Becoming a Best Ball Bro: Is There An Optimal Roster Construction?

JJ Zachariason (0:01)

So Rich, I was on vacation last week. My family went to Hilton Head, this is my wife and the kids. Really good time. And for any of you who have been to Hilton Head, or who go every year, I know there's a lot of you that probably do, there's a guy who does like children's songs in this one area, this little cove. And we went one night to kind of hang out and like sing some songs, you know, have a good time, family time. It's a very, very, you know, quintessential kind of family atmosphere. And he would have these kids go up on stage, okay, and they would sing, right? Well, during the week, I swear everyone we met was from Ohio, like someone was from Ohio, like every there was some Cincinnati connection and or Columbus or even Cleveland, but everyone seemed to be from Ohio. And my wife and I are sitting there, you know, my kids are down sort of closer to the singer and dancing around and having a good time. And this one kid goes up and when he goes up, the person's like, hey, where are you from? You know, what are you going to sing? And the kid goes, oh, I'm from Seattle. And I looked at my wife and I said, wow, it's a long way, not only is that a far, far away to get here, but they're not from Ohio. Like everyone was from Ohio. And then he goes, what are you going to sing? And the kid starts singing, he sings the Cincinnati Bengals touchdown song. I'm JJ. And last year, I tried my hardest to become a best ball bro. I drafted over 500 teams. I talked to some of the most successful best ball players in existence and I admittedly had mixed results. So this year, I'm going to chase that title once again. My plan is to max enter DraftKings millionaire maker, and I'm going to document all of it while talking to the brightest best ball minds on the planet.

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Sponsored by DK. Now back to the show. Welcome into another episode of Becoming a Best Ball Bro. I'm JJ Zachariason joined as always by Rich Ryan. Rich, what's going on buddy?

Rich Ryan (3:55)

Doing great, JJ. It's the heart of the World Series of Poker. So I've been watching a ton of that, supporting my guys over at Poker Go. $10 million up for grabs in the desert. So it'll be a fun next week and a half over there, enjoying all the poker stuff. And now digging back into the best ball streets, training camp pre-season right around the corner, man.

JJ Zachariason (4:16)

Yeah. I mean, it's July, right? I just went on my family vacation back from the vacation. I am drafting and ready to do this.

Today, we are going to talk about kind of a, like it's kind of like a midsummer update with best ball drafts and such, because, you know, we are into July now. I am now 55, maybe a little bit over 55, because I think I drafted a couple more since I pulled these numbers, but I'm 55 millionaire contests in, so I have less than 100 to go, which is kind of daunting sounding, but it's July 8th at the time of this recording. I think I'm pacing okay enough, right? I mean, if I need to really like beef it up, I'm trying to do two or three a day at this point. So I actually haven't drafted any today, but I did pull my exposure numbers, and we're going to walk through it, and I'm going to explain why I've drafted as much as I've drafted some of these guys. At least like given my experience last year in max entering this stuff and playing a high volume of best ball drafts last year, I realized this year that I didn't want to be overly cautious with my exposure stuff until maybe mid-July. I just wanted to draft who I thought was the best players in those rounds. And I do think, we'll go over the percentages, it's actually evened out. It's not that crazy. I don't have insane 45, 50, 55% exposed players, but there are some guys who I think I'm a little bit too much, I have too much exposure of and too little of that we'll talk through. So we'll go position by position today and talk through it. I would love to hear Rich's reaction to some of this stuff too, as sort of the ears, as a listener, if you will. Because I've been talking about players on the show, and we'll see how much that's matched to my actual drafting.