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Some people play DFS for entertainment.
Some people play for profit.
And a lot of people think they are playing for profit…when they are actually playing for entertainment.
Bankroll management will be different for different personalities and player types. If you tend to be conservative with your money, you should probably lean more toward cash games than toward tourneys (with maybe something like an 80/20 bankroll split). And if you are the kind of person who is fine throwing around money and sustaining big swings, know that there are a few DFS pros who never play cash games at all. I cannot answer what “the best bankroll split” is for you, as each individual player should really assess this on their own.*
But regardless of the bankroll allocation that proves most effective for you, there are three things that hold true across all player types:
1. Cash Games (double-ups, 50/50s, H2Hs, three-man leagues, etc.) are the surest and safest way to grow bankroll.
2. Small-field tourneys, single-entry tourneys, and (if your bankroll can sustain it) high-dollar tourneys are the best way to reliably grow your bankroll through tourney play, with more ups-and-downs than cash games carry, but with more upside as well.
3. Large-field tourneys with a top-heavy payout structure (tourneys with tens of thousands of entries, and only the top few spots paying out a truly significant amount — with the DraftKings Millionaire Maker as the flagship example) should be viewed as events for the Tourists. Think of these as marketing events for the sites. View them as lottery tickets for you, the player. And consider the fact that if you lived in New York City, you might head down to Times Square a couple times a year, but that would certainly not be where you hung out all the time. The upside these events can boast absolutely make them fun — and I dedicate a small percentage of my bankroll each week toward chasing this long-odds upside. But if you are serious about making money in NFL DFS, these contests should never be the backbone of your play. It might be “slightly more boring” to pour 95% of your money each week into cash games, small-field tourneys, and single-entry events; but it’s also quite a bit more fun to make money than to lose it.
*For those curious: I tend to be somewhere in the 40/60 to 60/40 range each week in my distribution between cash games and tournaments.
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