Fantasy Sports Betting

Fantasy sports betting has actually been around for quite some time, but never in the magnitude or with the money making opportunities that it is today. Typically, fantasy sports were done in living rooms or sports bars among a few friends in a league format to make sports more entertaining to watch. Occasionally a few bucks or a few beers were bet on the leagues, but they mainly served a recreational purpose.

Today, thanks to technology and a few smart minds, fantasy sports has exploded out of our small living room gatherings and into the mainstream big time. You now have the ability to win more than just a few bucks and bragging rights. You’ve got the ability to win thousands and sometimes millions of dollars on fantasy sports all from the comfort of your own home. If you’re new to the concept or are looking to find out more about fantasy sports betting, you’ve come to the right place. We are going to systematically walk you through everything you need to know to understand fantasy sports and get started playing like a pro.

What Are Fantasy Sports?

Fantasy sports are a type of game where participants (you) create virtual teams of real players (pro athletes) from a particular sport. The participants then compete against other participants in various different formats. Points are scored, and the winner is determined based on how the participant’s virtual player selections perform in real live games.

Misconceptions

Here are a few quick misconceptions about fantasy sports that we’d like to clear up before moving forward. Misconceptions are common with new types of betting or types of betting that are growing in popularity.

Fantasy sports do not have to be the entire length of a season

Recently we have seen the introduction of daily fantasy sports that shorten the duration of the competition to one day or one week. We will go into this more in depth in the dedicated sections below.

Fantasy sports can have extremely different scoring options

There are similar tendencies for the scoring rules that people have gravitated to, but for the most part, there is a lot of flexibility when it comes to the scoring rules of fantasy sports. The consistent part of the scoring is that it is based on how the pro athletes you have selected perform in actual sports competition.

To tie all of this together and make it much more clear, we are going to show you two different examples of fantasy sports and how they are set-up. Here’s an example of how fantasy sports works in football. If you’ve ever been in a fantasy sports league with friends before, this will sound the same as it is actually the same. This specific example is about American football as it is the most popular sport for fantasy sports, but keep in mind the setup is the same for most sports.

Example One – Exclusive Private League Format

This format is what we will refer to as an “exclusive style” private league format. This format is going to be the most similar to a neighborhood fantasy football league that you may have participated in before. What we mean by this is the following:

Exclusive Style – This means that once a player is on someone’s team, no one else can draft or use that player. They are excluded once they are selected. If someone selects Tom Brady to be on their team, no one else can select Tom Brady.

Private – This format is a league between friends that you must be invited too. These are typically smaller and also have a smaller potential for big payouts unless you are playing in a huge buy-in league with a lot of risk.

League Format – This refers to the duration of the contest as well as how a participant wins. The duration in this format is usually the length of the season. In this format, a participant wins by defeating a single opponent that is pre-selected each week. The opposite of this would be an open format where the participant competes against 100% of the other participants at once and the highest score overall wins.

Example Two – Daily Fantasy Open Competition Format

Daily – The time frame of this format will usually be one day or one week of the season. It can sometimes be a little bit longer, but the point is that it is over and winners are paid out in a much shorter time frame than the league format.

Open – This format allows players to pick whoever they want to be on their fantasy team. There are restrictions we will discuss, but any participant has the ability to select any player no matter how many other participants have selected them. If everyone wants Tom Brady, everyone can have Tom Brady. There are strategy drawbacks to this we will discuss later, though. The standard format here also has all participants competing against all other participants at the same time. Highest point total wins.

You are free to select any active player that is playing that Sunday for these slots. Now, you might think that most participants are just going to pick only the best and that will be that. To combat this, each player active has a price tag on them for that week. The better the player is and the more points they’re projected to score, the higher their cost. For example, Tom Brady may cost $8500 to put on your team, while Coby Fleener might cost $2800. You are given a salary cap of $50,000 usually that you can spend however you want to fill your nine slots. You must fill all of your spots while staying within those budget constraints.

