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There is absolutely no question that the biggest area of growth right now in fantasy football is with the explosion of Daily Fantasy Contests. With several top sites out there already and more entering this space each day, Footballguys is expanding the coverage in this arena to give Footballguys Insiders exclusive coverage of the latest news and information of Daily Fantasy Football.
Over the course of this football season, we will talk about numerous aspects of Daily Fantasy Football. From articles on these sites, strategies to win daily contests, bankroll (money management) strategy, different league and game types, signup and reload bonuses, players to target each week and even contests that look to be undersubscribed ("overlays"), we will cover it all. Welcome to the one-stop shop for Daily coverage.
Please note that even though the NFL has weekly Thursday games and DFS sites have contests that start on Thursdays, in general we will be looking at the majority of the contests and DFS games that do not begin until Sunday. Our weekly coverage does include Thursday DFS information if you are looking to get a jump on the DFS action for the week with the first game on Thursday.
DFS LESSON OF THE WEEK - MUlTiPLIER and LEAGUE COnTESTS
Over the past several weeks I have talked a lot about both cash games (50/50s, double-ups) and guaranteed prize pool tournaments (GPPs), but this week I wanted to talk about some of the other types of contests out there that are often overlooked and not discussed – “triple-ups”, "multipliers" and leagues. Lots of discussions and strategies focus on either cash games or tournament play, but these other contests exist and get very little coverage. This week I am going to put these games in context and hopefully give you some idea what it takes to win these types of contests as well.
First, let’s define each of these other games. “Triple-ups” (or “3x”) are similar to double-ups (“2x”) in that DFS players enter a roster in the triple-up contest and if they finish high enough in the tournament, they earn three times their entry fee. For example, a $10 Triple up contest offers a prize of $30 should you finish in the payout zone, where the math usually works out to be the Top 30% for the tournament. Also similar to double-ups (and 50/50s, for that matter) is that it does not matter if you finish first in the tournament or just within the payout zone – you get the same prize. This is where these tournaments differ from GPPs, where the higher you finish, the more you earn.
Some DFS sites offer a bit more exotic contests under the category of "multipliers", and I have seen them range from 2x, 3x, 5x and all the way up to 10x the entry fee. The theory is all the same – finish high enough in the tournament and you will get that multiple of your entry fee back (total, not in addition to – an important distinction). What is important to note is just how far up the rankings within the tournament you must finish to get into the payout zone. For these extra high multipliers (5x or more), the payout zone is about the same area as a GPP – or possibly even higher! This is where you need to pay attention and decide if the risk is worth the reward. A 5x tournament with an entry fee of $10 on FanDuel pays out the first 20 people – out of 112 entries for a fulll league. That’s about 18% of the field earning a reward. At DraftKings, a $10 10x league pays out $100 to the winners – which are the Top 3 out of 34, or less than 10%. That’s worse than a GPP. So while the allure of a bigger payday is certainly inviting, it is likely a smarter decision to play in a GPP if you are shooting for 5x or higher in rewards, because if your team is good enough to be in the Top 10-15% anyway, the prizes you earn will likely be much greater in a GPP. Conversely, if you want to play in a 5x or 10x, you might as well put that same lineup in a GPP, because if you win in a 5x or 10x league, you will also be winning in a GPP as well.
So what about the contests described as leagues? These games are typically smaller contests where only the very top finishers earn cash back from their entry fee. I have seen many different types of leagues, but some very common league structures are the “winner take all” format for 3-5 players, and also 10 or 11 person leagues where the Top 3 finishers are rewarded with winnings. Similar to a multiplier contest (3x, 5x, 10x), the prizes for leagues offer a bigger reward than a cash game but not nearly as big as a GPP tournament. The question becomes one of how good your team must be to win a league and to earn that top prize. To figure that out, we need to do some math, but don’t worry – just like a few weeks ago, I will provide a good summary to advise you how to make good decisions as to which types of leagues to enter for your confidence in your lineups.
Going back a few weeks, I broke down how you need to think about a 50/50 and a double-up tournament as a large collection of head-to-head games. By looking at it that way, you can see that you need to beat around 50-55% of the rest of the teams to finish in the money. Using statistical methods like combinatorics and permutations, you can figure out just how good of a team you must have to win a 50/50 or a double-up. That number worked out to be as low as 50.5% in a 50/50 league (meaning your team only has to beat teams slightly more than half of the time to win) to earn the prize money, but the returns on your investment are relatively small – only 1.8 times your entry fee. For a double-up, you need to win about 55% of the time, but that does give you a better return of twice the cost to play. Now we need to look at leagues and triple-ups to put these twotypes of games in similar context.
