Throw out what you know about MLB DFS when playing InGame's new daily fantasy app

So, we've had the opportunity to work with a lot of fantastic daily fantasy sports companies since we started this company, and while many have offered newer takes on the daily fantasy sports experience, I can safely say that none is quite as innovative as our new sponsor's new app, InGame. If you haven't heard of them yet, here's the basics on how InGame contests work.

A quick note - if you sign up through our affiliate link InGame will give you $5 worth of contest entries for free - so sign up now!
Users must validate their location and identity before participating in contests.

Just like the DFS you know and love, you'll draft new players for your roster every single night. Unlike traditional DFS, you don't get a certain number of points based on how your players perform. Just like in real baseball, you don't get points if your guy draws a walk. You get points when your players score runs. InGame simulates this experience flawlessly, allowing you to look at a box score in the same way that you would if you had an ESPN box score on your phone while you watched another game on your TV.

When you use InGame, you'll be fed a stream of players who were about to take their next plate appearance, and then you make the call: among all the players available, who will step up to the plate for your team? All of this happens in real time, so you'll have perfect information as to whether a guy is injured, what the weather is like in his game, and who exactly is on the mound.

There are no salary caps, no cheesy extra points for arbitrary outcomes - just your skill in choosing the right player for the right moment, managing your fantasy team like a real life baseball manager.

But I don't suggest just jumping into InGame blind. Unlike other versions of salary-cap daily fantasy sports games, InGame offers new strategic decisions that you probably haven't come across before. Here are 5 things you should prepare yourself for before diving into an InGame contest.

1) There are no salary caps
Some of you will read the first point as "there is no skill," but I can assure you, that isn't the case. See, the skill that's most rewarded with InGame's app is patience. You have a whole day of baseball to get your at bats in. This means you don't have to play bad players in bad spots. If you're patient enough, you can put yourself into the position where you're picking between stars rather than scrubs. Most of your opponents won't be so patient, though, so be sure to take advantage of them.

2) You can trust platoon splits a lot more.
One of the early errors in most daily fantasy baseball models I've seen is overvaluing platoon splits (we even made this mistake early on). It's an easy trap to fall into - you have a guy who has crushed right handed pitching for his career, but gotten eaten alive by lefties. So you just play him against righties and not against lefties, right? Not so fast. In regular DFS, dramatic platoon guys are the most likely to get pulled for a pinch hitter when a pitcher of similar handedness is on the mound, and even worse, they are the most likely targets for opposing teams to bring in their right or left handed specialists. With InGame, this isn't a problem. Since you're picking players for an individual plate appearance at a time, you can just take the Josh Reddicks of the world in their favorable spots, and ditch them otherwise. This allows you to get a huge advantage, even if you use star players. Bryce Harper is a different hitter against righties and lefties, so be sure to use this to your advantage.

3) Situational decision making matters
You're painting with too broad a brush if you label some players "stars" and some players "scrubs." Real life players have different skill sets, which means players of equal skill level will not always be equally useful in any given situation. If you've got a man on first with 2 outs, it makes a lot more sense to prioritize someone who can hit a home run rather than someone who generates a lot of his value via the stolen base and OBP. Likewise, if you see a lot of people in your contest got in on an early home run that you missed out on, you'll need to take risks on higher upside power guys later in your game. Either way, you'll need to become accustomed to looking at not just the player, but the situation in your game as well. Which leads me to my next point...

4) Relearn what is actually valuable for real life baseball.
Fantasy value correlates with real life player value, but there are some pretty dramatic outliers. In DFS, Billy Hamilton is a guy you'll happily roster when the price is right and he's in a good platoon spot. In real baseball (and thus in InGame), he's actually been a below replacement level player as a hitter. Since you don't get to put Billy Hamilton in as your center fielder, you can thus ignore him completely. I recommend using a stat like wOBA to determine a player's true offensive potential, and comparing that against our daily projected points to get a sense of who has a good match-up and who is hitting in a good hitters' park.

5) Let your opponents go first.
If you can at all make it possible, I like to let my opponents take their at bats before I take mine. When you can see what you need to do, you effectively become the home team. If you know you only need a single run, you can just take high OBP guys against pitchers with low strike out totals. If you know you need to put up a pile of runs, you can afford to take a few more risks. But please, don't jam Chris Davis into your squad as your leadoff man in the first inning if the other teams in your contest have struggled. Just like in real baseball, the goal is only to win the game, not to win by the biggest margin.

So that's my top 5 first impression tips from diving into the very different world of InGame. It's a fresh look at fantasy to be sure, and this also means we haven't perfected our strategies yet. We'll be holding some DFSR specific contests going forward, and we think it'd be awesome to get our heads together and figure out this brand new way of enjoying daily fantasy sports. If it fulfills the huge potential it seems to have, being good at this kind of game will be essential for any aspiring DFS pros. And in the meantime, we'll have a hell of a lot of fun trying to figure it out.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for InGame (this is a sponsored link of course) and start managing a team tonight!