After you have your roster selected, you are locked in for the competition. There are no trades or picking up new players (unless you make a change before the games start). The virtual team with the most points at the end of the day will be the winner. Points are awarded in the same fashion as the league format. The more positive things the player does, the more points they are awarded. Ultimately, if you pick the players that perform the best for the duration of the competition, you are going to be the winner.

We will discuss how the payouts work for this format in the dedicated Daily Fantasy Sports section below.

Daily Fantasy Sports – Rules and Examples

The fastest growing sect of fantasy sports is daily fantasy sports. As we identified in the example above, these competitions are typically much shorter in length than the traditional league format and usually pit participants against all of the other participants at the same time. These competitions also normally use the open format allowing any participant to select any player they want, regardless of how many times they had been selected by other participants. For the remainder of this article, this is the format that we will focus on as it is the most popular, fastest growing, and offers the biggest and best opportunities to make money.

Rules for Picking Players

Picking players in a daily fantasy sports format are based on getting the highest performing players while still staying within your salary cap. When you enter a competition, you are given a certain amount of virtual money (known as your salary cap) that you are allowed to spend to fill your spots. For football, this is typically $50,000. This number has absolutely nothing to do with how much the entry fee for the competition is or anything like that. It is strictly play-money that everyone gets. If you play in a $1 competition, you get $50,000 to spend on players. If you play in a $1000 competition, you get $50,000 to spend on players.

You are allowed to pick any players you want to be on your team as long as you stay within the salary cap limits. You will not be able to see who everyone else is selecting until after the games begin and your picks are locked in. This is extremely important when it comes to strategy as we will discuss later. For now, just realize that you are able to pick anyone you want for that week.

Scoring Points

Points are scored based on how well the players on your team you have active do for that game. When the competition is set-up, these scoring rules will be clearly laid out as they are important for you to pay attention to when selecting your team. For example, some formats tend to give a lot more points to the things quarterbacks do. If this is the format you are playing in, you probably want to spend more money on a great quarterback and cut back in some other departments. Remember, you don’t ACTUALLY have to spend more real money. We are only referring to your virtual salary cap money that you get.

Here is an example of the scoring set up for the quarterback position on DraftKings, a popular daily fantasy sports betting website.

• Passing TD = +4 Points
• 25 Passing Yards = +1 Point (+0.04 Points per yard is awarded)
• 300+ Yard Passing Game = +3 Points
• Interception = -1 Point
• 10 Rushing Yards = +1 Point (+0.1 Point per yard is awarded)
• Rushing TD = +6 Points
• 100+ Yard Rushing Game = +3 Points

So let’s say that your quarterback throws for 250 yards, 2 passing touchdowns, 1 running touchdown off a QB sneak, and 1 interception. You would receive the following points for the QB position:

This same principle is applied to all of your nine positions, and the points are added to compute your total. The team with the most overall points is the winner and the teams below that are ranked in order of total points.

How the Betting Works

Now that we know how the teams are picked, how the points are scored, and how we win, let’s talk about how the wagering works in daily fantasy sports and how we actually make some money. In daily fantasy sports, there are two main types of competitions you can enter into – Cash Games and Tournaments.

Cash Games

Cash games are set up and scored exactly the same as we laid out in the sections above. The difference is in how they are paid out. Cash games refer to competitions known as 50/50s or head-to-head competitions. In a 50/50 league, half of the participants will win double their buy-in and the other half will win nothing.

The important part to note about this format is that nothing else matters except making it into the payout zone. It doesn’t matter how many points that takes or how well you do against the other players in the payout zone. All that matters is you finish ahead of the number of players you need to, and you will double your money. Note that the most you can make in this format is 2x your money.

Tournaments

Tournaments are also referred to sometimes as GPP format or Guaranteed Prize Pool format. In this format, team selection and scoring rules will be the same as outlined above and the same they are in the cash game format. The difference here is that you will be competing against every single player in the tournament at the same time. In this format, it does matter how many points you score and not just that you eek into a scoring zone.

