Today we are chatting with user SGS who was the GW 26 Monster winner. Not only did SGS take down the €5,000 1st place prize but also came 2nd for another €3,000 along with 17 more cashes in the event.
SGS, from Germany, only plays fantasy sports as a hobby but that has not stopped him from piling up the profits. We wanted to pick his brains over his Monster selections and his general strategy and preparation.
Q. Firstly congrats on your win! In your winning team, you had no players who were playing on the last day. How were the nerves? Were you confident in holding on to the lead?
A. Thank you! The tournament was very nerve-wracking until the last second. snowbeef was only a few points behind me and still had three Wolves players to play. One more Wolves goal could have knocked me off the throne!
Q. We would love to know the thoughts behind your selection process. How do you do your preparation for a slate? Any sites you like to use for research?
A. With me the procedure is always the same. First I check on Fantasy Football Scout what the expected lineups of the teams are. Then I filter out these players in an Excel file.
Then I write down the most important bookmaker odds for the upcoming game day, like the clean sheet probabilities of the teams or the to score probabilities of the players. From this data, I create my own player projections.
Then I think about which defensive lines, which offensive lines, and which captains I want to play on that game day and start creating the teams.
Q. Your 11 players covered just 4 teams in total (Chelsea, Southampton, Liverpool, and Tottenham) all of whom contributed. Is keeping the number of teams you cover small, a regular tactic for you, and if so what are the reasons for this?
A.This depends on the game day and what possibilities it offers you. I usually have between 4-6 different teams in a lineup.
Q. In defence, you went for just two teams. Is the stacking penalty something you think much about or would you rather cover as few teams as possible?
A. I like to play only two teams in the defence, among other things because of the stacking penalty. Every now and then, however, I play an additional upside defender on defence, such as Cancelo or Trent-Alexander Arnold. Especially when I play Manchester City or Liverpool in the offence.
Q. In attack, the Liverpool trio delivered points as maybe you would expect against Norwich. However, the guys who did you really well were Kane and Son. What were your reasons for playing them considering they were playing Man City?
A. I played Liverpool and Manchester City in the offence ostensibly on this matchday. In the teams where I didn’t have a Manchester City player in the offence, I went for Son and Kane because they were incredibly cheap and I hoped that Tottenham would score at least 1 goal against Manchester City with Son and Kane involved. That the Spurs won in the end and even scored three goals, that of course I would have also not expected.
Q. Is using all your available budget something you try to do or are you happy to leave some on the table?
A.If you look at my teams, you will see that I usually leave a maximum budget of 1.5 million. That is my pain threshold. For me, it doesn’t make sense to max out the budget come hell or high water. My teams need to tell a story first and foremost.
Q. We see you entered 32 teams of those an incredible 19 cashed. You used a core group of players, do you prefer to do this rather than spread your selections wider?
A. I prefer a core of teams and players that I find interesting on a game day. In my case, it was 43 different players from 10 different teams. In the offence I had Liverpool and Manchester City and in defense Aston Villa, Chelsea, Southampton, Wolves and Manchester United.
Q. What are your thoughts on safety net and do you use this tactically?
A. I am a very big fan of the Safety Net. It allows me to set up my teams without having to sweat whether my player is playing. In a way, I also use the Safety Net tactically. I only line up players who have a Safety Net 100% of the time. All other players are not worth the risk to me.
Q. Any strategy you can give other Fanteam users for selecting their monster teams.
A. I would advise every beginner to look at the top 20 lineups from the last 20 Monster Weeks to get a feeling for how a promising team has to look like I see again and again teams where I know from the beginning that the chances of success are zero.
Q. Do you play any other sports apart from football on Fanteam?
A. I still play basketball and every now and then I try other sports like the UFC, tennis etc.
Q. Do you play fantasy sports professionally or is this just a hobby?
A. For me Daily Fantasy Sport is a hobby, with which I was very successful in the last months and hopefully will be in the future.
Q. Finally, was this your biggest win? Do you plan to do anything nice with the winnings?
A. No, I won my highest prize money last year at the SCOFF tournament, but from the prestige point of view, winning the Weekly Monster is definitely the biggest success. I will probably reinvest the money I won. How exactly, I do not know yet.
Brilliant, thank you for answering our questions, and good luck investing those winnings. We can see that there were plenty of methods behind your picks last week and it’s no surprise you are churning out positive results. We expect to see your name at the top of the leaderboard plenty more in the future.
We hope those reading this will have found that insightful and can take some of that and use it for your own selection processes.
If you have read our Newsletter you will have seen there is no Monster this weekend. The EFL Cup on Sunday has led to a reduced schedule so we have opted to have a special Saturday Main Event in its place.
The 4 games kicking off at 3pm GMT will form a Uni-6 Main Event, with all lineups known prior to the deadline it’ll be a super chance to use all your selection skills. We’ll also have showdown contests for the Friday, early Saturday, and late Saturday single matches.
The Monster will return in GW 28. Maybe you will be our next Monster interviewee!
Thanks for reading,
The Fanteam Crew
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