DFS Process: Contest Selection & Bankroll Management
On the most recent Fantasy Footballers DFS & Betting Podcast, Betz and myself discussed all things strategy related to DFS tournaments including how to allocate your budget and which contests to select each week.
This article is meant to give you an overview of the DFS Process and some of the contests we play in on DraftKings.
Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out the 2024 Ultimate Draft Kit+ to gain access to the DFS Pass, which includes premium resources like DFS Rankings, DraftKings picks, FanDuel picks, our Optimizer and our Roster Percentage Report.
What are your goals for DFS?
We have to have some goal or idea in mind unless you enjoy lighting money on fire. This should help guide you when you log in an determine what contests to play. Developing a process and setting goals for DFS is essential for anyone who wants to be a long-term profitable player.
“I’m just here for a good time”
If you’re just here for a good time, want to throw a few darts, and enter the Milly… go for it! We’re here to ride with you. Oh, but we also might caution you might run out of money in a month.
“I want to build my bankroll and improve my process”
If you want to grind an edge for 18+ weeks and pad a bankroll, consider some smaller field GPPs & cash style contests. We think our cash process and picks in the DFS Pass (especially Saturday’s Best Plays article) can help you learn the game the right way
“I want to win a big tournament so I can quit my job!”
Yo! I mean, yeah! We’re here for that too. Although don’t quit your job just yet.
“I want all of the above please!”
Good! The best part is that you don’t have to pick and choose. This isn’t an either-or situation. Both cash and GPP can be rewarding but you get to tailor your DFS experience to what you want.
If you are like me, you live by a weekly schedule when it comes to your job, your family, and how you accomplish your goals. DFS players should be no different and the biggest curse of winning early in DFS for me was that I figured if I won then, I could do it again. Wrong! I needed a process because of the constant ups and downs you could experience while playing this format of fantasy football.
I wrote an article entitled The DFS Process: Weekly Strategy & Schedule if you need a template to follow. A lot of DFS content can work alongside your life instead of forcing you to abandon your responsibilities and family as you do endless research in the basement. For example, listening to an hour-long DFS Podcast can happen in the car or while mowing the lawn. The two weekly podcasts we put out for DFS & Betting condense so much of the preparatory work. Let us do the heavy lifting and sift through all the things you don’t need!
Allocating Your Budget
Everyone works with a different sized budget based on personal preferences, your season in life, or your risk tolerance. For the sake of this article and easy math, let’s say we are working with $100 each week. The percentages are all the same so hopefully
How much of your budget are you playing each week?
- Getting Your Feet Wet– 80% Cash / 20% GPPs
- Our Recommendation– 60-70% Cash / 30-40% GPPs
- Advanced– 50-60% Cash / 40-50% GPPs
- Professionals– <40% Cash
That may sound elementary to start with but it’s better to go in with some structure. Aimlessly throwing money and ending up on Sunday entering a bunch of contests you didn’t need to usually does not work out well.
Building a Ladder
On the podcast, I tried to give a picture for the visual learners. I started with a pyramid and decided that ladder (a metaphor others in the DFS industry have used) is probably a better way to explain things.
Why a ladder? When you are climbing (trying to win a tournament), you are really glad you have something sturdy and stable to hold onto. The bottom rungs of the ladder and base have to be there for you. We want the foundation of our weekly contests to cover what we do even if we put up a goose egg in tournaments.
If you have $100, you could construct your ladder this way:
| Contest | $ Amount |
Potential Winnings
|
| Your Choice | $10 | ? |
| GPPs | $20 | ? |
| Head to Head | $20 | x2 |
| Double-Ups | $50 | x2 |
The main idea: if you hit the cash line in Double-Ups, you cover all your bases for the week. In other words, cash can be the great equalizer and H2Hs will insulate your losses and maximize your good weeks. Obviously, you need to be better than 50% of the field but we’ve found over the years that you can be successful and let the field make mistakes.
