Playoff Best Ball Sidekick Launch
It's the most wonderful time of the year: Playoff Best Ball season. The Sidekick is now live for Playoff Best Ball contests on Underdog and DraftKings.
If you just want to get started drafting as quickly as possible, follow this quick installation guide.
If you already have the Sidekick installed, it should auto-update to the current version, but you can always simply reinstall it if your extension hasn't auto-updated.
Playoffs + Pre-NFL Draft + Summer Best Ball, One Yearly Subscription
If you signed up for a yearly Sidekick subscription this past offseason... playoff best ball is included in your subscription. Likewise, if you sign up for a yearly subscription to draft playoff best ball, it will cover you for the pre-NFL draft and summer best ball periods. All three draft windows are under the same subscription.
Playoff Best Ball Sims
This year's version of the Playoff Best Ball Sidekick uses the sims you came to know and love from best ball drafts this summer.
If you are a creature of habit and still want to use the previous version of the Playoff Best Ball Sidekick, fear not. You can simply change your "Algo Type" to "Classic" by using the drop-down menu at the bottom of the Sidekick.
You should find that much when drafting with the sims this summer, you can more consistently take the top recommended player in the Sidekick (compared to the classic algo).
That's not to say you should only click the top recommended player every time, but you can do so more reliably with the sims.
As a drafter, there are a couple of ways you can add additional value when using the Sidekick:
- Reading the draft room and determining when you want to push players to try to get them to come back at your next pick
- Thinking through the combinations of two players on the turns in drafts, the Sidekick will sometimes recommend an individual player that's better in a vacuum over a player that would ultimately be part of a two-player combination that might be your best overall choice.
And if you do deviate from the top recommended player, the Sidekick knows its role: it's your Sidekick, and you call the shots.
It will help guide you down whatever path you deem fit. Some of the most fun I've had drafting with the Sidekick for playoff best ball is when I take a small detour based on a team preference or player take, then watching where the Sidekick takes me. I've built some pretty fun teams that I wouldn't have in the past without the sims.
Key Differences between the Sims and Classic
Our classic playoff best ball algo was fairly rigid when compared to the sims.
Without sims, it's hard to truly evaluate the quality of a team, so we relied on evidence-based constraints and heuristics to construct teams that we had confidence were +EV.
Sims allow us to be more flexible. With the ability to more granularly evaluate individual teams, we can adhere less strictly to some of the rules that we've followed in the past when drafting playoff best ball teams. You might notice the sims doing things like drafting a 2nd QB, taking more than two teams from one conference, or drafting roster constructions that seem unconventional.
That's the entire point of the sims, they help us find teams that we otherwise wouldn't have had the ability to identify as +EV.
New Sidekick Features and Other Notes
The Sidekick has had some minor updates since you last saw it. Here are some you might notice:
Double-clicking the Sidekick no longer minimizes it; no more behavior where the Sidekick could sometimes get stuck in a minimized state.
To reposition the Sidekick, simply click and drag the top bar of the Sidekick (between the Sidekick logo and the "On the clock" sound button).
To resize the Sidekick, hover your mouse over any edge of the Sidekick, click, and drag until it's the size that you want.
If you have any questions or need help troubleshooting, please post in the "Sidekick Support" channel in Discord. Happy drafting!
Pat Kerrane
Sackreligious
