Quote:
Originally Posted by H.E. Pennypacker
Hahah, I appreciate the candor for sure, and I'm definitely not looking to be a grinder who earns a living off of it or anything, more so just looking for some basic strat/routines that will help me become somewhat competent.
Thanks!
Ok here are some general tips for a rec type player:
1. Plan out your year. Meaning figure out what sports you want to play and stick with those sports. Dont ever just throw in a lineup you made without doing any sort of research in a random sport you know nothing about. You'll get killed. Early on figure out what type of games you like to play ie classic, showdown, tiers, snake draft and then stick with that particular type of game so you can get better at it. Also, and this is very important, if you are playing multi entry tournaments, Max out whatever you enter ie single entry obviously only 1, 3 max....play 3, 20 max.....play 20. DO NOT play 150 max tournaments unless you're putting in 150 lineups. You'll be enticed to do so because those are the bigger tournaments with the big payday up top, but you'll get slaughtered thinking you can put in 1 entry and compete against the best in the world who have entered the contest 150 times. Find a contest within each sport you are playing and play the same contest every week. Dont skip around playing different contests. Starting out I'd probably recommend playing in a 3max contest. It will familiarize you with a multi entry contest and help you develop different strategies for multi entry contests, but it doesnt take forever to hand build 3 lineups compared to say a 20 max entry contest.
2. Bankroll. Figure out how much you want to play per day and/or per year and stick to the plan until you bink something significant. For instance say your bankroll for the year is $1000 and you want to play NFL and PGA. NFL reg season is 18 weeks and PGA is roughly 44 weeks so that would be 62 sessions meaning you should be playing no more than 2% of your bankroll per session and that is IMO the MAX you should be playing, especially just starting out. I'd probably recommend playing 1% of your roll per session so that would be $10. As you notice if you follow this advice there is ZERO percent chance of ruin if you play $10 per session in this scenario vs a chance you could go broke within a year playing $20 per session. That's why I recommend playing 1% of your bankroll starting out per session.
3. Optimizers. You will absolutely need to purchase some type of optimizer and with that will come player projections. Just a cost of doing the hobby. Otherwise you're just guessing. Quality varies between optimizers. Others can probably comment on this better than myself as I dont use an optimizer or projections (I give pretty sound advice but I dont follow everything I say for various reasons). I have used an optimizer like linestar briefly which i think costs like $15 a month. Also I believe rotowire has one for around the same price. The best one out there, fantasycruncher, is $30/month for their "lite" product and goes up to $150/mo for their top of the line product. If I were you, I'd just go with the $30 fantasycruncher product. Might as well use the best thing out there.
4. Contest payout structures. These vary wildly. Some contests pay an obscene % of the prizepool to 1st place. You want to avoid these contests generally speaking. I think a good gauge for a contest prize structure is finding one that pays around 10% of what the payout is for first place ie 1st pays $1000, 10th pays $100.
5. Never play cash games ie 50/50 contests or double ups. These contests prize is basically doubling your money ie 100 entries 50 people double their money. DFS has become so competitive that it's pretty pointless to play these and you're totally missing out on the upside of tournaments.
6. Withdrawals. Dont be that guy that puts money in their account, wins $10, then withdraws it all only to redeposit the following week. You're costing the company money which in turn hurts all of us in the long run with higher rake.
7. Play on Yahoo instead of Draftkings. Yahoo is really trying to attract new customers and have some great contests some without rake, some that will give you 100% of your entry fee back even if you dont cash, etc. The competition is a lot softer as well and they have beginner only contests.
8. Set realistic expectations. I dont know how smart you are or what your educational background is, but these days you are competing against some very smart people ie people that have PhDs in Math and Statistics and the like. I would say in your 1st year a good goal would be to break even. You are going to lose. A LOT! So just be prepared for that and dont get frustrated. Even the best players are pretty much looking to hit a few big tournaments a year to make their years profitable and even they lose a lot. Dont let it affect the rest of your life. Take a break if you need to (it can really get to be a grind).
That's about it off the top of my head. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.
Last edited by thedude404; 01-07-2022 at 10:09 PM.