Payouts for tournaments are typically done to a fixed percentage of the field, usually around 15%. The higher you finish within that 15%, the more money you receive. For example, let’s say you buy-in to a tournament, and there are 100 people. You can expect that the top 15 people will get paid something with 14th getting more than 15th and so on with 1st place getting the most money.

The reason this format is commonly referred to as GPP is that most of the online sites running these competitions will guarantee a prize pool for the competition. What does that mean? Here’s a small example. Let’s say you buy-in to a $10, $1000 guaranteed daily fantasy tournament. No matter how many people sign up, the sports book will be paying out $1000 combined minimum to the winners. This does not mean $1000 to every winner, but just a total of $1000 (maybe $800 to first, $200 to second, or something like that) If five people sign up, the total prize pool will be $1000. The sportsbook will have to add the additional $950 to the prize pool to make up for the missed guarantee. This doesn’t affect you at all except that you are now getting a lot of free money thrown into your tournament!

The sportsbook would need to get 100 entrants to meet their guarantee and not have to add any additional money. If the tournament gets more than the needed 100 entrants, the additional money just goes into the prize pool. 101 entrants would be $1010 prize pool…102 would be $1020 prize pool. The sportsbook does not cap the prize pool; they only guarantee that no matter how few entrants they get, the payouts will be of a certain size.

Benefits of Playing Daily Fantasy Sports

Shorter Season, Faster Payouts

Fantasy sports are a lot of fun, but they take a huge time commitment and require you to be attentive for the entire duration of the season. Some people are ok with this, but others prefer the freedom and flexibility to get in and be done with a competition in a day or a week. This means that if you absolutely crush it, you are able to get your winnings immediately without having to wait months on end to see if your win holds up.

Not Tied to a Failing Team

One of the worst things about season long fantasy sports is the fact that you are stuck with the team you draft from day one. If that team is terrible, you’re out of luck for the season and have to wait till next year to get a team you can actually care about. If you draft a dud of a team in daily fantasy sports, you only have to wait until the next day or the next week, and you get a brand new, fresh restart.

No Limitations on Players

One of our favorite things about daily fantasy sports is the open player selection format. There is nothing more frustrating than identifying a player that you think is going to blow up and having someone else select them before you. In this format, that will never happen to you as anyone can pick any player they want as long as they stay within their salary cap.

The Ability to Win Big

Let’s say you play in a 12 person fantasy sports league with a $20 buy-in. Typically, these leagues are going to pay out the top two or three players with first getting maybe $150? For the sake of this argument, though, let’s assume that it’s winner take all and you have the potential to win $240 on your $20 investment.

Now let’s look at that same $20 investment in a daily fantasy sports competition. Every Sunday of the NFL season they run a tournament on DraftKings where for $20 you can win $1,000,000 for first place. No, that is not a typo. You can literally win a million dollars off of a $20 bet. Is it easy? Heck no. But it’s possible if someone wins it every week of the NFL season.

Player vs. Player, Not the House

When you play roulette, you are playing against the casino, and they always have the edge. When you play any casino game, this is true. It is mathematically impossible to win in the long run against the house. What’s great about daily fantasy sports is that you are not competing against the house, but you are competing against other players. This means that there is no house advantage or edge and the winner of the competition will typically be the most skilled player. Sure, luck will come in occasionally, but in the long-run, the best will win. The sportsbooks and sites running these competitions are merely facilitating the competition. They could not care less who won. This means that it is definitely possible to be a long-term winner and crush the competition with a winning strategy.

Entertainment

This really should be number one on our list. Daily fantasy sports are just a blast. For some players, they love the research aspect leading up to the competition. They love trying to find sleepers (cheap players that will over perform) and love trying to put together the perfect lineup. For some players, they love the action of sweating the games where everything is now important. Games that never mattered before are now the biggest game of the week for them. Some players live for the bragging rights. They just want to put in that perfect lineup so they can collect their payday and talk smack to their buddies about how they are the supreme brain when it comes to their sport of choice.

The best part is that you don’t have to make a huge investment for the chance to win big. Buy-ins as low as a couple dollars can net you hundreds of thousands of dollars every weekend if you can nail the perfect lineup.

