,

and recent millionaire, Russell Miller. Last week, Russell took down the Draft King's Millie Maker with a single bullet, beautiful lineup. Russell, what's going on? Welcome to the show. Congratulations. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me.

Week later, it still doesn't feel real. I don't know former Millie winners themselves when it actually sinks in. when it hit my bank account it definitely sunk in a little bit but it's still pretty crazy especially primarily single bullet player you kind of dream of chasing it but not firing multiple lineups the odds of you actually hitting the nuts are significantly lower so it's pretty crazy bustle isn't just a fantasy point subscriber but he is also a php o g for those of you who don't know, first podcast ever did in the industry.

John Proctor and I did the Power Hour podcast, and this is like, we only had like 500 viewers per show, but like some of those viewers were A Raven or CSU RAM or Evan Silva, like a lot of people in this industry listening to that show. It wasn't super popular, but we did it for a number of years.

We had a blast doing it. And Russell's one of the OGs who've been listening. for, I don't know, since 2016, 2017. And he's not just a former PHP OG, but he's also an absolute mensch. You know, when he, you know, posted the screenshot, he tagged fantasy points, even though, like, this is just, like,

such a brilliant lineup that he deserves all of the credit there. He also did a subscription giveaway for fantasy points, giving away 10 free subs. So happy to have you as part of the team. You're also in Discord dropping what Johnny refers to as Russ novels. He did a mini AMA on Saturday talking a little bit about his process. And Johnny, I know you know Russell's experience grinding in the WNBA suites, which is sort of a breeding ground for elite DFS players.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think if I had to peg Russ as where he has had his most success, it's probably been in basketball-related sports. But I think in general, DFS from sport to sport, as long as you know, sort of or you can learn, I guess, the theory behind each sport, you don't necessarily have to be playing your best sport to win. I think I've had some of my biggest wins in the NBA, and I'm more of an NFL player.

But to Russ's point of it, not setting in, I think it's different when you're a single bullet player, whereas if you're 150 maxer, probably, you know, if you're a really good 150 maxer, you're probably two, three, four times a year live, at least, to some degree. So I think for them it's like they're live so often that it's maybe when they win, they kind of were hoping or expecting to win at least once every few years. But when you're just putting one lineup in and then you look at it and you're like, holy shit like this might do it. I think it's just completely different. So yeah, it's very cool. Yeah.

So let's dive into the lineup itself, the plays you made. and we'll talk about the thoughts that went into this. We'll talk about what the sweat was like and some more general advice you can give in terms of your strategy and what you've found works for you. But again, this is a super, super sharp lineup. The quarterback is Brock Purdy stacked with Debo Samuel on San Francisco side, but it's also stacked with a number of Rams players, Puka Nakuwa. Kyrin Williams.

RB2 is Zach Moss. Wide receiver one would be Keenan Allen, tight end, Darren Waller. And then Flex was Pollard, stack with the Cowboys defense. So really not a lot of chalk here. You could say Debo was chalk.

Also a great play as San Francisco's zone beater against a Rams defense that plays a lot of zone. Debo's also just destroyed the Rams historically. Pollard was a tiny bit chalky. Keenan was a tiny bit chalky, but only one guy I'm seeing over 11%. So pretty unique build. And I know that you were intentional about this. Well, I'll let you say how you sort of faded the 1 PM games and what led you to this

game stack. I think Johnny touched on it earlier and you said it best. I think NFL might not crack the top three sports if I had to rank like sports I like the grind play, probably be NBA first, then tennis, WMBA next. And then NFL would probably start to enter the equation. And I think the thing that stood out to me last Sunday was the more I built in the more lineups, like iterations of lineups, I can sit. for the single bullet. The one thing that stood out to me was every single construction I put together,

almost every single player was from the opening one o'clock window. And all I could think about was from the standpoint of in NFL, if your lineup is drawing dead from the beginning, no matter how much you love your lineup, you need to pivot off those plays to try to get unique, to try to get back to the cash line. And from that standpoint, looking at all the teams that I loved, there was no real options to do that. And the more I started to consider overall ownership, the late game window wasn't that popular to begin with. And a lot of the plays were only projecting for 10 to 15%. And from that standpoint, the more I thought about it and looking at the fact that the lineup I did fire and built had six or seven slots, including the defense, just fully open. it really felt like a situation, especially in the 555, which was the contest I built to try to win,

which is one of the things I said in the AMA to subscribers. I always, as a single bullet player, tried to build to win the highest dollar contest I enter and just let the process play out in any other entry at any other dollar amount below that. And in thinking about that and thinking about just collective ownership, while the ownership, I was actually shocked when the late games, the cards flopped and I saw the ownership because across the board it wasn't just the Rams. Like even Puka had dropped down to 11%. Like I wonder how many of those teams in that contest had to pivot off of players that I didn't

have to because I didn't load up on the early window of games. It could kind of sit back and just kind of see how it played out in the early window. I made the joke to a few friends in Discord before that going into, I think I said it at 11 o'clock before, like hours before the slate locked that I was contemplating firing that lineup. And I would know pretty early on into the slate if I was drawing dead or not based off what the early window of games produced just because of how popular they were in general. Yeah, this is this is a brilliantly sharp. This is also extremely ballsy.

