🥶 My Dark, Twisted Fantasy Sweat

In this week's P.O. Box:

I had one of my best fantasy days ever on Sunday:

And yet I spent most of that evening sick to my stomach.

I’ll explain…

I fired off 50 $5 entries into Underdog’s massive Week 9 Battle Royale contest and had a few promising teams thanks to C.J. Stroud, Tank Dell, and Dalton Schultz going off.

Things really started to heat up in the late games after A.J. Brown scored a TD in the third quarter of the Eagles/Cowboys game. The score pushed one of my teams into 1st place and another into 4th place.

I checked my current winnings from the bathroom where I was giving April her nightly bath. It said $36,000.

Lauren said she’d tap in. The sweat was on.

All I needed to do was hold off a few similar teams who had CeeDee Lamb instead of AJB for a final quarter of action.

You can guess what happened next (I should have finished the bath):

• Lamb racked up 72 more yards over the Cowboys final few drives

• The Eagles went three and out on three straight possessions

• D’Andre Swift, who I had in the 4th place lineup, poetically collided with Brown on what would be the final offensive play of he game

I dropped to 4th and 7th place:

Despite a legitimately cool thing—2 teams in the Top 7 of a contest with 56,688 entries and a nice score—I wanted to throw up.

Instead of celebrating, all I could think about was the Eagles offense flopping in the 4th quarter, or Mike Evans falling down at the 1-inch line earlier in the afternoon.

I was grappling with the psychological effect of loss aversion in real time—the pain of watching first slip away was way more dominant than the excitement of winning $10,000.

I quickly tried to defrag my emotions…

If the order of the games had been flipped, I never would have even thought about those Eagles follies and would have been ecstatic watching my Texans double stacks charge late into the Top 10.

Instead of tilting for an entire quarter, I would have been bouncing off the walls.

And the end result would have been the exact same.

A few weeks back I wrote about tilting on your own terms.

I think I mostly accomplished that last Sunday. I knew what I was getting into when I embraced the sweat. I knew pain was a possibility when I allowed myself to get emotionally invested in an outcome that still had a ton of variables at play.

Despite that self-awareness, it still took me a couple hours to shake off the disappointment. Even with things are going exceptionally well, our dumb lizard brains find a way to ruin the enjoyment.

I tilted a bit more on my Pourtfolio Review show on Monday, but we’ve since taken a few moments to enjoy the wins and soak it up.

It’s so, so hard to even land a single team in the Top 10 of one of these massive contests, much less two.

We talked about how wild the swings are in DFS on LOLz yesterday. The odds are heavily against me ever doing it again and it’s very likely this will be my best week of the year.

So instead of tilting any more about what could have been, I’m just going to enjoy it. These type of days are hard to come by.

💎 Week 10 Hidden Gems for Battle Royale & DFS. Wrote about two games I’m specifically attacking in Underdog Drafts this week:

☕️ 2 Top 10 Battle Royale Finishes (Week 9 DFS Recap). In addition to reviewing my Battle Royale sweats on this week's Pourtfolio Review, we also look at my lineups on DraftKings and Youdacao’s insane Milly Maker-winning team, as well as check in on my Best Ball Mania IV squads.

🏆️ Fantasy Life roundup. Recapped the wild Joshua Dobbs story, got hyped abbout Kyler Murray’s return, and previewed the four Week 10 games with shootout potential.

☣️ The Guy Who Won $3M Playing DFS & Then Quit. RBX88 has over $3,000,000 in DFS winnings after winning multiple Millymakers on Draftkings. But then he stopped playing to focus on poker and other things. We catch up with him about his new career playing Pot Limit Omaha, why he hates DFS touts, and why he doesn't care about who is the DFS GOAT.

💪 Swolecast: Draftkings Week 10 picks. The preeminent first look DFS show in the industry and your go-to source for college football props.

🚢 Robert Mays Knows Ball (But The Panthers/Bears Do Not). The Ship Chasing crew hang out for the gross Bears/Panthers game with Robert Mays and sweat some pick 'em entries.

🏀 Wemby’s Fast Start & Week 10 NFL Takes. The Club talk NBA and NFL while drafting some Week 10 teams on Underdog Fantasy.

📈 Backfield Shakeups, WR Riddles & Week 10 Targets. Drico & Sack break down all of the important usage and trends from Week 9 to prepare you for Week 10 waivers, DFS builds and Underdog Fantasy drafts.

📊 Ship Chasing High Stakes Team Reviews & Week 10 Waiver Roundup. Steph recaps our high stakes teams and Keaton Mitchell mania on the waiver wire:

We got 4 shows on tap before the Week 10 main slate kicks off…

🧩 Block Party: Week 10 DFS Plays & GPP Strat w/ JMToWin

⏱️ Off & On The Clock: Week 10 Draft Party w/ Badge Bros

🥃 DFS After Dark: Interview & DFS Build w/ Tom Strachan

🤓 Week 10 DFS Cram: Top GPP Plays & Hidden Gems

This Arthur Smith shit has reached such absurd levels. It is now bordering on legitimate parody.

Here’s a round-up of his shenanigans from just this past week:

• He invents new ways not to give Bijan Robinson touches

• Seriously, the usage inside the 10 yard line is comical

• He then has the gall to say Bijan “excels away from the ball” and opens things up for other players lmao

• He then shaves his mustache, at the start of Movember, no less

• Needless to say, this video by Jake Trowbridge was a much needed palate cleanser to a week of Arthur tomfoolery:

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