Many of the sites also offer free buy-in events for you to try it out where you can actually win real money! We’ll list some of our favorite sites at the bottom of this page with some links to get you some freebies for trying them out.

Daily Fantasy Strategy

If anyone tries to tell you there is no strategy associated with daily fantasy sports, they’re clearly clueless. Daily fantasy sports is a format of sports betting that allows you to put your knowledge and reading ability to the ultimate test and the better and sharper you are, the more money you stand to make. While a lot of the strategy for daily fantasy sports is sport dependent (football strategy for football, NASCAR strategy for NASCAR, etc.), there are a lot of tips and tricks that apply to all or most of the sports offered.

Being successful at daily fantasy sports is ultimately about getting your mind thinking the proper way and looking for the things that you need to be looking for. It’s not just about picking the best players that you think will do the best. That is what the suckers look for. Let’s get into some of these tips, and you will see what we are talking about.

Look For Value

If you just picked all of the best players in the league, you would probably get the highest score. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to do this because of your salary cap. This limits you from just picking the best of the best. So how do you go about building your lineups? Start by looking for value. Look for players that you think are going to over perform their cost.

For example, let’s say Tom Brady is $9,000 and is projected to get 25 points.

Let’s also say that Blake Bortles is $5,500 and is projected to get 20 points.

You would probably be initially tempted to take Tom Brady because he is going to score more points, but let’s take a look at this from a value perspective. The best way to do this is to look at how many points you are projected to get per $1000 of salary cap you spend.

For 9 thousand, we will get 25 points with Tom Brady. To calculate points per thousand (PPT), we will divide the points by how many thousands he costs. So, 25/9= 2.77 points per thousand. So for every thousand, we spend on Tom Brady, we should get 2.77 points.

For Blake Bortles, we will get 20 points for 5.5 thousand. So we divide 20/5.5=3.63 points per thousand. So for every thousand, we spend on Blake Bortles, we should get 3.63 points.

As you can see, Bortles is a much better bang for our buck and might be someone we should seriously consider picking up. There are other factors that go into this decision, but you can now understand what we mean by looking for value. A lot of times you will see the middle of the pack players that are way undervalued for how they are going to perform. A lot of professional daily fantasy sports bettors like to start building their lineups based off of a few key value players they see for the week.

Don’t Overspend on the Top Unless You Have To

A lot of new daily fantasy sports players have a tendency to overspend on the big names of the week. The problem with this is two-fold. First, you waste a lot of money on one player that might have a bad week and kill your entire lineup. It’s tough to put all your eggs in one basket and can really have a bad outcome. Second, it becomes an issue if you pick a player that everyone else is picking. We will go more into this below in the variance section, but keep it in the back of your mind until then.

If a player is going to have that big of a game, you are sometimes handcuffed and have to spend the money on them. This happened a few seasons ago with running back Devonte Freeman and happens with quarterbacks often. This will be completely up to you on when you should or should not pull the trigger on the big names. Some of the tips and tricks below will help make this more clear, specifically the matchups and player chasing sections.

Know the Scoring Rules

This is EXTREMELY important. It’s so important that we put the word extremely in all caps. Different tournaments and different websites will have different ways that they score competitions. You need to know this because in a lot of sports it will impact where you want to spend the most money. For example, if a competition gives six points for a passing touchdown instead of the standard four, you should definitely spend more time and effort on getting a great quarterback.

Not understanding the scoring rules can shoot yourself in the foot before you even start picking your lineup. It only takes a few minutes, and it is clearly posted on every single website. Once you read it and understand it, most sites are the same for all of their competitions unless it is clearly stated otherwise.

Understand the Format (Ceilings)

We talked earlier about the fact that there were two main types of formats – Cash Games and Tournaments. Depending on which format you are playing will depict what type of lineup you will select. If you are playing a cash game format, it does not matter if you have the top score or a middle of the pack score. All that matters is that you make it into the payout zone. This means that you are going to want to avoid the gamble players and go with the tried and true workhorses.