You you started off and you're like you're making all these different builds. Again, you're a single lineup player, but you know, you're playing around with builds. And so first lineup, second lineup, third lineup goes super heavy on 1 PM games. And then you think to yourself, you're like, you know, I really like these. But I think the field really likes this. So this just shows how sharp your game theory is. No, no, no, no, I'm not going to play, you know, these lineups, which I think are really good. I'm going to intentionally fade those lineups because those are going to be the most popular lineups.

And I'm going to give myself a major edge just switching off to this other lineup that I like maybe just as much or only a little bit less. But it has so much more upside because of it's so much lower owned. Yeah. And you say it's ballsy, Scott. but I think it's, I think people, like the majority of DFS players, like they, you know, they'll say, wow, you know, I can't believe that person did that. And it's just what you're how you should play. So like he's playing the five, so the five five five, for example, ownership on like the best plays are going to be higher than, you know, the $5 flea flicker. So you think like, okay, that top game that everyone, the top two games that everyone was going to play was what?

The Jags Chiefs game and then I forget what the other one was. But so you think about those and you're like, okay, not only are these plays going to be the highest own, they're going to be 10, 15% higher here. So it's, you just have to not play them if you're playing for first place. So people say how ballsy something is, but to some degree, it's just. just making the calculated decisions correctly less than having balls. And then I think once you get to the point where you understand that, where Russ has evolved from, you know, 2015, 2016, like anyone else who has worked their way into being a more theoretical player, you just have to make that decision and say,

okay, this is where the ownership's going to be. And I need to be on the other side of it with plays that I think are, are just as good or slightly better, you just have to do it. Because I can't remember, but I even think that the San Francisco team total was one of the third highest on the slate. But for some reason,

nobody wanted to play that game because nobody thought the Rams could actually push the 49ers. Yeah, and keep in mind the week earlier, like they looked incredible, pace of play was up. I think Stafford was the second highest graded quarterback of the week. He looked legitimately incredible. Yeah. And yeah, no one was on it when it made a ton of sense.

And there was a ton of values such as Puka Nakuwa. So I just pulled this up on video as a screen share in case we put this up as a video. Again, just to walk this through one more time, it's Brock Purdy, a quarterback. Kairn Williams, RB1, Zach Moss, RB2, Keenan Allen, wide receiver 1, Debo, Samuel, wide receiver 2, Puka, Nuku, wide receiver 3, tight end one, Darren Waller, flex, Tony Pollard, stacked with Cowboys defense. And so just like talking about these players, just from my perspective, like why I thought these were all really sharp plays, Brock Purdy, I was saying, was super underrated,

all offseason, thought he was underrated heading into this game, which looked attracted to me. Kiron Williams was a late news guy, Cam Acres. He announced like an hour before the games was inactive. And so we were talking in Discord, like he's an awesome play.

And he's going to go so low own because people, like even for this game, which is a four o'clock game, are slow to kind of adapt to the news. They don't want to blow up their lineups that they felt really good about. And then Zach Moss, I thought was like a top three cash play of the slate. Keenan Allen, same thing.

Debo Samuel, again, the matchup was perfect for him. Zone beater destroys the Rams. Puga, we'll go deeper into this and a little bit. But that was another late news guy. Mike Garifolo was saying, you know, Rams are so high on him. Like he's going to have a major role even when Cooper Cup comes back, which really raises. of the possibility that he could have a week two, just like a week one he had, in which case,

he's the best play of the slate. He was my, my wide receiver one in the week, but all for GPPs, I was just trying to come up with ways to fade him, but only 11% owned. Darren Waller, tight ends have been like a dumpster fire. This was my Exodia tight end. That doesn't look like too great of a call now for season long leagues, but like massive upside for a position that's just been dead and like Andrews and Kelsey both banged up. Pollard, RB one of the week, I thought, I mean, Cowboys against Zach Wilson makes all the sense in the world. But I want to go back to Puka Nakua because you had, you had a tricky 1V1 that was the difference between you making over a million dollars in a live final seat

and making, I don't know, just 50K. And I just want to, I want to quickly I want to say, I think this was like the biggest thing for me and where Russ found a way that I didn't where I thought Kyron and Pucco were both amazing plays but I didn't want to play them together because they were the Rams. So I'll let Russ talk about sort of how he ended up playing them together.

