Daily Fantasy: Types of cash games, lineup strategy & contest distribution

Most people begin playing Daily Fantasy Sports in hopes of earning one big win that will pay their next vacation or mortgage.

Unfortunately, that’s not a likely possibility and there’s a good chance of going bust while chasing those dreams. In this article, I’ll propose a shift in thinking that will let you chase those tourney wins while also steadily building your bankroll—all while using a method that promotes long-term success.

The odds of winning a tourney are way less than winning a 50/50 or head-to-head contest (cash games). So, while I still recommend playing tournaments, you should start allocating more of your bankroll to cash games so that you can use those winnings to help fund your GPP endeavors. You might not retire as quickly as you hoped when you started playing DFS, but I promise that if you’re disciplined about following this approach, it will help you slowly grind your way through contests.

We’ll address types of tournaments (and tourney strategy) in a future article, but for now, let’s take a look at the three types of cash games.

Cash Game Types

  • 50/50s and Double-Ups: These are pools of anywhere from 10 to 5,000 people that pay out half the field. In 50/50s, the top 50 percent receive double their entry fee minus the rake, while Double-ups pay roughly the top 40 percent twice their entry fee with no rake.
  • Multipliers: Multipliers are sort of like 50/50s and Double-Ups, except they’re shrinking your chance to win while increasing your prize potential. Multipliers give you the opportunity to triple or quintuple (or more) your entry fee (so, winning a $10 Triple Up would net you $30). The downside is the number of winners shrinks to 30 or even 10 percent of contest entrants.
  • Head-to-Head contests: Pretty self-explanatory, right? You and another DFS player square off and the highest-scoring lineup wins the pot (minus the rake). The good news is that you only have to beat one person. The bad news is that your opponent only has to beat one person too.

By playing cash games, you’re shrinking the size of opponents you have to beat, which means you can be a lot more conservative with your lineups. It’s almost the exact opposite in large tournaments, where the fields tend to be larger and you’re often rewarded for taking risks.

Cash Game Strategy

In cash games (especially 50/50s), you should aim for a balanced approach. Head-to-head is a little more volatile because you’re up against just one opponent, but the key to 50/50s is to remember that if you’re in a 100-person field, finishing 49th is just as good as finishing first. You want more of a high-floor lineup and less of a high-risk/high-upside lineup. Picking a top-flight pitcher is a great way to start building a cash game lineup as it should theoretically introduce a higher degree of safety.

While you might want to go with a Stars (Mike Trout) and Scrubs (Jace Peterson) approach in a tournament, you’ll want a more balanced lineup in 50/50s consisting of players like Neil Walker and Matt Holliday and anchored by a pitcher who you have a high degree of confidence in. It’s a little more boring, but it’s way more effective.

Contest Distribution

How should you divide your entry fees among various contest types? Here’s a general approach that I use:

graph

Next Steps

I don’t mean to discourage anyone from playing exclusively in tournaments (it’s your money, after all), but I promise this approach will keep you from re-upping your DFS account every week.

I’d recommend starting slow with a $50-100 deposit and playing some $1-$5 cash games and some $1-$5 single-entry tournaments. Play no more than 10% of your entire bankroll on any given night and stick to the strategies outlined above. You’ll be surprised how much more you’ll enjoy DFS if you were previously one of those people who only played tournaments. I hope to hear you’ve all become millionaires by the end of the season, but I promise that you can at least make sure you’re moving your bankroll in a positive direction by diversifying your contests.

Nick Raducanu is the founder of ProjectRoto.com and is a contributor to Rotoworld and the New York Times. Follow him on Twitter.