Whether you’re brand new to daily fantasy sports (DFS) or an experienced gambler, you’ve come to the right place. Cash games, GPPs, bankroll, contrarian, correlation, exposure, rake, etc. If those terms make no sense to you out of context, this is the right piece for you. Learn all about daily fantasy sports and figure it all out here in DFS Primer: Myths and Truths About Daily Fantasy.
Seasonal players need to forget what they’ve learned
If you’re a season-long grinder or if you focus more on the betting side of the NFL, DFS will be a totally new game to you that involves totally new skills. The skills needed to understand a roster and what it takes over 18 weeks to build a winner are much different than the skills needed to understand who might smash over one single game. So, young Padawan, just know DFS is a game where you “must unlearn what you have learned.”
You’ve probably seen the commercials or heard the ads promising massive payouts for a small investment. And while that pitch is technically accurate, much, much more goes into the game. There are a lot of myths, conjecturing, and superlatives that surround the aura of DFS, so this piece will seek to inform you what DFS is and what DFS is not to help you better prepare for the 18-week journey of trying to build winning lineups.
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What Is DFS?
DFS is: A level playing field for fantasy
In our redraft and dynasty seasonal leagues, there are always constraints on the players we can use. Whether it’s draft position, available salary-cap dollars, FAAB, or any other number of factors, it would be impossible to roster and use every player.
DFS levels that playing field. Didn’t get Davante Adams in any seasonal leagues and want to roster him every week? Go right ahead. You weren’t sure when Justin Fields would actually start so you wanted to wait until that happened? DFS is for you. Every entry has the same players, the same salary cap, and the same matchups at their disposal. Let the best man or woman win. Whether you’re playing on DraftKings, FanDuel, or another lower-end site, it all really is the same.
DFS is not: A path to get rich quick
Depending on what type of game you play, you might, over time, have a steady ROI from your DFS bankroll. But much like playing the lotto, don’t expect to come in right away, scratch off a few lineups, and expect to win the big money these ads promise. There are DFS players who have been doing this for more than 10 years, some do it professionally, some have highly sophisticated algorithms and models that give them optimal plays. And most of the time even they don’t win the mega prizes.
There are primarily two types of games in DFS: cash games and GPPs. Cash games are usually considered so when at least one-third of the field is paid out. These have smaller consistent prizes, but a greater chance of winning. GPPs have a very top-heavy, large prize pool, but usually, less than 25% of entries end up cashing and only a very few win big money. Many DFS players will tell you that if you can manage a 10-20% ROI for an entire season, you are well ahead of the rest of the field. Temper your expectations.
DFS is: A way to get exposure to any player you want
You will often hear the term “Exposure” used around DFS games. Simply put, it means the percentage of your rosters for a particular slate of games that includes a certain player. Many players who enter only cash games use only one lineup, so their exposure is limited to just those eight players plus defense on their roster.
But those who multi-enter (play contests where you can enter anywhere between 3-150 lineups), often spread out their exposure so if a Saquon Barkley in Week 2 last year happens to one of their players, their entire cache of rosters is not completely sunk.
DFS is not: A place to just play the best players
Since DFS is always a salary cap game. It’s a balancing act of rostering which high-dollar players who will most assuredly score massive amounts of points, which lower-dollar players can have a strong point-per-dollar return, and a smattering of mid-range plays with ultra-high upside.
Take for example Week 1 salaries on DraftKings and FanDuel. Two of the most popular plays in cash games are likely to be Christian McCaffrey ($9,500 on DK, $10,400 on FD) and Marquez Callaway ($3,400 on DK, $5,200). Why is that the case? Unless McCaffrey gets hurt, the likelihood that Callaway can match McCaffrey’s production is slim. McCaffrey should absolutely smash against the Jets, and with that high salary, that’s what his managers are counting on. But as the WR1 on the Saints, Callaway’s points per dollar could easily put him as one of the top value plays on the week, even if he only scores one-third of what McCaffrey does.
One note here on Callaway and other value plays. The $1,800 difference between Callaway’s salary on the two main sites is substantial. On DraftKings where the salary cap is $50,000, Callaway uses 6.8% of that total. On FanDuel ($60,000 salary cap), it’s 8.7%. Both should still be good value plays, but Callaway’s salary makes him more valuable on paper on DraftKings in Week 1 than on FanDuel.