And this is a question I've actually gotten a few times going into, obviously the Cam Acres news broke less than 10 minutes before the main slate locked. So in my confidence in this lineup, Everyone was like, how could you possibly have known that before the fact? And the truth is, I didn't. My original lineup had Tony Pollard, where Kyron Williams is right there, and it had Jahan Dotson and $100 left over in the Flex. And I had built enough iterations of the afternoon window that if, for whatever reason, things didn't break away I wanted or things cropped up weird, I knew I had options in the Flex based off salary and I had that extra $100.

And obviously with the Cowboys defense too, I also had potential wiggle room with respect to dropping down to 49ers, DST, etc. If I wanted to, there was a few or even options in the Giants game. Like there was salary to work with. Like, Ertz was a tied end option. But the second the Acres news broke, Dotson became $5,000. Kieran Williams, and I moved him and I basically just reorganized the roster and set it and forget it. The one thing to note, too, in Williams being the $5,000 back that the news broke so close to lock and people don't adjust, the main thing to remember last week and week two was Joshua Kelly was also the $5,000 running back.

That was the chalk running back in a really difficult matchup that, unfortunately, for the field. did not work out. And from that standpoint, going into that, why going into the early window of games, I played Keenan for leverage. And rather than play the $5,000 chalk Kelly alongside Allen, I played Moss as a $300 cheaper running back at basically no ownership, because similar to Kiannoy Miller, who Scott, I know you're pretty big on this week. In my opinion, like, looking at This week's slate, Chandra Miller is basically the exact same play as Zach Moss was last week, in my opinion.

When you think about it, there's a whole bunch of injury upside. People questioned his health, so nobody wanted to play him from an ownership standpoint. His backfield mate in Dion Jackson is very similar to Tony Jones Jr. And wildly inefficient production-wise. So if all things are created equal,

one back will be more productive with that work than the other. And all of that is just keeping the ownership down from a tournament standpoint. And ironically, the more you think about it too, both Zach Moss and Keandre Miller both have a mobile running quarterback. Say quarterback because everyone is worried about Taysam Hill, the quarterback as tight end for the Saints who can Volter goal line work, but Zach Moss still put up 20 points. Well, granted, Richardson got hurt, but Richardson scored the first two rushing touchdowns of that game and did also Vulture production.

So I think the irony for me is the Zach Moss play feels a lot like the Keandre Miller play this week in terms of ownership, price, everything in tournaments. Yeah, I like that a lot. I like Joshua. I thought it was a really good play, probably underrating that Titans defense. And I was viewing Zach Moss and Karen Williams both as leverage plays, both those really good plays. Didn't have both of them on the same lineup. I thought that was super sharp.

But like the big one v1 for you, I know you reached out to Johnny about this. And so I'd like to hear both of your thoughts was Puka Nakuwa versus Jahan Dotson. So remember, you're going into the 4 PM games. At this point, you only have, what, Keenan Allen and. Keenan Allen and Zach Moss were the only two plays. Okay, which are two great. And then 1 PM definitely did underwhelm versus expectations. I said Jehan Dodson was the best GPP wide receiver play of the slate.

Obviously, that looks really bad. part of that was Patrick Certain was likely to shadow Terry McLaurin. Every beat said that was probably going to happen. And he didn't. We did see Jahan Dotson get five targets on the team's first two drives. Those are typically like the scripted drives. So like he was clearly part of the game plan. And then he had zero targets from then on.

I assume like, you know, once he saw Certain was on him more than he was Terry McLaren, they just moved off of him. but like you would think that the upside might be greater there because like no other site was really on jehan d'atson or did it make more sense to go with more of an onslaught game stack where you have purdy debo and then two rams as well um yeah by the way the craziest thing about this shout out to you russell is you knew really early on that this was a special lineup i think you said you you talked to your friends maybe before the game started talking about this lineup. I know you reached out to Johnny early on. So shout out to you. This is definitely a special lineup. Put it in the Louvre, hang it up in Canton. But yeah, you want to talk a little bit about what you and Johnny discuss as it relates to Dots and Nakuwa and what led you to making the right call?

Yeah. So basically as the afternoon window of games was about to kick off like an hour before those games kicked off, I jumped into Johnny's DMs and basically just sent him the screenshot of the team that you see there and basically inquired. I was between Puka and Dotson originally. Like when I sent Johnny the screenshot, it was, as you see here, it was the full both Rams bring back with the game stack. And I basically reached out to Johnny for kind of the sanity check, like, in the moment. Like, a lot of times in fantasy, there's those split-second decisions you often have to make leading up to lock and trial and error.

