Daily Fantasy MMA Picks for UFC 190 8/1/2015

This week we've got Rich from Win Daily Fantasy here to give you some MMA picks for tonight's events.

The Value in Going Against Rousey

Saturday night’s UFC 190 has one of the most exciting lineups MMA has seen this year. It’s also one of those rare matches where the headline match is a women’s fight. The undefeated Ronda Rousey is going up against the also undefeated Bethe Correia. While Rousey is the clear favorite going into the match, Correia has posted some great numbers in her first 9 fights. In fact, they are pretty comparable to Rousey’s, and her KO/TKO percentage is actually a little bit higher. Still, Rousey is both the fan and Vegas favorite. Daily fantasy sports leagues agree with this assessment.

When you have a fighter like this that has such a huge edge in the popular opinion, there’s often very little value in selecting them for your daily fantasy league play. In this case, Rousey is very expensive--$12,200 at DraftKings. Selecting her would have a huge impact on the rest of your card, and even if she does win convincingly, there’s a chance that it wouldn’t be enough to boost your team into the money. The only way that a fighter would ever be worth this much is if they could add 22% or more in fantasy value than an average fighter would. The math here is actually pretty simple; the average fighter costs $10,000 and $12,200 is 22% more than this. If the average points contributed is 60 per fighter, that would mean that Rousey would need to score at least 73.3 points. Her average contribution this year has been 103.1, so it seems safe to say that she has some value, even at this inflated price. If you think that she has the edge here, she is a worthy price even though it’s high.

The issue is, you need to look for average or above average in each of your other picks, too. And that can be quite difficult to do here considering many fighters on the current card do not have enough stats to be predictable. I’m thinking the Franca-Bruno, Lopes-Vieira, and Gadelha-Aguilar fights, in particular. On these, where it could realistically go either way, picking the cheaper of the two fighters has some value, but this is something that you should use your discretion on. If you do have a strong feeling about the fight, and you favor the more expensive fighter, it’s probably a good idea to skip to a more mainstream fight. Otherwise, there’s definitely some value in the underdogs.

Another approach would be to select Correia over Rousey. She’s priced at just $7,200, which would swing your average price per fighter from $9,450 if you had gone with Rousey, up to $10,700 by going with Correia. This could also be a good strategy as she has strong numbers, and a points average that’s higher than pretty much anyone else in the card other than Rousey at 79.7. The question is, will she be capable of this on Saturday? Against Ronda Rousey, that’s tough to say. It’s a risky approach, but in a big league, it could give you the edge necessary to swing the odds into your favor if she has a win, or even just a very good match. Mostly everyone will be going with Rousey in this fight, and while she has a better than 50% chance of winning, she will impact your scorecard heavily by limiting your choices. She might have an above average fight, but if you are stuck with 4 losers to try and score points with after counting this, you’re not going to win. Going with Correia is a kind of Hail Mary in this regard, and even if she loses, there’s still a chance that it will give you the extra salary to get the rest of your team to
make up for her slack. Value-wise, it just makes sense. She is valued at just 78% the worth of an average fighter, but is scoring 19 points (about 30% more) than the average fighter. There’s way more value here than with Rousey.

The trick here is to determine value, and it’s hard to say if Rousey has much because of the talent of her current competition. However, at such a cheap price, Correia definitely has the most value, and is therefore the smarter buy in this case. It’s a controversial call, but if it means scoring more points with your four remaining roster spots, then sacrificing in this small way upfront to more than make up for it later will be a beneficial trade-off for you.