LINEUP GENIUS OWNER’S MANUAL
“Learning to operate a lineup optimiser is the most important skill for any DFS player looking to consistently profit. There’s no better lineup tool in the industry than the Genius, and it’s the only thing I use to generate lineups” – chriseddy999.
Build Lineups in Seconds
Crunch. Adjust. Delete. Repeat.
Creating profitable lineups in the Lineup Genius is a trial-and-error process that involves toggling the projections and fine-tuning the settings between crunches until you have your desired lineups. And just like most things in life, the best way to become familiar with the tool is by doing.
The Genius is designed for simplicity and smoothness, making it quick and easy to use. First-time users will be able to upload 100+ lineups to AFL DFS contests within minutes. Experienced users can utilise the tool’s flexibility for big edges in Australian Daily Fantasy contests.
Trial and error
→ Make a crunch and check out the Genius Results!
→ Don’t like the amount of Clayton Olivers in your lineups for that crunch?
→ Delete the crunch, adjust Oliver’s settings and repeat the process with another crunch.
→ You now find yourself with fewer Clayton Oliver’s, but decide you want more Max Gawns?
→ Repeat the process!
→ Delete your recently crunched lineups, adjust Max Gawn’s settings and crunch again.
→ Repeat this process until you’re satisfied with the lineups produced.
Crunching great lineups is an iterative process requiring constant tweaks of the settings after each crunch – your first crunch isn’t likely to resemble your desired portfolio, so read on!
PRE-CRUNCH FEATURES
Using the Max % and Projection columns
The best way to adjust your lineups is to change the Max % and Projection columns in a trial-and-error method.
If you want a player to feature in precisely 40% of lineups, enter a high projection and toggle the Max % column to 40%. It’s important to note that simply setting the Max % to 40% won’t always mean the player will feature in 40% of your lineups. However, if you give this player a high projection, the Genius prioritises this player in your lineups.
Configuring the Settings
As mentioned at the top of this page, crunching good lineups is an iterative process.
After toggling the Max % of Projection lineups to get the players Configure the settings to produce top-quality lineups.
Use the ‘Must have a minimum number of players from team ___’ feature for stacking purposes.
Use the ‘Player X can’t feature with Player Y’ feature to avoid anti-correlation in players.
Adjust the ‘#of unique players’ field to make each lineup more unique if you choose so.
1. ‘Select a Slate’ Menu
Use the drop-down to select the slate you wish to play.
2. Number of Lineups Field
Use this field to enter the number of lineups you wish to generate.
3. CRUNCH LINEUPS Button
Use this button once you’ve adjusted the settings to your liking.
4. ‘Locked Lineup’
This is where players you have locked can be seen.
Use the toggle button to rotate DPP players between positions as desired.
5. Player Search
A quick search feature to find a chosen player.
6. Advanced Settings
The engine of the Lineup Genius.
- Minimum salary cap – set a minimum salary that each of your lineups must adhere to.
- Number of unique players in each lineup – adjust this setting to make your lineups differ by 1, 2 or 3 players depending on the uniqueness desired!
- Maximum number of players from any team – defaulted to 8 in single games and 5 in multi-game slates as per Draftstars playing rules. Adjust this setting to cap any team’s maximum number of players allowed per lineup.
- Lineups must feature at least ___ and no more than ___ players from this team – a must-have feature for multi-game slates that allows DraftStuds members to set a maximum and minimum amount of players your lineups must have from a given AFL team. Ex. Set it to 3, 5 and ‘Hawthorn’ to make each of your lineups feature between 3 and 5 Hawthorn players.
- Player ___ can’t feature with player ___ – avoid playing two players in the same lineup using this tool. Use this to avoid anti-correlation among players. E.g. Think only one of Jeremy Cameron or Tom Hawkins can fire today? Use this feature to make sure they never appear together in your lineups!
7. Shortlist, Lock or Exclude Players
Shortlisting: By toggling the Shortlist only? option in the settings header, the Genius will generate lineups from a limited player pool. It will only use players you have short-listed by clicking the Star Icon.
Locking: Clicking the Lock Icon for a player means they will feature in 100% of your lineups and made to be a priority. As mentioned in 4. the player will appear visually in the locked lineup.
Excluding: Clicking the Exclude Icon on a player means they will feature in zero of your lineups.
8. Adjusting Player Exposures
Adjusting a player’s Max % column means that the player is capped to the specified percentage of generated lineups.