Sometimes you get them right. Sometimes you don't. And with that team, I basically asked Johnny, it's like, my heart wants to play Dotson, but my brain says that Puka is the correct play. Like, can I just bounce it off of you because I don't want to fumble the bag quite literally? because that did turn out to be a $950,000 decision and one we've won. But it was the decision to prioritize the game stack for the collective ceiling of everyone over an individual player's ceiling. That inevitably what kept me to stay on the team, but also helped the lineup climb towards the end.

Yeah. And I think that's people always ask. like, you know, what has more upside this or that? And I think there's multiple kinds of upside and multiple kinds of ceiling. And I think a lot of people struggle with that idea. And so like I had said to Russ, when he messaged me is like the odds of this lineup scoring, you know, 225 points instead of 201 or whatever, playing Dotson from a separate game, because the odds that you get multiple touchdowns with two players from two different

games is higher, you know, in terms of total ceiling, but the odds of actually capturing touchdowns is much higher when you have multiple players from a single game. So like I said to Scott on Twitter, it's, you know, hitting a nine individual parlayes will pay you more money than, you know, hitting a parlay that uses a game stack, but you're more likely to hit that parlay. And that's where playing Kyron Puka, you know, with Purdy, you know, you're more likely to capture a ceiling if that game goes off versus getting, you know, you're not going to get 50 out of two, both players. You're not going to get Kyron to score 50 and Puka to score 50. But, you know, the fact that you can get 30 out of both of them and 22 out of Debo is sort of where Russ won. And it's a week where the 1 PM games kind of failed, so you didn't really need 50.

for many players. I think part of the thing I struggled with too was I had a really hard time gauging what was exactly the individual ownership of those plays, knowing that so much of the field basically going into that late window had either the tight end flex, maybe the DST left. It was trying, it was really hard to gauge. Like in that, did they play Kyron or did they play Puka in terms of who was that 5K RAM in the flex spot. So technically the MVP of your lineup is supposed to be Kairn Williams.

There's an unwritten rule among Millie Maker winners, DFS millionaires, is when you win the Millie, you have to buy a framed autograph jersey of your lowest own player, which would be Kyron Williams at 5.7%. It's also fitting for reasons we'll get into. why he was kind of one of the secret superstars of this lineup. Russell, I want to know what this sweat was like. Like, I can't even imagine. So in order to win a million dollars, you have to be either smart and lucky,

insanely lucky, or I don't know, you have to be lucky, but you were unlucky and you won a million dollars. You had Brock Purdy had a touchdown pass to Devo Samuel changed as a, a Debo Samuel run because, you know, the ball was maybe like an inch over the behind the line of scrimmage. And so you were, you were in third place. This, this happened. And you drop all the way to like 22nd.

And like, I'm losing my mind. My palms are sweaty. I could barely watch the games. I think there were me. I would just like turn the games off and like go for a run or get rid of this nervous. Like losing my mind. But you, I don't know, you stayed calm and collected. you have to tell the listeners what the sweat was like, what the excitement was like when

there were no stat corrections after the game. What happened on Monday? Did you tell your boss to kiss your ass? What did your wife have to say? Russell, what was this sweat like? Walk us through what happened. I guess the first place to start would be to what Johnny noted. I have been playing fantasy sports for a year. I have had multiple mid-five-figure wins. I have won. figures before. So I had had the feeling of what does it feel like to be live towards the end to win a decent chunk of change with respect to return on your investment buy-in wise. It's the first time I'd ever been live to win the Millie. And I know I had mentioned it to you, Scott, when we caught up the other day. But ironically, I was watching the games, but I was kind

of following them on my phone. Like my wife and I, she's been wanting to watch. watch Ashoka, the Star Wars series for a while. So having watched a lot of football in the early window trying to sweat to see like how the lineup was stacking up in the early games. I figured I'll switch gears, just kind of let it play out how it did. Quickly going into the fourth quarter of the San Francisco Rams game, I was in, I think 80. I think I was either, I was in the top 80 with like 10 minutes to go in the fourth quarter. And the thing that stood out to me when I quickly scanned the leaderboard was the first place lineup had 189 draft Kings points and I had 179 and I was basically only 10 off. But then when I quickly scanned all the lineups in front of me, I had like

eight times the player minutes remaining than the majority of the field because of the strategy I had to basically offload and backload and wait for these games. And it got to the point where as as we got closer to the 10 minute window, I actually had to ask my wife to like, can we just pause the show for a second? Because I kind of need to turn my focus back to the football games because it was beginning to sink in that I didn't think I didn't think I was going to win a million dollars. But I knew I was live for a decent amount of money because there was a lot of football left and out of anybody in the top one. I had the most PMR by a lot. Like I went back to recap it to just refresh my own memory. Like basically with seven minutes to go in the fourth quarter,