For a triple-up, you have to finish in the Top 30% of a given league. That’s a tougher hill to climb, but that’s to be expected as the prize is larger. To create a positive expectation value (+EV) where you win more than you lose on average, you need to finish in the Top 30% of a given field of entries 33.4% of the time – which equals the reward ($30) divided by the entry fee ($10). But the odds of you finishing in the Top 30% of 100 teams, for example, are not good if you only have a mediocre team – so we need to figure out once again how good of a lineup you must have to expect to finish in the Top 30%. Just like in the 50/50 problem, this is like looking at 99 head to head matchups, and trying to figure out what winning percentage would give you at least 30 wins, on average. Doing the math for you, it works out to be 68.2%.
Now let’s talk once again about the leagues. The simplest examples are 3-team and 5-team, “winner take all” leagues, where the top team walks away the prize and everyone else leaves empty-handed. For a 3-team league, the math is very simple – beat the other two teams to win the prize (usually $30 for an $11 entry). The 5-team league is not much different, except you have to beat two more teams. The bonus there is that the prize is much more (usually $50 for an $11 entry). The calculations for both contests are also relatively simple, and again you have to look at this as either two head-to-head matchups (for 3-team leagues) or four (for 5-team leagues). A coin flip win percentage just won’t do in either case, and you better win more often in the 5-team league to be successful. Once again I have done the math for you, and the 3-team league requires a 60.6% winning percentage, while the 5-team requires 68.5%. To check me, just multiply either winning percentage times itself the same number of times as the matchups – the result should be the same as the prize amount divided by the entry fee (or very, very close).
One more league type intrigued me, and that was the 10-team and 11-team format where the Top 3 teams all received prizes, although not evenly. As an example, a 10-team league that had an $11 entry fee would offer $50 to first place, $30 to second and $20 to third. Similarly, an 11-team league would offer the same prizes, but with two small differences – a larger field (11 teams instead of 10) and a slightly smaller entry fee of $10. I had two questions – what win percentage gives you a +EV, and does the difference in format really matter?
I dug into the math for both of these, and found that the 10-team league was slightly preferable with a 68.8% winning percentage (or greater) giving you a positive expected outcome. The 11-team league was only 1.6% worse with a 70.4% winning percentage needed to win, but as you can imagine, over time even a small percentage point can matter. On the surface, this makes complete sense to me, because the DFS player in the 10-team league is paying the extra $1 to reduce the number of competitors by one, and that is advantageous in the long run. It is also similar to the advantage of playing in 50/50s instead of double-ups, as you fall in the payout zone easier in a 50/50 (Top 50% instead of Top 45%). It pays to know these sorts of subtle differences.
So now we have some interesting winning percentages, but we need even more math and context to see how these stack up against the bigger multipliers and the GPPs. For the 5x league, the numbers worked out to be 68.5% required to win on average, while the 10x league required a lofty 84.7% winning percentage. Since doing the math for the big GPPs is very difficult exercise to do (especially since the payouts are not equal, and each GPP is different from the next), I have simplified the math to just determining what it would take to finish in the Top 15% and Top 20% of a 100-team tournament. Those answers should give you a relative feel of how good your team needs to be for winning something in a given GPP contest. The results are summarized in Table 1:
League Type | Payout Zone | Win % Needed to be in Payout Zone |
50/50 | Top 50% | 50.5-52.3% |
2x | Top 45% | 55.0-55.2% |
3-Team | 1st | 60.6% |
3x | Top 30% | 68.2% |
5-Team | 1st | 68.5% |
10-Team | Top 3 | 68.8% |
11-Team | Top 3 | 70.4% |
5x | Top 17.9% | 79.2% |
Top 20% GPP | Top 20% | 80.3% |
10x | Top 8.8% | 84.7% |
Top 15% GPP | Top 15% | 85.3% |
Table 1 - Required Winning Percentages for Success Contests
Table 1 summarizes the winning percentages across the range of contests, from small 50/50s (52.3%) all the way up to the Top 15% GPPs. As you can see, a 3-team league is easier to win than a triple-up, but 5x and 10x multipliers are virtually GPPs requiring lineups that would beat at least 79% of a given set of lineups in a tournament. The table gives you a quick reference point for the level of difficulty to win in each type of contest, and also the relative strength of a lineup that would be required to earn a prize in each. This is why cash games favor the more conservative lineups, while GPPs and big multiplier contests really require more risks to be taken with the players selected for the DFS entry so that higher scores can be achieved to beat a bigger majority of the competition.