A gamble player is a player who has the potential to have an insanely big week but also has the potential to do absolutely nothing. These players are usually a lot cheaper but can kill your lineup if they have a bad week. In cash game format, you don’t need these players that might blow up. You just need to make a solid lineup with players that perform how they are supposed to, and you should easily slide into the money.

The common term for this potential blow up is a player’s ceiling. Their ceiling is how high they can score on their absolute best day. Gamble players are going to have a very high ceiling, but are extremely risky. Reliable players will have a much lower ceiling but are much more likely to get the job done. Bottom line in cash games is to avoid the high ceiling gamble players and stick to the reliable workhorses.

If you are playing in a tournament format, it is important how many total points you score. You will probably never have the winning lineup if you don’t include a few gamble players that have the potential to hit a huge ceiling. This is because you HAVE to have one of the top scores to make some big money. If you play a cash game style lineup in a tournament, you might make it into the payout zone but you will always be towards the bottom and only making a few bucks at most.

Make sure you know which format you are playing in and make sure that the lineup you submit takes that into account.

Look for Variance

Let’s look at an exaggerated example to make our point here. You are playing in a 10 person tournament. All 10 players select Tom Brady as their quarterback. Tom Brady scores 8 million points. Awesome, right?! Nope. It’s great that he scored that many points, but you didn’t get ahead of anyone else in the competition because everyone else also got those 8 million points. Sometimes this is ok if a player is going to score THAT many points. There are times your hand is forced, and you have to go with some popular picks. You will never know before a tournament how many people selected someone, but you can usually have a pretty good idea.

In cash game formats, variance is not very important. Just pick the best lineup that you can, and you should do just fine. In tournament format, this is extremely important. You are looking for ways to get ahead of everyone else. This becomes really tough if you all have the same players. Try and look for players that are going to have big weeks that other people might not be picking. Don’t go crazy here though and pick a lineup of only third string players. Just try and introduce a little variance where you can and don’t force it if it doesn’t fit.

Use Multiple Lineups

Having trouble picking between a few players? Not to worry. Just put in a few lineups. What is really cool about daily fantasy sports is that you have the potential to win big for a small investment. If you were to have multiple teams in a normal league, it would not be a positive expected value move. What we mean is that it wouldn’t be worth buying the extra team. If you were playing in the 12 person $20 tournament we talked about earlier where first was $150, two teams would cost you $40 for the potential to win only $150. In daily fantasy sports, though, if you put in two lineups, it would cost you $40 for the chance win $1,000,000. As you can see, it becomes a much smarter move to spend for the extra lineup if you want to in daily fantasy sports.

This is great to do in tournament format when you have a few high-ceiling players that you are having trouble picking between.

Look at Matchups

One thing that new daily fantasy sports players forget to do often is to look at who the team is playing against. For example, if you are in a football competition, just because someone is a great running back does not mean they are a great pick that week. They might be matched up against the best running defense in the league and are going to have a tough day. You can look at this the other way as well. A player who is less of a superstar might be poised to have a huge day if they are playing against a worse defense or a team with key defensive players out.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you are playing in an NFL daily fantasy sports tournament. One of the best positions to look for high ceiling/gamble players is the wide receiver position. These players have a tendency to have a mediocre/bad day or absolutely go off. We like to look at the defense they are playing against.

If their defensive line is injured or banged up, the quarterback is probably going to be passing more. If their starting safety is out or will be watching a higher profile player, they might be poised for a big day. The bottom line here is not to just look at the players, but take a look at who they have to match up against.

Also to note, some players are what we call matchup proof. These are the players that are just THAT good that it doesn’t matter how good the defense is; they are going to get the job done. Keep your eyes out for these players.

Don’t Chase Players

This is one of the biggest no-no’s that we see players do over and over again. A guy will have a huge week, and then everyone and their mother will have them in their lineup the next week. This means that the player is awful regarding variance (everyone has them) and most of the time people don’t realize the big week was due to a favorable matchup. Yes, it is important to pay attention to which players are getting hot and which are not, but make sure you don’t let it cloud your logic of what the matchup for that week or day looks like.

