So last week was something, huh? A technical failure at DK early Sunday morning turned the DFS landscape as well as Twitter into a veritable crap-storm. Owners were unable to get into DK to make changes to their rosters prior to 1 PM games. Not to mention that owners weren’t able to add additional lineups and take advantage of massive overlays. Finally at nearly kickoff, most owners were able to get back into DK to make changes and add rosters, but by that point many had already pulled out all their remaining hair. Not to mention flooding the inbox at DK Support and filling the Twitter-verse with death threats and whatnot.

As the 1 PM games got underway, DK issued emails to users who had complained prior to kickoff stating that “We will refund any lineup that did not place in a prize paying position at the conclusion of the contest.” This quote quickly spread like wildfire on social media. Count me amongst the many that took this as Gospel and decided to not bother with making any late swaps to my lineup.

“Late Swaps” is a term that many people may not be familiar with. That said the most successful fantasy players take advantage of this at DK. When placing multiple entries into tournaments and cash games it is commonplace to include a couple 4 PM or SNF/MNF heavy entries amongst your initial lineups. By doing this you have the ability to make changes to your lineup after the 1 PM games are well underway and you have an idea about how your early players are performing. You also get to gauge how other teams stack up. If your early players are performing at or above what you expected then it makes sense to fill out your late game picks with steady safe players that are less risk. If your early game players are laying a stink bomb then it is time to backload your roster with homerun hitters.

So how does this work? Let’s examine last week using one of my actual rosters. My team had finished up the 1 PM games and I was far down in the standings and I felt that my players to that point had underperformed. I still had steady but not spectacular individuals like Ben Roethlisberger, Dwayne Allen and Ahmad Bradshaw scheduled to go in the late games but I wasn’t guaranteed anything. In a late swap situation I could’ve benched those three and replaced them with Zach Mettenberger, Jonas Gray, and Rob Gronkowski. Of course knowing what we do now, Bradshaw and Allen both got hurt and killed my mojo. Meanwhile, Gronk was Gronk and Gray way Superman. This doesn’t always work out but at least you can make an educated attempt at bettering your situation as the games proceed.

Now that was an example of what I would’ve done if I had been able to Sunday. Unfortunately much like the technical problems earlier in the day, the DK scorekeeping servers were in veritable meltdown mode during the early games. Individual stats weren’t updating in real-time, and even if you could figure out your score it would’ve taken a Supercomputer to calculate everyone else’s correct score. So in reality we knew how we were doing but not how we were doing relative to everyone else. Of course in lieu of that earlier tweet saying that people would be basically free-rolled for all their non-cashing rosters I didn’t even bother trying to figure things out and figured I would cash where I did and get my money back on everything else.

It was about that time that I decided to tune out to the games and spend some time with my wife. I know she was happy since typically from September through January she becomes a Sunday Football Widow (I’m only partially serious as she is a huge football fan too). I actually completely tuned out of Twitter for the day too…mainly to avoid all the venom being spewed towards DK and their tech issues. The following morning I woke up to a slew of emails in my inbox all up in arms regarding a tweet that broke Sunday late afternoon from DK where they stated that they would refund entries for anyone who emailed them before half time of the SNF game. Of course I never submitted an email to DK because I didn’t want to be another person whining about the issue and filling up their email in-box. I took their initial tweet about refunds as the final word and apparently millions of other did as well.

To be safe Monday morning I emailed DK tech support and got an immediate response questionnaire where they were going on a case-by-case basis to process their refunds. I was very pleased to see that they were still willing to accept my e-mail even though it was a full eight hours past their apparent deadline.

Tuesday I got a refund of the difference between the total cost of all of my entries for the week and my total winnings for the week. Not quite a total refund of all of my non-winning contests, but still a showing of good faith from DK. One that I am sure still cost them a pretty penny. I know several users are still not satisfied but it could have been a lot worse. I think most of us remember when FD failed, not to mention the pain suffered by many of my fellow degenerates on Black Friday.

So now I get to get off my soapbox and give you some picks for this week. Don’t be scared off by one week’s issues. I guarantee you there will be thousands of owners who will stay away from DK this week either in protest or fear and this will mean HUGE! HUGE! HUGE! OVERLAY!

Also don’t forget to check our Thehuddle.com Freeroll on FantasyScore.com. This time around you can win money without putting up a penny of your own cash. 

WIN CASH THIS WEEK WITH A SPECIAL FREEROLL FOR HUDDLE MEMBERS!