I had basically 60 PMR left and I was at 191 draft king's points and need lunch money who everyone often probably sees him at the top of the leaderboards. He had 34 PMR left, and it was basically me and him for the longest time at the top of the leaderboard. He wound up finishing third. He had, in his lineup, Purdy, Samuel, Ertz, and Puka from the last game. So he had three out of the pieces that I had, but with my Waller, Pollard, and the defense, I had much more. ammo at my disposal and at that point it was 191 versus 195 like I was only basically three dekid points off first at that point and Scott to your point it was I believe it was around the

five six minute mark in the Rams game that Brock Purdy's passing touchdown to debo Sanumo got stat corrected so I had basically been two two, three DK points away from a million, the majority of the fourth quarter sitting in second place for $200,000. And then all of a sudden, the stat correction hits, which dropped Pertie back to basically 14 decay points, which anybody that's ever been in any sweat, or if you pay attention in contests today, et cetera, when you get in that top one percentile outcome, the difference between first and third is decimal points in terms of points.

So to lose six fantasy points all of a sudden was a massive swing. And all of a sudden I went from second to I dropped back to 25th, I think. Yeah, I dropped all the way. I would have lost my mind. I would have been like, God, doesn't want me to win a million dollars. I went from $200,000 to like $7,500. And I genuinely did look at my wife for a minute. I was like, I think the dream is kind of gone because it's like, I'd played fantasy

sports long enough to know that like six minutes of football and there were still that's six minutes of football in the 49ers game which was the earlier of the two afternoon games there was still like nine minutes to go in the cowboys and then the Washington Denver game I knew there was still enough football left that anything could happen but six points that's asking for a touchdown seven you lost a reception too oh it's true Johnny, I was saying to Scott, I think a friend pointed it out to me. I'm a Green Bay Packers fan, obviously. I would never wish an injury on anyone.

And as a Packers fan, I actually wanted to see Rogers succeed and go on with the Jets and kind of do well. But as a Packers fan, the million is kind of incredibly fitting that Cowboys DST, the final three possessions, of Zach Wilson dropping back their final three drives, interception, interception, interception. And those three interceptions magically gave me back the six Brock Purdy touchdown points that I lost. And then before I knew it, with under a minute to go in the San Francisco 49ers game,

all I needed was 1.46 DK points. and I was live. So I was looking for, could Poller give it to me? Could Kyran PPR give it to me? And that's Scott what you touched on. Kiron being the lowest own player in the jersey I should get, he is actually the reason why I won the Millie. Because with less than a minute to go, I'm sure everyone remembers the field goal,

what were they doing to cover the spread, kick the field goal when they're losing by more than a field goal. that drive and that late dump off to Williams to set up the field goal was the two DK points I needed to basically move into the lead by less than half of a DK point. And then ironically, the Cowboys' Jets game ended rather quickly because the game wasn't even close, so it kind of just ran its course. Although I do have to just say really quick, Tony Pollard's score for 19.9 fantasy points,

if it wouldn't have happened, knowing that the people in front of me didn't have Pollard, the fact that for as much red zone usage and goal line usage as Pollard has had to start this season, the fact that in that game, two tight end touchdowns first in five and first in goal on the one yard line, two passing touchdowns to the tight ends that weren't Pollard,

touchdowns. I was afraid that was going to come back and haunt the lineup, but thankfully it didn't matter. But it was an unreal runout at the end of the game. It was pretty funny, though, because when I asked my wife, I was like, we need to pause the show for a minute. And I just got to like turn my focus back to football. She thought it was a sweat. But when I was like visibly shaking, I was like, no, it's like kind of a big deal. Like, it's not like a six figure sweat. Like, I could potentially win a million. And when she, like, looked at my phone and, like, looked at the lineup and, like, started to put it all together, she just basically, like, burst out laughing for the first, like, couple of minutes. Like, she could not, like, fathom what was happening.

But I was telling Scott, like, the funny thing and all of it was, like, the second it started to get really real towards the end of the game, like, my wife likes sports, like, obviously not as much as I do, but, like, I've never seen my wife become a bigger football fan. than she was in the final few minutes of the NFL slate on Sunday, to the point where she had the Denver, what was it? It was Denver Washington game up. Basically, I was sweating the stats. She was basically, because that came a chance for overtime. And, oh, man, like, former PHP member Nixon wasn't too far back with Dotson and a lineup.

So there were a few dots in lineups that were, I think the closest dots in lineup was 83rd, but I think that's an aspect to the sweat that was crazy. The unfortunate, it's not really a bug, but the unfortunate thing about Draft Kings is if a game gets below a minute, it shows zero PMR, even though there's time left on the clock. So trying to scroll back through the standings and see, are there any teams live, basically became impossible in that final window. that Hail Mary throw, that Hail Mary catch, and the touchdown. Thankfully, the two-point conversion wasn't successful.