For GPPs, 20-30% might not sound that enticing but you can find an easy blend to work with in single and 3-entry style tournaments if you are a beginner
- $3 3-Max Contest
- $10 Single Entry Contest
- $1 Single Entry Contest
- Extra $10… throw in our DFS contests for our DraftKings leagues
Obviously, you can scale these amounts in whatever fashion you want but constructing a ladder can help you when the tournament winds don’t flow in your favor.
Understanding Rake & Payout Structures
When we are discussing “rake“, we are computing the percentage of entry fees that the DFS sites keep as a fee for creating the contest. They ain’t doing this for free! The higher the rake, the less money is in the prize pool for us, the players. The equation is quite simple:
RAKE = (Total BuyIns – Total Prizes)/ (Total BuyIns)
In general, we want to stay away from contests where the rake is above 14%. Many of the contests that are front and center for DraftKings users are
For example, one of the first contests you will see when you open your app is the $500K Play-Action. At only $3 a pop, it can sound enticing and it does lure in many when they see $500K in prizes and $50K to 1st place. Breaking this down, it might be a different story…
- Total BuyIns: $3 x 198,100 entrants = $594,300.
- The Rake: ($594,300 – $500,000) / $594,000 = 15.9%
Yep, DraftKings gets to pocket over $94K in their pocket just because they can. There is nothing wrong with this but as a user, you need to be aware that the rake for a contest like this is enormous.
At the higher price points, you will find that the rake sits closer to 10%. It makes sense: casuals won’t want to play and this rewards users who foot the bill at $150 an entry.
- Total BuyIns: $150 x 740 = $111,000
- The Rake: ($111,000 – $100,000) / 111,000 = 9.9%
We should be trying to find contests with as little rake as possible but be mindful that the lower dollar entry fees generally have a higher rake.
The payout structure for contests can be a bit misleading. You (like me) probably scroll to the top to see what 1st place gets. You say to yourself, “Oh sweet, I can turn $3 into $10K… let’s do it!” However, a better way to look at this is asking the question, “how ‘top heavy’ is the payout structure”?
This refers to % of the field that gets paid but also an understanding of how the prizes are distributed. There are no real advantages versus. disadvantages but it does changes the volatility of the contest.
Sticking with the $500K Play-Action Example from abovee→ Very, very top heavy
- 24.5% of the field gets paid
- $50K to 1st (10% of prize pool
The higher price point Power Sweep is a little bit flatter
- 23.4% of the field gets paid
- $15K to 1st (15% of prize pool)
Obviously, both tournaments have their advantages and disadvantages and you might not have the bankroll to throw down $150 in a contest. As you progress as a DFS player, you want to be more selective of the contests you play in.
Cash Contests We Like
Single Entry, Large Field Double Ups ($5, $10, $25)
The larger the contest size, the better. This increases our chances of playing against opponents who will make mistakes. Avoid multi-entry double ups, especially if you’re not going to max it. The top cash players will max enter their same cash lineup, making the field more difficult. I refer to the $25 Double-Up every single week in my Cash Lineup Review article.
Create Your Own Head to Heads
If we just blindly log in to DFS sites and start entering head-to-heads, we could be going up against experienced DFS players who know what they’re doing or going up against an inexperienced rookie who’s just trying DFS for the first time. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be going up against the second player in this scenario, not the pro who knows what they’re doing.
By posting our own head-to-heads, we are more likely to get casual DFS players who are logging into their preferred site on Sunday mornings without doing as much prep throughout the week as us. You can post head-to-heads for your preferred dollar amount and then to ensure that we’re not going to go up against the same player every contest, we can limit our opponent per contest to one. By doing this, we’re able to reduce the off chance that we have an awful week and end up cashing in zero of our head-to-head contests. Essentially, it will help to reduce some variance that’s associated with pure bad luck.
