Finding the Optimal Fanduel Daily Fantasy League Lineup in Week 1

Update: A couple lineups for $55K leagues have been added.

 

If you haven't tried Fanduel, well you're really missing out.  Daily fantasy football leagues have become a big part of my already over the top fantasy obsession.  My typical routine is to spend about 10 minutes perusing through the Fanduel players and throw together a few teams that in my mind, I am happy with.  I'll be honest, I haven't had much success with this approach.  While it is easy to find a couple of "value" players, it's nearly impossible to know which combination of value players and studs will yield the best results.  So I put my software engineering background to use and wrote a program to pick the optimal lineup from a given set of player projections in hopes of being able to put together some rock solid teams on a weekly basis to help line my (and your) pockets.

My approach is far from perfect, and I can't even guarantee it will yield great results, but the experiment to see if it can is under way.  

The Good

This approach essentially takes all of the players and searches for the optimal lineup in a $60K Fanduel league, minus the kicker and the defense.  So I set aside $5K each for a defense and kicker and found the perfect combination of players (QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, TE) that cost less than $50K and will yield the most fantasy points.  When I set out to do this, it seemed simple enough to just iterate through EVERY single player at every different position.  After waiting over 6 hours and noticing that progress was extremely slow, I had to find a much faster solution.  My best guess is that this first approach would have taken a matter of days...how many, I do not know.

So I simplified it somewhat by making some basic assumptions (throw out really crappy players below a certain threshold), and also wrote the program so that it would fully utilize each of the 12 CPU cores I had available.  Sorry, the software nerd in me is talking now.  In the end, I was able to obtain an optimal lineup and several other alternative lineups.  I feel that it's important to have other options and to utilize these different options for several reasons.  First, there could be one (or two, or three) significant injuries mid-game that would completely eliminate a player from your lineup.  Second, if one of the lineups just doesn't turn out to be up to par for whatever reason, it would really suck to have every single one of your Fanduel matchups contain that lineup.  

The Bad

Plain and simple: The optimal Fanduel lineup is only as good as the projections that it is based on.  I don't do my own projections (yet), but utilized Rotoworld's season pass rankings (side note: their season pass is worth it just for the ability to receive their player news e-mails).  

I would love to utilize other people's projections to find other lineups based off of this algorithm, so if you wouldn't mind sharing your projections with me and want me to spit out the best Fanduel lineup you can make based on your projections, .  

Also, I don't even try to predict kickers/defenses...Use your best judgement to plug one into your lineup.

The Lineups

I will say this...I had one lineup I had set for a Freeroll before trying this experiment, and it included both running backs and 2/3 wide receivers I found in the "optimal lineup".  Hopefully this is not a bad thing though, seeing as I said my intuition and Fanduel success have not coincided in years past.

Anyway, if you want to see the optimal lineups, you just need to subscribe to our premium serv...Ok, kidding.  I would love to get your feedback though on how well these are working for you.  Feel free to e-mail me (), tweet me (), or just post in the comments section.  Please note that I didn't feel it was my duty to share Rotoworld's premium projections for each player, but you will see a total score for each lineup. 

I also didn't pick the 5 BEST lineups, but did my best to find optimal lineups that utilize different players.  You will notice that McFadden, Julio Jones, and Calvin Johnson are common among many of these, and that's simply due to their very high point projections.

If you're new to this whole daily fantasy football thing, give our $1K Freeroll a try.

#1 Lineup

	Player	Pts	Cost
QB	Cam Newton	xx	$9,300
RB1	DeAngelo Williams	xx	$5,700
RB2	Darren McFadden	xx	$8,100
WR1	Julio Jones	xx	$7,200
WR2	Calvin Johnson	xx	$8,400
WR3	Eric Decker	xx	$6,000
TE	Fred Davis	xx	$5,300
	Totals	151.0	$50,000

 

#2 Lineup

	Player	Pts	Cost
QB	Cam Newton	xx	$9,300
RB1	Rashad Jennings	xx	$4,500
RB2	Darren McFadden	xx	$8,100
WR1	Julio Jones	xx	$7,200
WR2	Calvin Johnson	xx	$8,400
WR3	Brandon Lloyd	xx	$6,100
TE	Vernon Davis	xx	$6,100
	Totals	149.7	$49,700

 

#3 Lineup

	Player	Pts	Cost
QB	Russell Wilson	xx	$5,400
RB1	LeSean McCoy	xx	$8,700
RB2	Darren McFadden	xx	$8,100
WR1	Julio Jones	xx	$7,200
WR2	Calvin Johnson	xx	$8,400
WR3	Brandon Lloyd	xx	$6,100
TE	Vernon Davis	xx	$6,100
	Totals	148.7	$50,000

 

#4 Lineup

	Player	Pts	Cost
QB	Michael Vick	xx	$7,900
RB1	Doug Martin	xx	$6,500
RB2	Darren McFadden	xx	$8,100
WR1	Julio Jones	xx	$7,200
WR2	Calvin Johnson	xx	$8,400
WR3	Austin Collie	xx	$5,000
TE	Vernon Davis	xx	$6,100
	Totals	148.1	$49,200

 

#5 Lineup

	Player	Pts	Cost
QB	Matt Ryan	xx	$7,900
RB1	DeAngelo Williams	xx	$5,700
RB2	Darren McFadden	xx	$8,100
WR1	Julio Jones	xx	$7,200
WR2	Calvin Johnson	xx	$8,400
WR3	Percy Harvin	xx	$6,600
TE	Vernon Davis	xx	$6,100
	Totals	147.8	$50,000

 

$55K Lineups

	Player	Pts	Cost
QB	Russell Wilson	xx	$5,400
RB1	Ronnie Brown	xx	$4,500
RB2	Darren McFadden	xx	$8,100
WR1	Julio Jones	xx	$7,200
WR2	Calvin Johnson	xx	$8,400
WR3	Brandon Lloyd	xx	$6,100
TE	Fred Davis	xx	$5,300
	Totals	133.3	$45,000

 

	Player	Pts	Cost
QB	Cam Newton	xx	$9,300
RB1	Rashad Jennings	xx	$4,500
RB2	Ronnie Brown	xx	$4,500
WR1	Julio Jones	xx	$7,200
WR2	Calvin Johnson	xx	$8,400
WR3	Austin Collie	xx	$5,000
TE	Vernon Davis	xx	$6,100
	Totals	132.2	$45,000