Good luck this week, whatever games you play!
INDUSTRY NEWS
FanDuel Hosts the FFFC Finals in Las Vegas
The finals of the FFFC were held last week in Las Vegas, where over $7 Million was given away to 100 lucky qualifiers. First place won $2 Million, while second place still became an instant millionaire! Read all about it here.
Final Weeks for NFL Regular Season Contests
As the NFL regular season winds down, many DFS sites are still rolling with several big contests and tournaments throughout December.
Be sure to frequent your favorite sites and see what end of calendar year tournaments are on the slate for this week and for Week 16.
Also be on the lookout for NFL playoff contests as well, as many sites offer additional contests for postseason play. As long as there are at least two NFL games, there will be a DFS contest associated with those games. Ring in the New Year with some extra winnings!
We have some very exciting news to share. Starting today, Swoopt will be joining forces with leading mobile sports developer theScore.
With more than 9 million average monthly active users on its mobile platforms, theScore is one of North America’s leading providers of mobile sports experiences. And we couldn’t be more excited to join a company that shares the same mobile-first focus that we do.
What does this mean for [members]?
Swoopt will continue to operate as usual. Stay tuned - over the coming months we’ll be working on ways to make your Swoopt experience even better. Of course, if you have any questions about your account you can still contact us any time via support@swoopt.com.
In connection with the deal, we have updated our terms and conditions www.swoopt.com/#/Termsand privacy policy www.swoopt.com/#/Privacy. Continuing to use Swoopt from this point on constitutes acceptance of these.
For more details on the acquisition, you can check out theScore’s announcement here http://mobile.thescore.com/2014/12/thescore-acquires-mobile-first-daily-fantasy-sports-game-swoopt/
Many thanks for using Swoopt – and welcome to an exciting new chapter for our company and our players!
Matthew
Co-Founder/Swoopt
DAILY CONTENT AROUND FOOTBALLGUYS.COM
NFL WEEK 16
Halfway into the NFL season, and we have had some big, big contests in DFS so far - and the fun continues. Let's dig into some of the big contests out there. If there are any that I miss, please drop me an email (pasquino@footballguys.com) and I will update this article.
FANDUEL - WEEK 16 BIG CONTESTS
All of these contests can be found in the lobby at FanDuel.
In addition, here are their featured contests.
DRAFTKINGS - WEEK 16 BIG CONTESTS
Are you interested in winning $1 Million Dollars in a single week? DraftKings hopes that you are.
NFL $3.1M World Championship Main Event - This is the the big one! The $10M Fantasy Football World Championships Main Event! You could be an instant millionaire! Turn $1,500 into $1 Million and become an instant millionaire. Only 2,250 spots available and 419 spots are paid out in total. Multiple lineups per player are permitted. Good luck!
NFL $1M Chop Block Championship - Another $1M contest from DraftKings. $50 to Enter, top prize is $100,000. The top 4,600 finishers earn prizes.
NFL $400K Flea Flicker Championship - Another $400K contest from DraftKings. $5 to Enter, top prize is $50,000. The top 18,995 finishers earn prizes.
World's Biggest $109 50/50 - This 1,000-player contest boasts a $100,000 prize pool and pays out the top 400 finishing positions. All winners earn $200. Good luck!
World's Biggest $50 50/50 - This 2,224-player contest boasts a $100,080 prize pool and pays out the top 1,112 finishing positions. All winners earn $90. Good luck!
World's Biggest $20 50/50 - This 4,446-player contest boasts a $80,028 prize pool and pays out the top 2,223 finishing positions. All winners earn $36. Good luck!
World's Biggest $10 50/50 - This 11,112-player contest boasts a $100,008 prize pool and pays out the top 5,556 finishing positions. All winners earn $18. Good luck!
Future Big Contests:
Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.