I couldn't tell what the next closest team was. There was a team in 83rd, about 20 DK points off with Dotson that maybe could have closed the gap in overtime, but who knows. But the sweat for a million dollars is unlike anything. It's unreal to explain. like I was physically shaking at one point just I think I like mentally blacked out even after it happened like during the stat correction period like it's a lot to try to process in terms of a it happened be is it going to stat correct having already stat corrected the brot perity stats and only being in first by like 0.34 dk points I think I was it's like

there's not any wiggle room for any yards, anything to disappear, basically just tried to walk away, go for a walk, clear my head, just kind of ride it out until that is probably the worst stack correction sweat I have ever had in fantasy sports. And my heart goes out to those in the fantasy industry that have lost the million on those brutal beats of a cubic, a quarterback kneel down or a fumble, like to be that close and have such a freak thing be the swing of basically quarter $750,000, $800,000 is wild. Yeah. And you know Russ.

You know Russ is a DFS veteran because he didn't tell his wife until it was like five minutes left that he could win a million. I tell my girlfriend, you know, a minute after the game is end, I'm winning a million dollars. I'm currently in 30. No, just kidding. Yeah. So again, you actually got unlucky. Brock Purdy, seven,

Brock Purdy and Debo, seven points lost on a stat correction. Darren Waller, I know had a big play that was negated due to penalty. And I just pulled it up. Tony Pollard, 19.9 fantasy points, zero touchdowns.

He had six carries inside the 10-yard line, scored zero touchdowns. I think that shows you he's such a good play again this week. But yeah, let's talk a little bit about your DFS journey. This episode is kind of a power hour podcast reunion, like our first one since, I don't know, 20, 2018, maybe. So when did you get into DFS? When did you start playing serious volume? You said you've had six-figure scores.

You've had a number of five-figure wins. when did that sort of winning come? And was there any big change for you in terms of process that led to these better results? I think my fantasy journey, it basically started with just a passion and love for sports. I imagine like many of us, sports is something we love, be it hobby, recreational, enjoy watching it. And like many of us turned the passions into ways to kind of grind a little profit, make a little income. Like for me, my fantasy journey kind of started just office leagues playing season long, be it ESPN, Yahoo, etc. From there, it kind of, I never really got into draft.

I kind of started my DFS journey on Yahoo of all places. Like back in like 2013, 2014, like, when, draft kings and fan duel weren't really big yet like but season long fantasy football leagues where i remember like on the app on the phone when yahoo back in the day and this goes to show like how far yahoo contests have even come in the last almost decade like basically in 2014 i put like 50 bucks on my phone on to play like the daily fantasy version of uh that and and never really, never won a ton, but never really lost a bit until 2016, like right before I found power hour. Like, I played a $10 lineup in whatever one of their contests were. And I was basically

like most casual players. Like I was consistently cashing, but I was never close to the top. Like, I had not learned roster construction theory, bring backs, like all of the things that basically are ingrained in the way we construct lineups now, especially this day and age in fantasy sports. Like, I bet if I could go back and look at some of those teams, they were pretty horrific in terms of correlation, ownership, et cetera. To put it this way, I went back and looked. The sweat, the first ever sweat I ever had, and that's kind of what had me hooked, was a back then those slates were the way draft king slates used to be where it was an all-day affair

where the Sunday night game was actually part of the main slate and the first slate I really kind of hit big and got the itch to wow man that's what was wild was the Baltimore Ravens versus Pittsburgh Steelers divisional rival game on Christmas Day where ironically salary-wise, I had plugged in the minimum salary on Yahoo, Kyle Eusecheck, as my running back, which he wasn't even a running back on the Ravens. He was Terrence. Back then, it was Terrence West, and he was just the full back. And I just plugged him in because he was cheap.

And I had found, like, in the late game, I had at least started to learn the concept of a late-night hammer and wanting to keep the line moving. And ironically, like watching the game also with my wife because Christmas night, there wasn't much to do. We hadn't traveled to see our families. We were watching the game. And I was in the top 25 and I needed just any points from Kyle Ustich, which at that point, there's no way in hell. and sure enough that game with there was a 120 remaining in the game first and 10 Joe Flacco hands the ball off to Kyle Eustacheck and he plows it in for 10 yards and that put me over the top into first place and I remember like it was a similar funny sweat where like

the second Eustech checked into the game I looked at my wife and I was like oh my god I need need him to get not just the handoff, but the touchdown. And it was funny because like the Baltimore backfield at the time, like Terrence West, big black man, use check, the whitest guys can be. The second he checked into the game, I knew without even looking at the number, it was him. And I was like, I need this touchdown so bad. The Ravens wound up losing that game because that was the game that the Steelers wound up with a minute 11 to go.