Injuries Go Both Ways

If you haven’t paid much attention to any of the tips yet, please pay attention to this one. Injuries are the biggest killer to a lineup and simultaneously the biggest booster to some lineups in daily fantasy sports. We want to start with a short personal story to demonstrate what we mean. This is a true story, though, we will leave names and details out to protect the ignorant.

A friend is a huge daily fantasy sports player. This friend puts $20,000-$30,000 into fantasy football lineups in every weekend. They had set all of their lineups for the Sunday games and set their alarm to get up before the games to once over everything. They overslept. No big deal, though, right? They’ve already set their lineups, and it’s not like much can change. Well, a lot did change. The running back that was their star pick in 70-80% of their lineups got injured overnight and was moved to the bench for the game. They now had 80% of their lineups running with only eight players. Safe to say, it’s impossible to win with fewer players, and they lost a lot of money that week. Had they replaced the injured player, they would have had a huge week as the rest of their lineups were great.

The moral of the story here is the first point we want to make about injuries. You HAVE to check your lineups all the way up until game time to make sure that you are not playing a player that is injured and on the bench. Once the game starts, your lineup is locked in, and you cannot make any substitutions. This doesn’t mean you’re going to have to have every different ESPN on to stay up to speed on this. Most of the sites offering daily fantasy sports will update you immediately on your lineup when a player is ruled out. They don’t always update them in time so do pay attention to the players that are questionable.

The second thing we want to point out about injuries is that they create opportunities to pick up some serious value. You need to understand how the player pricings are set or more importantly when they are set. The major sites will set their salary prices on players at the beginning of the week, and they will not be changed ever. This means that if Devonte Freeman is $8,000 and then breaks his leg on Tuesday, he will still show up as $8,000.

When a player gets injured, someone has to step up and play in their position. This backup player will have been priced at the beginning of the week at the bare minimum probably because they weren’t expected to play. This means that you can pick up a now starter for an insanely low price. Their value will be so far through the roof, it won’t be funny. Yes, a lot of other people will jump on this as well, but you would be surprised how many people don’t pay attention to these things.

Also, if a player is questionable to play throughout the week, they could be a good gamble to take depending on the circumstances (for tournament format only). The reason for this is that most people are lazy and don’t want to have to keep checking back and forth to see if the player is going to play or not. They’ll just opt to put someone else in their lineup to make things easier. If this is the case and the player plays, they may score a ton of points, and almost no one will own them. This is the ultimate variance play. Keep in mind, though, that there is a reason they are questionable. Most likely it is because they are injured or teetering on the edge of being injured which could impact their performance or playing time. The bottom line is to stay on top of injury reports and be mindful of how they might help or hurt your lineups.

Stick to Sports You Know

This is advice we always give in regards to any form of sports betting, and it continues to be true with daily fantasy sports. The key to winning here is having the edge over your opponents and being able to pick a better lineup than they do. If you are trying to select a lineup for a sport you know nothing about, you are going to make mistakes and end up making some bonehead moves that are going to cost you money. Stick to the sports that you are most comfortable with and if you need more action, learn a new sport first before you start going wild with the betting on it.

The Wrap-Up

As you can probably tell by now, fantasy sports and daily fantasy sports are an insanely fun type of sports betting that will continue to grow in popularity and influence as more and more people are introduced to it. As more people come on board, the prize pools will get bigger, and the skill level of those competing will get worse. This creates a perfect storm for you to make a lot of easy money if you can learn to craft the perfect lineups.

If you’re ready to get started with daily fantasy sports, it can be a bit of a daunting task to try and pick where you want to play or what site is the best for you. All of the sites have a lot of different pros and cons and it can get a bit overwhelming. We have gone ahead and put together a short list of our favorite and most trusted sites to get you started. These sites also have some of the best bonuses and biggest tournaments available. Take a peek at a few of these and we’re sure you will find a daily fantasy sports home that is perfect for you.