Here’s how to create head-to-heads on DraftKings:
- Log into your DraftKings account
- On the top menu bar, click “Contests”
- On the right side of the screen, click “Create a Contest”
- Choose NFL and follow the on-screen prompts to select your preferred slate
- Choose “Public” and click “Head-to-Head”
- On the Details page, select your entry fee(s) and set the opponent limit to 1. NOTE: You must create more than one head-to-head in order to be able to set opponent limit.
Small Field Contests We Like
For this article, we will define large field as anything under 5,000 entrants. Betz prefers to stick closer to the 2,500-3,000 number.
NFL $10K Pylon (Single Entry) – $3
- Single entry tournament costs just $3 to enter
- Only 3,963 entrants
- Some of the best rake you will find- 8.4%
- Over 25% of the field is paid out with $1,000 as the top prize
NFL $25K Fair Catch (Single Entry) – $12
- Single entry tournament costs just $12 to enter
- Very winnable with ‘only’ 2,450 entrants.
- Some tournaments push for an 18+% rake which is high. This one comes in around 17%.
- With $5,000 up top to first, this contest has a solid payout structure and almost 23% of the field get paid.
NFL $25K Red Zone (Single Entry) – $50
- Single entry tournament costs at elevated price point
- Very winnable with ‘only’ 2,272 entrants.
- 12% rake is doable.
NFL $40K Goal Line (3 Entry Max) – $75
- This contest costs much more to enter with an entry costing $75, but the rake here is great with the rake coming in at under 14%.
- In addition, unlike the large field tournaments above, over 25% of the field gets paid.
- If you’ve got the bankroll, this check the boxes we’re looking for – lower rake and a high payout structure. It’s got $4,000 up top to first with about 600 entrants.
NFL $50K Spy (Single Entry) – $100
- Another contest for those who have the bankroll to afford it.
- This one costs $100, but given that there are only 555 entrants and an 11% rake, it’s much more user-friendly.
- Over 21% of the field gets paid, and there’s $5,000 to first place.
- There is also an even smaller field version of 334 entrants at the same price point if you’d prefer.
Large Field Contests We Like
For this article, we will define large field as anything over 5,000 entrants.
NFL $250K First Down (20 Entry Max) – $1
- $1 per entry for a $20 max
- Over 297,000 entrants with $20,000 to 1st, and 24% of the field gets paid.
- This low-stakes contest is great if you want to test out your MME skills using an optimizer.
- We generally recommend folks only enter these multi-entry contests if you can afford to max enter, and given that this only costs, it fits the bill.
NFL $30K Triple Option (3 Entry Max) – $3
- Just under 12,000 entrants and over 21% of the field gets paid.
- At $9 total to max enter, this can fit with even the smallest of budgets
- The rake is only 8.5% with $30K paid out in prizes and almost 26% of the field.
NFL $100K Engage Eight (3 Entry Max) – $8
- You can bet you will find Betz and I in this contest every single week.
- Compared to the other contests in this section, only 20% of the field gets paid but the pay structure is much more friendly.
- There’s $10K to first, $5K to second, $4K to third, $3K to fourth and $1.5K to fifth. Other tournaments are extremely top heavy with most of if not all the money to first place.
- Here we’re rewarded handsomely with a top 10 finish as each user who finishes inside the top 10 gets at least $1,000. It’s only $8 per entry for a max of $24.
NFL $100K Screen Pass (3 Entry Max) – $15
- Just under 8,000 entrants and over 21% of the field gets paid.
- At $15 per entry, it’s a nice step up for those looking to increase their entry fees as they have success.
- There’s $10K up top to first and like the Engage Eight, all users in the top 10 are taking home at least $1K.
NFL $50K Blind Side (Single Entry) – $27
- Another single entry contest with decent rake at around 16%.
- About 23% of the field gets paid, and there’s a really nice $5,000 to first place.
- Given that the field is just over 2,000 entrants, this is one for those who are overwhelmed by trying to beat almost thousands and thousands of opponents.