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FanDuel Course – Introduction

I’ve been lucky enough to have had a great deal of success in DFS over the last eight years. That success has happened at different times and on different sites: DraftKings, FanDuel, and the now-defunct FantasyDraft (RIP). DraftKings was the site for the largest score of my career ($200k in Week 17 of the 2020 NFL season), but the site where I’ve seen the highest finishes and biggest scores have been on FanDuel. Over the course of the last eight years, I have won $4,000 or more in a tournament on 14 different occasions, including qualifying for a live final in 2014. Of those finishes, six were in the five-figure range with two of them being for $40,000 or more. Mind you, I am not someone who max enters tournaments and/or uses an optimizer. I hand build all of my lineups and most of my scores are in affordable tournaments, with somewhere in the range of 12 to 30 lineups. 

Why FanDuel

The reason I am writing this course is that I believe there is a tangible edge to be had on FanDuel for those who take the time to study the site and format. My results on FanDuel over time have been pretty consistent and noteworthy, and I think there are a lot of things to explore and ways to exploit edges that I can pass on to those who purchase this course. Perhaps the biggest reason for an edge on FanDuel is exactly why I am writing this course: The overwhelming majority of content made in the DFS industry is focused on DraftKings scoring and pricing. There are a variety of reasons for this, and in my opinion, these are the main ones:

  • DraftKings has a better product and user experience on the site and this helps them retain more players of all levels.
  • DraftKings has better customer service and rewards for high-volume players. This helps them offer and fill more of the biggest prize pool tournaments.
  • DraftKings scoring (which we will get to later) has more variables, and pricing is tighter, making the higher volume players feel like they have a greater edge, particularly in cash games where many of them focus a lot of their play.
  • DraftKings has more options for tournaments with very large prize pools.
    • Heading into Week 1 of the 2022 season, DraftKings has 14 tournaments on their main slate with prize pools of $200k or more, and only three of those have entry fees over $200. 
    • Meanwhile, FanDuel only has 6 such tournaments, and three of those have entry fees over $200.
  • The highest volume players will play a lot on both sites, but the above points serve to drive many of the sharp, high-volume players who don’t have the bankrolls of the highest volume players to choose to focus on DK rather than FD.
SITE DIFFERENCES

While there is certainly some talk and focus on FanDuel across the industry, it is definitely the afterthought to DraftKings for almost all content providers. Projections are provided and adjusted for the scoring, but the deeper context of a completely different type of contest is mostly ignored. And let’s be completely clear about that – a site having different scoring settings and salary cap changes SO MUCH about the way you should approach the contests, yet most people are just making some slight adjustments and treating them the same. In my +EV primer course, one of the things I talk about is the ability to find edges against “softer” competition. There really isn’t much greater of an edge you can find in any game than having a better understanding of the rules than your competitors. The combination of a smaller percentage of total lineups in a contest coming from the “sharpest” players and the average player not fully understanding how to approach FanDuel’s specific format (and being flooded with content designed for a different format) gives us a tangible edge over time. 

The above realities, combined with some of the nuanced approaches that I will talk about throughout these lessons, are where we find our advantage. So let’s dive into this course and I will explain to you the different edges I have found playing on FanDuel and the relatively straightforward ways you can exploit them while raising your chances of winning.