Plus Minus
Plus/Minus is an innovative metric for evaluating daily fantasy sports performance.
To help you utilize our tools and analytics platform, we want you to fully grasp how to use our predictive Plus/Minus-based metrics.
How It Works
Plus/Minus is actual fantasy points minus expected fantasy points. That term ‘expected’ is key. It’s pivotal to fully understanding daily fantasy sports value. If Stephen Curry scores 25 fantasy points, isn’t that much different than Austin Rivers doing the same?
Player A: Stephen Curry
Expected Points
47.12
Actual Points
25
Plus/Minus
-22.12
Player B: Austin Rivers
Expected Points
14.02
Actual Points
25
Plus/Minus
+10.98
The Result
In this example, both Stephen Curry and Austin Rivers scored 25 points, yet Rivers turned in a much higher Plus/Minus. More important, that Plus/Minus is based off of actual historical salary and performance data, meaning players at different salary levels – like Curry and Rivers – can be compared on an even playing field.
How Do We Determine Expected Points?
Our salary-based expectation acts as a baseline that we can measure all players against, and do it on an even playing field. You can see why Plus/Minus – as a metric, but also as a way of thinking about how to approach DFS – is so critical.
We look at historical performance and salary data to determine how many points player should score in certain situations, so we know an $8,000 pitcher on DraftKings has an expectation of X points. If he scores 2.0 points more than that one game and 4.0 points more than it the next, he has a Plus/Minus of +3.0 for those two games.
Watch In Action
FantasyLabs co-founder and DFS pro player Jonathan Bales gives a complete overview of how the +/- metric works.
Powering Our Tools
Many of our tools and other metrics are based around Plus/Minus. Check out all of the premium tools available on our platform.
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