What is DFS?
DFS, or Daily Fantasy Sports, is a unique and exciting fantasy football format that is growing in popularity each and every year. Unlike traditional season-long formats, DFS is a weekly game. When constructing your lineup, all of the players in a given week, or on a particular slate of games, are made available to you. The catch is that each player is assigned a monetary value, with the best players like Christian McCaffrey and Lamar Jackson costing the most, and backups and role players costing the least. The goal is to create the best possible combination of players without exceeding the “salary cap.”
The DFS salary cap system allows for thousands of fantasy gamers to roster the same NFL players. Completely identical lineups can even be entered in the same contest. This is quite different from a normal snake draft in which each player can only be owned by one team, and value is extracted by acquiring breakout players in later rounds. Instead, you can gain an edge in DFS by rostering inexpensive players that post week-winning performances.
Two DFS Formats
There are two main types of DFS contests: tournaments and cash games. Each requires an entirely distinct roster-building philosophy.
Tournaments typically have thousands or tens of thousands of participants, with large payouts for lineups that finish within roughly the top 5% of scorers. In these formats, upside is king. You won’t have a chance at the top prize unless all of your players hit their ceilings. So, don’t worry about rostering guys with safe floors. Tournaments can be single-entry or multi-entry. I will touch on strategy tips and tricks for these two types of contests in a later article.
Cash games, on the other hand, are usually much smaller. These games fall into a few categories: including head-to-head, 50/50, and various “multiplier” games. Head-to-head contests pit two players against each other in a winner-take-all style faceoff. 50/50s may contain several hundred participants, with the top 50% receiving slightly less than twice their buy-in amount. The multipliers category of contests includes contests like “double ups”, “triple ups” and “quintuple ups”. These are contests in which your buy-in is multiplied as long as you finish in a certain top percentage of the contest (regardless of exact standing within that percentage).
In this way, they are very similar to 50/50s. However, in multiplier games, the higher the payout, the smaller the percentage of winning entries. In these types of “cash game” contests, there are usually fewer lineups to compete against, and you don’t need to finish in the top handful of scorers to receive the full prize. So, you should be careful rostering players with a wide range of outcomes. Online sites like 선시티카지노 will enable you to enjoy these games while conveniently organizing your budget to suit all your needs.
Falling somewhat between these two types of contests are “3-100 Player” contests. These contests are tournaments with limited entry pools and they can have varying payout structures. In these contests, you still want to pick those high ceiling players. But, because there are fewer entries to worry about than in the larger tournaments, you don’t have to be as concerned about finding that one certain sleeper who is sure to be low owned. In these smaller tournaments, you can be confident with players who have a solid floor.
Places to Play
FanDuel and DraftKings are the two best places to play DFS. On both sites, you’ll be constructing a lineup that features 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 TE, 1 FLEX, and 1 D/ST. However, there are some differences in player scoring. FanDuel awards 0.5 points per reception. DraftKings, however, gives players 1 point per reception and awards 3 bonus points for 300 passing yards, 100 rushing yards, or 100 receiving yards. Player prices also vary between the two sites, so I’ll be sure to bring you the best values from both FanDuel and DraftKings each and every week.
Why You Need to Try DFS
There has never been a better time to try DFS. Injuries? Holdouts? COVID designations? As a DFS player, nothing can phase you. Instead of rushing out to the waiver wire or frantically trading for the backups of your injured players, you can just sit back and relax while you wait for all the news to come out. You can build your lineup ten minutes before kickoff on Sunday if you want to. And, of course, the best reason to try DFS is… *drumroll please* … you can win a TON of money and have fun doing it. All it takes is the right strategy (keep an eye out for my Tips and Tricks article) and a little bit of luck.
Thanks for reading this article! Look me up on Twitter at @fantasyfreezer if you’d like to hear more from me. I love answering fantasy questions, discussing trades, and engaging in friendly debates, so be sure to drop in and say hello.
