The United States’ most popular pick’em site, PrizePicks Optimizer.
How To Use PrizePicks Profitably: Finding Value, Flex & Power Play
How to Use PrizePicks: Is it Legit?
If you’re wondering whether PrizePicks is legit, there’s a simple answer: yes. You can withdraw all the money you make on the app, which is why it’s such a popular option among DFS pick’em players.
How to Use PrizePicks: Finding Value
While there are several options at your disposal when constructing a PrizePicks lineup, the most important thing you must be able to do to play at the site profitably is to find value, more specifically, you want to find squares with positive expected value (+EV).
There are two primary ways to do this: you can use either a projection-based system to estimate +EV by projecting how much of a given stat a player will produce or a market-based system to estimate the +EV of a given square by seeing how much value you’re getting at PrizePicks relative to the rest of the market.
There’s an added wrinkle to consider here: whether a square is +EV depends on certain factors, including your lineup type and square type. For example, a Flex Friday entries) may have a different threshold for +EV.
If that sounds like a lot of math, that’s because it is — but fortunately for you, Portfolio EV’s PrizePicks Optimizer is here to help!
How to Use Portfolio EV’s PrizePicks Optimizer
When using our pick’em plays sheet and lists them in order of most to least +EV. If there’s a free or discounted square available, you’ll usually see it trading at the top of the list! Let’s look at an example entry with +EV:
This PrizePicks entry is trading with +EV because each square carries +EV, and, when combined into a five-leg flex play, we’re scoring enough value for a positive return.
Our PrizePicks Optimizer even allows you to customize your lineup along several lines.
Not only can you choose which squares to add, but you can also choose whether to use a Flex or Power entry, whether you want only plays from today or all of this week and which sports you’re looking to play.
In this case, each square has +EV because its true odds — our proprietary estimate of how likely it is that square will cash — are higher than the implied odds of the square at PrizePicks.
It’s worth noting that the edge our model finds is, well, in this screenshot, a maximum of 2.8% for oe square. While profitable over the long run, the square won’t win every time — but it should win enough for you to turn a profit.
The PrizePicks Optimizer also breaks down how much you’ll get paid after getting a given number of squares correct. A five-square entry will pay you out 10x the fee, so as long as you’re going 5-for-5 once every 10 times, you’re breaking even.
Neither you nor your lineups must go 5-for-5 for you to make money, though, which is one of the upshots of playing at PrizePicks. You’ll receive a 2x payout if you go 4-for-5 and a 0.4x payout if you go 3-for-5.
You can take advantage of free entries as well on PrizePicks; check out the guide on how to get free PrizePicks entries. Here are some other guides from Stokastic to get you going:
- What are Demons and Goblins at PrizePicks?
- How Do PrizePicks Multipliers Work?
- Is PrizePicks Gambling or DFS?
- How Often Does PrizePicks Have Promotions?
- How to Use NBA DFS Sims: Expert Strategy Guide, Tips & Advice
- How to Leverage Starting Lineups in NBA DFS
- How to Use Stokastic’s NBA DFS Data Hub to Build Great Lineups
