The Daily Grind: Week 5 Edition

Photo: USA Today Sports

Welcome to the 2016 version of The Daily Grind, a look at Daily Fantasy Football from several vantage points.  Together we will look at many different topics this season – from managing expectations and bankroll to what Footballguys has in store for 2016 and how to best use what this site has to offer to maximize both your enjoyment and your bankroll by Super Bowl LI.  So let’s jump right in with some thoughts on both expectations for playing this year and also a first take at a guided tour for Footballguys’ DFS coverage this season: 

Game Selection

Daily fantasy sports contests offer players a means of entertainment and fun with the possibility of not just recouping your money, but also to make a profit by playing in contests.  Hopefully, by building strong lineups and choosing the correct games to play, a DFS player can enjoy all three aspects of DFS each week.  Sometimes the enjoyable aspects of DFS, along with the hopes of “striking it big”, can get in the way of growing your bankroll effectively.  Solely targeting big contests in the hopes of a big, big payday each week and not playing in other games can cost you in the long run. 

Contests hold back a certain amount of all entry fees to pay for costs and try to turn a profit.  This number, often referred to as “rake”, used to be typically 10%, meaning that when you played a head-to-head contest against someone for a $5 entry fee each, the winner would get $9 and the site would keep $1, or 10% to pay for costs and try and turn a profit.  The 10% number varied a few percentage points, but is rather typical in cash and head-to-head contests across all sites. 

Tournaments are completely different animals when it comes to DFS.  The amount paid back to players can vary greatly, to over 100% (if the contest is not filled, or in an “overlay” condition) to somewhere in the 80-90% range.  The 90% number would make a given tournament rake 10%, comparable to cash and head-to-head games, but usually the rake is higher.  Recently, FanDuel has increased their rake in the biggest contest each week - the Sunday Million - to 15%, and also changed their payout structure.  More entrants do cash now with 25% of entrants getting something back, but a minimum cash now is just $40 o a $25 entry, which is only 1.6 times the entry fee.  To be fair to FanDuel and compare this to DraftKings’ Fantasy Football Millionaire, their minimum cash number is just $30 on a $20 entry fee, or 1.5 times. 

As a DFS player, we have to respect that each site is a business and has to make money somehow to keep operating.  Costs for all DFS sites have increased due to legal fees and registrations with some states, so it should not come as any surprise that DFS has seen the amount held back by each site within a contest increase across the industry.  If these sites do not take in enough revenue, DFS players will lose the ability to play in fantasy games like these completely.  It is important, however, to take note of both factors (payouts and rake) and to make informed decisions with our bankrolls each week.  That is what I am going to help you with today.

One of the most important parts of playing DFS is selecting the right contest.  While many DFS sites and experts talk about building a cash game lineup vs. a tournament lineup, it is just as important – possibly even more important – to know when and where to use each roster.  There are multiple ways to play DFS, but bankroll management is not just about how much money you put into play each week.  Game selection and choosing which tournaments to enter has a significant impact on your overall return on investment and growing that bankroll.

So I did some homework last week to pull all the data together.  The first thing that I decided to do was to look at the results for multiple big contests on FanDuel. (I could have used DraftKings or another DFS site as well, and may in a future article, but the general results and guidelines are similar.)   What I looked at was not just the score required to minimum cash for each contest, but also the score required in tournaments that would return several different multiples of the entry fee, anywhere from less than twice the price of playing all the way up to almost seven times the cost of entry.  Then I also looked at several multiplier contests at the same site to see what the score to hit that multiplier would be.  Gathering all those numbers resulted in this table:

Table 1:  Winning Scores and ROI for Various FanDuel Contests in Week 4

Now, interpreting those numbers can be tricky, so I decided to change the format into a better visual, and turn the numbers into one big chart:

Figure 1:  Winning Scores and Payout Rates for Various Week 4 FanDuel Contests 

For those of you reading this on a smaller device, I will help you a bit – the bottom two lines ($2 multiplier, $5 multiplier) are virtually the same, so you can pretty much read them as one line.  That line is actually the result of six different contests – the large double-up (2x), triple-up (3x) and quintuple-up (5x) tournaments for both a $2 and a $5 entry fee.  The winning scores range between 118 and 128 points. The next lowest line is the $25 double-up, which was just over 120 points for winning entries.  The rest of the chart reflects four big GPPs – the $2 Snap, the $5 Rush, the $12 Kickoff and the $25 Sunday Million contests, and the four lines on the chart wander upwards at different rates based on the lineup scores required to hit given multiples of return on the entry fee.

For me, the results were both striking and affirming at the same time.  It is clearly much easier to get 2-5 times on your bankroll in the multiplier contests than it is in these big GPPs.  Just look at the 130 scoring line and go across the chart, looking at the ROI for the entry fee.  For all four GPPs, the return ranges from twice in the $2 Snap and $5 Rush down to 1.6x in the Sunday Million and only 1.5x in the $12 Kickoff.  That same lineup and score would be successful enough for all three multiplier contests.

So what do we do now?  Here is an example of how to manage your bankroll.  If you have $25 and are deciding what contest to play, do not just build a GPP lineup and enter it in the Sunday Million and hope.  The smarter way to play would be to take that same lineup and enter it five times – twice in the $5 triple-up, and twice in the $5 quintuple-up, and finally putting that roster in the $5 Rush.  If that roster scores 130 points on Sunday, you will win $90 instead of just $40 in the Sunday Million.

But what if the roster goes crazy and you score really high?  That’s why you have it in the $5 Rush. Scoring 150 points will get you 6x your entry fee in that contest, which also happens to be a better return than the same scoring lineup in the Sunday Million (150 would only return 3x in that GPP).  Having your money spread across the multiplier contests gives you a bankroll to play again and again each week and sets a “floor” for your GPPs.  That is how you build a bankroll.

Best of luck in all of your contests this week!

A GUIDED TOUR TO FOOTBALLGUYS’ DFS 2016 COVERAGE (FINAL EDITION)

Over the past three weeks I have provided you a guided tour to all the DFS coverage Footballguys is providing this season. Here at Footballguys, we have dedicated a good amount of the staff and resources to give you the best DFS content possible, and the intent of this tour was to highlight as much of the content and how to use it as possible.  As a courtesy to you the reader each week, I will leave this placeholder so you can find the tour in the future and can find the articles and tools you use the most.  Just remember to check the week number in the link, as it will take you to Week 3 content.  

Here is the final version of the tour:

Week 3 Daily Grind DFS Tour

Good luck to you in all of your contests!

Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.

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