9. Adjusting Player Projections
Raising the Projection figure will make the given player feature in more of your lineups.
Conversely, lowering a player’s projection will see them featuring in less of your lineups.
POST-CRUNCH FEATURES
Every crunch you make will be stored in the GENIUS RESULTS section underneath the player table. You can rename each crunch and handpick the lineups you want to keep here. Do this by deselecting the lineups you don’t want and clicking the MOVE LINEUPS TO button. We suggest using the LOCKER tab as a place to store your finalised lineups, ready for battle in the Draftstars lobby.
Optimising your portfolio
– Rename tabs to suit your strategy before moving them to the locker.
– Remove undesired lineups before moving a folder to the locker.
– Use the player exposure table to check that your settings have created your desired lineups.
10. Lineup Folders Section
After you hit the CRUNCH LINEUPS button, the Genius navigates to the GENIUS RESULTS section, where you can find your lineups.
You can edit, move, and remove lineups into different tabs in this section.
The image above shows the user has segregated their lineups into 3 separate strategies: 50 ‘Melbourne Stacks’ lineups, 25 ‘Bulldogs Stacks’ lineups, 15 ‘Gawn as Ruckman’ lineups, and 10 unlabelled lineups.
The left-most section labelled LOCKER is where you can move all your final lineups, ready for export.
11. Export Lineups to CSV or Excel
Hit EXPORT to produce a CSV file to upload to the Draftstars MY TEAMS section.
12. Move Lineups Between Folders
After removing undesired lineups and creating your ideal set of folders. Use the MOVE LINEUPS TO feature to move desired lineups into the LOCKER section, ready for uploading to Draftstars.
13. Player Exposure Table
A table showing your portfolio’s player exposure for a given crunch.
14. Raw Lineups Section
Your outputted lineups – the result of your settings specified before the crunch. Here you can select or deselect lineups before moving them into your locker.
UPLOADING LINEUPS TO DRAFTSTARS
After hours of joyous crunching (or seconds!), it’s time to get those lineups uploaded to Draftstars and start competing!
First, export them to a CSV file using the EXPORT button in the GENIUS RESULTS tab.
Then, head to the Draftstars lobby and hit MY TEAMS on the left-hand side of your screen.
From here, you’ll see a green Upload CSV tab. Click on it.
Once your teams are uploaded, head to the desired Draftstars contest you wish to enter them into.
Once you’ve clicked on the contest, hit ENTER to be taken to the CREATE YOUR LINEUP view. From here, select the IMPORT button and upload as many teams as you please into the contest.
FAQs
At what stage during the week is the Lineup Genius available?
The Genius is available within 2 hours of the AFL team sheets being named for a given game.
Are the projections updated in the lead up to games?
The projections are set in stone when the Genius is released each week.
Won’t my lineups be the same as other DraftStuds members?
Very rarely. The nature of DFS means that there are trillions of combinations available, meaning it’s almost impossible to regularly share the same lineup with other contestants.
I’m crunching like a man possessed and have 20 different crunches open in the Genius at once. Will this affect my crunch speed?
It can. It’s wise to delete unwanted crunches as you go, as it limits the risk of you losing all your lineups and having to start again.
The Genius is showing a player who is named as an emergency. Why is that?
Due to the nature of late outs, we must show these players in case they are swapped into a game prior to a match. The Genius shows all emergencies for each match and projects their score to 0. Be careful not to change their projection, or they may feature in some of your lineups!
What happens if I get a bit excited and place too many constraints on the Genius?
You’ll gently be told to loosen your settings and will have another chance to crunch. Click on the floating DraftStuds trophy icon to return to the crunching screen.
I’m having trouble uploading my lineups to Draftstars. I’m getting an ‘ID error’. How do I fix this?
The most common cause for this is that your ID number is malfunctioning in the CSV Excel Sheet.
Go to the DraftStars My Teams tab again and hit the Select Competition drop-down to fix this. Find the slate you wish to enter and hit the Download CSV button.
*Click the image above to be taken to the uploading screen shown
Open the Excel sheet and copy the Batch ID figure represented in the B1 cell below (highlighted in green)
Now reopen the Excel sheet you exported from the Genius, enter the Batch ID found in the Draftstars CSV. Resave your Genius export and upload to the Draftstars My Teams tab again. This should work just fine. If problems persist, ping us on Discord and we can help you.
