Contest Selection 2.24

As a prerequisite, there are two things that should be considered:

1. What is your bankroll? This can be considered for the week, or the entire season. But, as a best practice, I’d recommend you cap your weekly exposure to 10% of your full-season bankroll. For example, if you’ve got $2,500 you’re willing to put into play over the course of the NFL season, I would shoot for $150 -$250 in play each week. Any more than that, and you are at risk of going broke or having your play change to a more cautious approach/style. Playing with fear, aka not to lose, is a detrimental mindset, and will likely hinder you from a winning lineup. 
2. What is your goal for the season? Are you playing for fun? Trying to grind out a profit? Trying to hit a big score or have a life-changing win? Being honest with yourself and setting a realistic goal should determine the types of contests you enter.

Now that the prereqs are out of the way, some background . . .

I want to start by saying that DFS is hard. So much so, that a vast majority of players, (probably around 80-90%), are lifetime losers. In order to combat the turnover of players going broke, sites like FanDuel and DraftKings dedicate large advertising budgets to continue to attract new players. One of their key marketing strategies is advertising the ability to turn $20 into $1 million, with their weekly milly-maker contests. However, in order to win a tournament like the milli-maker, you have to beat a full city’s worth of entrants, hence why these types of tournaments are commonly referred to as “lottos”.

With that in mind, why make it even more difficult for yourself to be a winning player by playing poorly structured contests? When sorted by prize pool, almost all of the larger field contests on DraftKings for Week 2 have very top heavy structures, which essentially means, it will take a top 0.1%, (not 1%, but 0.1%) finish to return a strong ROI on your entry fees. My advice is to avoid these types of contests. Below I’ll outline what you should be looking for and the tournaments to consider at different buy-in levels. 

So what should we look for when choosing a contest?