They drove down the field. and I believe A.B. caught a slant in the end zone with like basically time expiring for them to win the division and win that game. But for me, I didn't care because none of the A.B lineups could have touched me. And that one goal line touchdown and that sweat of like, oh my goodness, if this outcome happens, I'm going to 100x my money. I basically $10 in, $1,000 out was like such a. rush there was like okay now I'm hooked and from there I was like it could basically chalk it up to I had no idea what I was doing that was a fluke but that feeling and taking that passion for sports and having it paid off in that way was awesome which ironically eventually found my way to you guys at DFS power hour and from there just continued to try to understand

roster construction, game theory, like correlation and leverage. And there was lots of trial and error. Like once I found you guys a power hour, that's when I realized, oh, there's this thing called draft kings and the prize pools are significantly better with respect to payout structure. So I basically took what bankroll I had ground from Yahoo put it into draft kings and then kept trying to turn a profit. And from there, like in the early years, and I think that's one of the things I said in the AMA to the fantasy point subscribers is I think looking back on my own journey,

it's setting actionable goals where like year by year you can like measure your process in terms of how much you've grown as a player in the industry and kind of making those goals not monetary. Because at the end of the day, it is kind of a volatile industry. like even the best players and the sharks that we all chase, we all see on top of the leaderboard, they can go through some brutal stretches of just they can't seem to hit anything. And from that standpoint,

it doesn't necessarily mean that they're doing anything wrong. I think one of the earliest mistakes I made early in my own process and career is just one chasing other people's success. It's really easy to see somebody in a community you're in. hit big and think, I want to do that too. And suddenly you start to do everything different from something that may have been working from you in your own process. And from that standpoint, it's kind of a really easy thing to do. Because obviously at the end of the day, who doesn't like making money? But at the same time, from a process standpoint, if you find a

process that works for you where you can consistently make the right decisions, those decisions might not always work out. And I think that's one thing Proctor is always preached is like make a call, be confident in that call and don't be results oriented in the fact that if it doesn't hit, that doesn't mean it was the wrong decision. Go back, review a slate, see why it didn't hit. And I think I in my own process saw myself grow quicker in my own fantasy play when I started kind of reverse engineering a slate rather than move on to the next day, go back, look at all the decisions I had made along the way and see where could I have made a better decision? And I think that's what's helped anyone's confidence kind of grow in their own play.

Like I shared an AMA, like in my process, especially through like the Power Hour days, like the Russ novels that Johnny's joked about, like in my own process, like I used to write a lot. I still do. I have less time, obviously, in my 9 to 5 day job to write Russ novels on the side, but very much a part of my own process was the therapeutic act of committing thoughts to page and actually writing why I thought a play was a good play, not just the stats, the dank stats, like you like to share, Scott, but the fact that the game theory aspect of it, how did I see a game playing, what are the holes I could poke in a play? what are the angles of a play that the field might not be considering?

And the beauty of that is basically at the end of every slate, be it basketball, NFL, I'd basically have a written history of everything I thought about how I saw potentially the slate playing out that I could then go back and line up study. What calls did I get right? What calls did I get wrong? What calls were just variants where it may have been the right call, but the outcome didn't happen. And from there, it's kind of exponentially grew. It's interesting to see now kind of flash forward three or four years since that was like a major part of my process, how like lineup study and a lot of the like tools in the industry these days that make it easier for users to basically go back and not just reverse engineer their own lineups, but study anyone in the industry's lineups.

I think is a major change that we've made in the industry for the better. But I think so often, especially users that are just getting their foot in the door, just trying to learn, the airball slate, and the easiest thing to do is, well, I'm going to chalk that up as loss and move on to the next day. But like, there's just as much to learn in the wins as there are in the losses. And I think from that standpoint, like, I credit a lot of, the decisions I've made that have helped me get those big wins to that. Because I think the biggest thing I've preached is like it's a confidence thing.

It's be it basketball or NFL. Cam Acres news is a perfect example. That news broke with less than 10 minutes to go for lock. You have a ticking clock to make a split second decision of is this the correct play or not? And in the early years, you might make the wrong play more often than not. but if you can continue to study your lineups and your process and gain confidence that, yes, this is the correct decision. Like I had so many moments on Sunday throughout the course of the day where in the back of my mind,

I remembered a mistake I had made years ago that I wished I could get back. And this was my opportunity to get it back and not make that same mistake again and kind of little things like that. I mean, ironically, I even said in my tweet, I wound up playing the early and the late slate that day that I won the million because I loved those early slate lineups so much that I wanted to still play those players, but I also didn't want to tinker off a main team that I felt so confident in. And I think so often that can happen where you have a team you love. but obviously there's only so many slots. You can't play everyone. And I think from a process standpoint, it's one of the other things I said in the AMA is like,

