Yards Per Fantasy University: DFS 101

Don’t you wish that you could start that stud running back even though you weren’t able to draft him for your season long team? Do you still want to have some skin in the game when your team is decimated by injury and out of playoff contention? And how about making some money while you’re at?

That’s Daily Fantasy Sports, or DFS for short.

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DFS 101: How Does it Work?

Fundamentally, you build a lineup of players based on the teams that are playing in that game (or group of games), pay an entry fee to play that lineup and win cash prizes if your lineup scores enough points compared to everyone else. Be aware, DFS is basically gambling. You’re betting your entry fee that you can beat others in that contest and you win prizes depending on where you finish, or nothing at all if you don’t finish high enough. As a result, DFS is not available to everyone in all locations, it’s subject to local gambling laws.

There are more nuances than that though. Firstly, you have to choose which ‘slate’ you want to play in. This could be all Sunday afternoon games or it could be more specific to the Thursday Night game for example. The available players for your lineup will only be the players on those teams that are playing at those times. Secondly, you still have to build a team within the positional constraints, usually a Quarterback, two Running Backs, three Wide Receivers, a Tight End and a Flex, maybe even a Defense/Special Teams. Thirdly, you have a budget and each player has a cost. For example, the budget may be $50,000 so the costs of all your players added together has to be equal to or less than $50,000.

That’s your lineup set, then you need to enter it in to a contest to compete against others. The major DFS sites all have intuitive menus to find contests to match the slate that you’ve chosen to play in. Each one of those contests has an entry fee, and it will tell you what the prizes are, usually a sliding scale with the biggest payout to 1st place and gradually reducing to $0.

Where Can you play?

There are two major DFS sites, DraftKings and FanDuel. Each has differences including contest types, entry fees, payout structures, team budgets, player values and points scoring differences. They may also differ in terms of the locations in which you can play them. In terms of points scoring, look out for points-per-reception differences and bonus points (for over 100 yards rushing for example) in particular.

Types of Contest

Wherever you play, there are basically two types of contest, 50/50 and tournaments (also known as GPP).

In a 50/50 you just have to finish in the top half of scorers to double your money. If 100 people enter with an entry fee of $5 each, the top 50 win $10 each and the bottom 50 get nothing. With these types of contest, if you just pick the best team you can then you have a strong chance of finishing in that top half. I know that sounds obvious to ‘pick the best team’ but you’ll see the difference when we look at tournaments. The point with 50/50 is not to try to be contrarian or to find a weird combination of secondary players that you hope will hit. If you pick the best running back and the best wide receiver available then it doesn’t matter that a bunch of other people have done that to, you don’t need to beat everyone, just the bottom half.

Tournaments are different. In a tournament, the payouts are structured to more heavily reward those at the top and it’s much less than half of the field that gets double their money. Fundamentally, it’s harder to win money in a tournament but the payouts are much bigger. As a result, finding an edge over the rest of the field is important. Remember, everyone has the same players to choose from and has the same budget to use so, unlike with 50/50 contests, if 50-percent of the field choose the same best players then you’re unlikely to win.

Stacking

One of the most common phrases you’ll hear when it comes to DFS is stacking. The concept is fairly straightforward and involves drafting multiple players from the same team, most commonly a Quarterback and Wide Receivers. Stacking is a much bigger consideration in larger tournaments where you are looking for upside.

While you shouldn’t be going overboard with stacking to the point where you’re choosing worse players because of it, having some sort of stack is essential to placing in tournaments. It allows you to capitalize on an offense that accumulates a lot of yards and touchdowns while maximizing your point totals. For example, if you select DK Metcalf and he has a big game (e.g. WR1 overall), it’s almost certain that his Quarterback (Russell Wilson) also had a big game. In that case, you can boost the upside of your team by selecting Wilson, which also reduces the number of things you need to “get right” in trying to build a super team capable of winning a big tournament. In other words, if you don’t stack a Quarterback with any of your Wide Receivers then you need four separate things to go right. If you stack a Quarterback with one of them, you now only need three things to go right.

