Selecting LeBron James isn’t the secret to winning in DFS basketball
FantasyPros has put together a glossary of Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) terms for readers to reference. More and more players are taking part in DFS contests. We’re providing the glossary so that you can easily reference terms and strategies as you get started playing DFS. Below we’ll take a look at daily fantasy basketball 101.
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Welcome to Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) Basketball 101: FanDuel Edition. If you are new to DFS in general, or just new to DFS basketball, this column is for you. I’m going to touch on some of the basics of scoring, types of leagues you can enter, and a few strategies to help you get started. For those of you that may be coming from your season-long basketball leagues, you’ll notice a few differences in the way the scoring is done, but once you get the basics down it is the most rewarding DFS sport there is. For this article, we are going to concentrate on DFS basketball on FanDuel.
How It Works
It is pretty simple and straight forward on FanDuel. You are given a $60,000 salary to “buy” players to fill your nine positions – two point guards, two shooting guards, two small forwards, two power forwards and one center position. The “better” a player is, the higher his price will be on FanDuel. How FanDuel determines the pricing is anyone’s guess. I’m assuming it’s a complicated algorithm. Even if I knew it, I wouldn’t understand it, but how the prices are determined isn’t important. The important part is knowing how to balance your expensive players with your cheaper players to get the maximum amount of points you can.
Types of Contests
The first thing you’ll need to do before you start building a lineup is to select what type of contest you want to enter. You can sort contests by type, entry fee and the prizes awarded. Here are the different types of contests available:
League Game
These typically have a relatively small amount of teams in comparison to some of the bigger tournaments. I recommend you start here before entering some of the larger contests as they have some free leagues you can use to practice. The entry fees in leagues start at $1 and go up to amounts in the thousands. Chances are if you’re reading this you aren’t playing in those $1,000-plus entry fee leagues – at least I hope not.
50/50
These contests are another good place to start if you are just getting your feet wet. In these contests, you have a 50 percent chance to win, but the payouts are a lot less and are the same for every winning player no matter how high you finish. For example, a 50/50 contest with 100 entries, the top 50 will win a cash payout, but whether you are No. 50 or No.1 overall, you will all receive the same payout.
Head-to-Head Games
Exactly what the name implies. You play head-to-head against one other player. You score higher than him you win. Simple as that.
Multipliers
These contests used to fall under the “tournaments” section, but they have since split them into their own category. These contests simply have payouts that double, triple, quadruple or quintuple your entry fee. If you put $2 into a “double-up” multiplier, then your winning payout is $4, and for a “triple-up” it would be $6, etc. The higher the multiplier, the lower the percentage there is for winning.
Tournaments
These are your huge contests. Thousands sometimes 10s of thousands enter these contests. These are the contests in which the big money is won. Entry fees for these start at $1 and go up from there. To win these contests you typically have to finish in the top 20 percent or better, and the higher you finish, the more money you win.
Cash Game
You may also hear the terms “cash game” or “GPP” when referring to the types of contests. A cash game is another way to refer to the low-risk/low-reward game like your 50/50s and head-to-heads where you have a 50 percent chance to win. These contest will NOT run if they don’t fill to capacity.
GPP
A GPP contest is another way to refer to the large tournaments. GPP stands for “guaranteed prize pool,” meaning that even if the contest does not fill, it will still run, and the payouts remain the same, as they are “guaranteed.”
Scoring
As with all fantasy games, how your players perform in their real life games directly affects how many points your FanDuel team scores. The scoring format for FanDuel is as follow:
- 3-pt FG = 3 points
- 2-pt FG = 2 points
- FT = 1 point
- Rebound = 1.2 points
- Assist = 1.5 points
- Steal = 2 points
- Block = 2 points
- Turnover = -1 point
Strategy
There are many different types of strategies when playing DFS, but I’m only going to touch on a few basic ones here.
Punting a Positon or “Punt Play”
This refers to the practice of using one or more players in your lineup that are at or near the minimum price on FanDuel. These are typically guys that get very little playing time or seldom produce fantasy points, but for some reason or another will have an opportunity to outperform his price tag on a given night. One of the main reasons a player may become a good “punt play” would be an injury to a starting player in which the punted player may be in position to gain more playing time. Other reasons could be planned rest days for the starters or a mid-season trade in which the traded player becomes more valuable on his new team.
Studs and Duds
This refers to building a lineup in which you plug as many top-tier players into your lineup, and pair these studs with two or three punt plays. This strategy is typically used in the larger tournaments. The thought process is if your studs can just be their stud-selves, and your duds — or punts – can have career nights, then there is a good chance you are going to win a lot of money.
Building a Lineup from the Bottom Up
When I first heard this term, I thought it meant to start at the center position and build backwards to your point guard position. What it actually means is to start with your value plays, or cheaper players, and build up to your studs. This gives you a better idea of which studs you will be able to afford when you get to the last few spots of your lineup. Building from the top down sometimes leaves just plugging in players that “fit” – instead of players you like.
Other Important Factors
Back-to-Back Games
Players tend to be less effective in the second game of a back-to-back — especially the older players. Don’t overthink this when building your lineup. Top-tier players don’t normally fall into these pitfalls, as it is normally your role players you have to worry about. You also have to be careful of the “rest” factor for older players. Gregg Popovich is the pioneer of this recent trend in which coaches will rest their players in one of the back-to-back games.
Home vs. Away
Role players typically are less effective on the road than at home and, in some cases, the star players are much better at home as well.
Determining Value
The most asked question I get when telling someone how to play DFS is, “How many points do I have to score to win?” There is no easy answer to that because it varies from night to night. There is, however, a simple formula to determine if a player has “reached his value” or given a good ROI (return on investment). For a player to reach his value, he needs to score five points for every $1,000 you spend on him. If a player is $6,000 he needs to get you 30 points to reach value. If all or most of your players reach value, you will win most of you cash games (50/50s, head-to-heads), but you must have a few players exceed value to win big in the tournaments.
Conclusion
My suggestion to new players is to start small. Play in a few free leagues before jumping into the big tournaments. When you do start entering the bigger tournaments, take a look at the top four of five winning teams after the tournament is over. It will help you to build better lineups if you see what a winning lineup looks like.
Also, do your research! Don’t just plug in a bunch of household names and expect to win. There are hundreds of advice and research sites. Find one you like and use it to help you build good lineups. When I first started playing my thought process was, “I’ll just take LeBron James every night, I’m bound to win eventually,” but there are plenty of nights where rostering James is a bad idea. So do your research. Good luck in your DFS contests and I hope you have found this article helpful.
Geoff Lambert is a correspondent at FantasyPros. You can read more from Geoff by visiting his site GoingFor2.com or follow him on Twitter @GeoffLambert77.