DFS is: A way to leverage matchups, usage, and context
One great thing about football is how unpredictable the games can be and often are. This is something smart DFS players use to their advantage. Just because Vegas says a game has a high 52.5 implied total doesn’t necessarily mean that many points will be scored. Likewise, a game with only a 44.5 over/under could easily crush the over and many will have avoided it because of the low total.
Novice DFS players often use numbers like over/unders and median player projections as gospel and let it drive their decisions. If you feel strongly about a certain game script, or a series or players and their role within a game, feel free to use that in your roster building.
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DFS is not: The place to get cute with low-rostered players
If you play large tournaments, GPPs, or any contest with high multi-entry, you will run into what’s known as the contrarian strategy. Put simply, it’s the thought of avoiding the most popular plays and using players with much lower roster percentages, hoping to gain a massive edge on the field if the chalky plays bust. Research has shown that many large field tournament winners often have multiple players who were less than 5% rostered.
But this is not a license to get too cute. Back to Callaway for a moment. He is a strong value play at $3,400, but it is certainly not a lock that he scores 12+ DraftKings points. Let’s say you want to pivot off of him and you land on Byron Pringle for $100 less, thinking he will be much less rostered and is on the Chiefs! He will certainly be less rostered, but it’s because of his context. Pringle is likely the sixth receiving option, at best, for the Chiefs. Callaway will likely have the second-highest target share for New Orleans and doesn’t play the tough Browns defense. Simply put – way more players are going to be in on Callaway than Pringle, see that 5% rostered stat mentioned above.
A more optimal strategy might be to pay up for a wide receiver, like an under-rostered DK Metcalf for $7,500, and pay down at one of your running back spots. This differentiates your lineup without sacrificing a slot to someone who will only marginally be involved in the game-plan.
DFS is: A place to stack one game
Studies of the top-ten finishers in million-dollar prize contests prove one thing over and over again: winning lineups always stack multiple players from the same game. This particular study found that 93% of the 170 top-10 lineups in DraftKings millionaire contests used some kind of game or team stack.
What is a game stack? It’s often a derivative of how you prescribe the game script will go. Let’s say you think the Minnesota Vikings will handle the Bengals quite easily this week. You might think one way that is likely to happen is through a Dalvin Cook monster game. On the other side of that game, the Bengals would need to be in catch-up mode, meaning a lot of throws for Joe Burrow. If you think Tee Higgins will receive the bulk of the target share, then you have your game stack: Cook-Burrow-Higgins. You could throw in Justin Jefferson if you think an onslaught through the air is likely as well.
An example of a contrarian stack in this game could be Joe Mixon–Kirk Cousins–Adam Thielen, for example. That will be a stack not often rostered.
DFS is not: A place to just enter random contests
Over the past 3-4 years, DFS conversation has centered much more around contest selection and how valuable that process can be to helping you strategize your builds. There will be plenty of people who will build one lineup and will just go down the FanDuel list of main slate NFL contests and enter it into each one, particularly in this first NFL week. That is not an optimal strategy.
There are different kinds of roster builds needed for cash games, 3-entry contests, large GPPs, quadruple-ups, etc. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received in DFS was to find your contest wheelhouse. Is it cash games on the main slate? Great, start entering. Is it 3-entry tournaments in the late afternoon slate? There is an edge to be had there. Do you have the stomach and bankroll to max-enter the biggest tournaments? That’s a whole different strategy.
If you are new to DFS, dabble a bit and see what seems to match your combination of analytic skill, bankroll, and, most importantly, time. There just isn’t enough time to enter and build lineups for every contest so focus on where you will find your edge.
We’re Here to Help You Win
Each week this season, this column will attempt to provide you with the best options for games, or team stacks, looking at both expensive and value options for roster construction. It will never be a definitive or exhaustive list of the “good” plays, but will hopefully be a data-driven look at the main slate. It also will not be able to judge your own risk tolerance for a certain game or particular player, so take it all with a grain of salt.
Here at The FF Faceoff, winning matters. We aren’t here for the drama or popularity contests. We’re here to help you win. So this will hopefully be one more tool in your belt to help you build winning lineups. Feel free to reach out in the comments or on Twitter (@kirkseysports) if you have any DFS-related questions.
Good luck in daily fantasy this season!