With DFS, gamescript comes in to play and you can look at ‘game stacks’. This is where you don’t just stack players on the same team but you stack them with players on the opposing team based on the gamescript. For example, if you think a Quarterback and Wide Receiver are going to hit big then their opponent is likely to be playing from behind and will need to throw more, opening up more opportunities for the receivers on that team. Another option is if you one team will be playing with a lead, you could roll out their Running Back, with the team expected to be in comeback mode’s passing game options.

In order to attack team stacks and game stacks, understanding and predicting what the gamescript is likely to be is important. The Vegas odds can help here too. If Vegas is predicting a high scoring game then, in theory, there’s more opportunities for touchdowns and points. If Vegas is predicting a low score then the touchdown scoring opportunities are reduced. We want to target those high-scoring games.

Contrarian

When you’re in those big tournaments, playing the same group of players as everyone else is not going to win you the prizes, you need to separate from the crowd. One way to do this is with some contrarian picks.

Whilst a lot of people are playing the obvious Quarterback and Wide Receiver pairing, the contrarian play might be to pick the opposition Quarterback who will have to throw to keep in the game. Maybe there’s an obvious gamescript where a running back is going to run all over the opposition, but what if that doesn’t happen and it’s the wide receivers or the tight ends that get the touchdowns in that game? That’s the contrarian pick and sometimes, that’s what can separate you to win those big prizes. Beware though, they’re contrarian for a reason and have a higher likelihood of busting!

General Roster Construction & Value

What’s the best way to split your budget to get the right roster construction? There’s no perfect answer but there are some principles to keep in mind.

This is a value game so the trick is to consider how many points you can get for your dollars. If you look at the amount of points that you need to win then you might be looking at 3x value. In other words, for every $1,000 of budget you need 3 points. With this in mind you can start to consider the value of players and whether they have the opportunity to get to those levels. If you have a running back who is $6,000 then you want them to hit 18 points – if that’s Christian McCaffrey then it’s possible but if it’s the 24th best running back against a tough run defense then it won’t pay off. You don’t need your $3,000 players to return the same values as your $6,000 players. In fact, if a $3,000 player can return 12 points (4x value) and a $6,000 player returns 18 points (3x value) then you’re better off with the $3,000 player and using the extra funds on another position that can return greater value per dollar. It’s all about value versus return.

With that in mind, particularly in tournaments, the boring floor players with a low ceiling are not what you need. You need the ceiling opportunities. Running Backs are generally considered to be the position of predictability where you can lock in the obvious volume. Wide Receivers are more volatile so you might want to save some budget on these players and shoot for the upside (look at the gamescript narratives). Tight Ends, outside someone like Travis Kelce, don’t tend to pay off consistently so you’re better off saving some money and taking a cheap play with the hope of a touchdown. Spend the money elsewhere where it’s more predictable. Same for the defense/special teams, it’s a guessing game at the best of times so save your money.

Choosing the right contest

Putting all this together, how do you know where to put your money? Well it depends on your risk appetite. If you want to shoot for the moon and risk no return then tournaments are right for you. If you want to steadily build a smaller return with lower risk, then it’s 50/50. In reality, many DFS players have a balance of the two, with a percentage of 50/50 contests to help build their funds and some tournament plays to go for the big payouts.

It’s also important to look at the balance of entry fee, payout and number of entrants. The $1 million payout tournaments look appealing but there are a LOT of other people entering and your odds of winning big are much lower than some other contests. A $100,000 top payout might seem less appealing but it may be a lower entry fee with less people entering giving you much better odds of winning.

Gambling

We cannot stress this enough. DFS is gambling and it is critical that you know your financial limits. Decide how much you’re willing to spend and stick to it, don’t chase your losses. This is still fantasy football and while winning money is an extra incentive, it’s supposed to be fun. If you spend your life savings then it’s not worth it.

If you need any help at all, there are resources available. Contact the National Problem Gambling Helpline on 1-800-522-4700 or similar resources in other countries.

Professor: Follow @MattFFBall