I think while it's not legal for everyone yet, sports betting has become a massive part of my process in these day and age. Like it's one of those things. Not every play may be a great daily fantasy play. They might be a good real life play. They might not be a great fantasy play. But if you want to scratch that itch, rather than playing Justin Watson today in your wide receiver spot who could put up a nice day,

but it's a way more volatile range of outcomes for ceiling in your DFS construction. Just go bet his over-receiving or reception prop and get some money down there to basically take your research and pay it forward rather than necessarily tinkering in your fantasy lineup, which I use that as an example, but in the late night crying and sweat, that was the fact I haven't slept, kind of just preparing for today's slate and just getting caught up in the fun of stats and fantasy. His receiving prop is over one and a half receptions. On draft kings, at minus 115, his receiving yards is over under 19 and a half, but his average depth of tar. target this season is basically 24.5 or 24.8, meaning they think he's going to catch potentially two

balls and the current receiving prop is at least six yards too low if he does do that. I love it. Really sharp. Yeah, I think we can do that more often. I wish it was legal in Texas. It's not for me. But yeah, sort of hedging with props or even just like, you know, building your bank roll with props. We have a new props tool over at fantasy points.com utilizing our projections. You guys should check that out. Last question I have for you, Russ, is just back to your NFL DFS process and game theory. How contrarian do you typically go? I imagine, you know, most weeks, you know, you're just getting zero back. And so maybe your sweats are a little less frequently, but your odds of having like a realistic mega sweat where you could stand to win six figures are more are more

frequent and just how stack heavy do you typically go how much do you factor in late swap do you have any advice for the fantasy point subscribers at home i think that's one thing i've noticed in all the years i've played NFL that question kind of evolves as the season goes on i think like the first four or five weeks like the time period we're in right now there's the obvious point per dollar plays and just salary plays that are just off that they're the plays that stand out for a reason it was the zach moss last week granted nobody wanted to play them it's the tank dell this week basically any of the texans receivers none of their salaries adjusted like early on in the season it's trying to, I've always found success, trying to potentially correlate less, trying to just

maximize the overall per dollar return of my roster. But then as the season goes on and pricing obviously tightens up, it's back to standard correlation, run backs, bring backs, trying to get unique elsewhere. I think the one thing that my basketball play has kind of helped me key in on is not just late swap, but what could be the pivots? I think so often going into a late slate, if you have to pivot off of your lineup for whatever reason, do you already have a backup plan for what you might consider if and when you need to do that?

Because I feel so often, even thinking back on my own play, I didn't necessarily always have those pivots. I basically be drawing dead going into the afternoon slate and need to make an adjustment, but I hadn't thought a few more steps down the road before Locke to if X happens, what do I do then? Or if Y, what's my next move? That way, I always kind of am comfortable with the next decision I have to make. All right. I love it. Russell, thank you so much for coming on. You're an absolute superstar. Anytime you ever want to do a video or any content for us, we would love to have it.

In the meantime, he's active in Discord, be on the lookout for hashtag Rust Novels. One of the sharpest players around really so much we can learn from him, including myself. We had some DM exchanges and I was looking back over your AMA, taking notes. Congratulations on your success. And thanks so much for coming on the show and making us have a little PHP reunion here. Real quick before we go, Scott. speaking of PHP reunion. We'll embarrass Johnny with this one.

Oh, no. Oh, man. If you're on the podcast and you can't watch this, he pulled out a super old John Proctor as, what is it, Roger Klotz shirt that we made. So he really is a Ph.P. OG. That is amazing. Also, we were just talking about late swap.

Johnny and I I've only MME'd once and I did it as a tag team with Johnny We did it on a playoff slate That we felt really good about Except heading into the last game Like all of our teams were dead We just didn't have the one guy

We didn't like who went nuclear And so Johnny's quote was We have to make all our All our lineups look like ass or something Just for like the most upside And so we threw him Randall Cobb Who like did had a season high of like six points.

We threw him into every lineup and he went nuclear in the playoffs. And I think we ended up winning like 15K or something like that. So yeah, definitely utilize late swap on teams that are drawing dead in Johnny's words. Make your lineups look like ass. Thanks so much for coming on, Russ. Any final words, Johnny? I would just say that for people in, you know, our discord that, you know, always ask about hand-building lineups and, you know,

should go into them. What Russ talked about today is exactly what should go into your hand-built lineups every Sunday. I mean, you should be thinking through so many different angles. So if it seems like he's doing a lot, I think he's actually just doing exactly what he should be doing when he builds hand-built lineups for Sunday. Russell, what's your Twitter for the folks at home? At R. Miller DFS. All right. Follow Russell. Super sharp DFS. player. Really glad to have you as part of the team Russ. And, you know, hopefully we'll be doing the show again next week when you win back-to-back Millies. Back-to-back. It's coming. I can feel it.