What’s a salary cap game?
Salary cap is the most widely played format on ‘daily fantasy sites’ where players compete each day or week for cash prizes. In addition to the appeal of winning money for doing something you love (playing fantasy sports), salary cap games offer several advantages over traditional fantasy leagues:
- No season long commitment. Contests usually last just one day or week.
- Level playing field. There’s no draft, so everyone can pick the players they want (within the salary cap)
- Less luck involved. The short timeframe minimizes the impact of unpredictable factors like injuries.
In a salary cap game, the object is to select a team of players – within the total budget allowed – that you believe will score the most fantasy points. The best players tend to have the highest salaries, so it’s not possible to pick all the top studs for your lineup. Your team will need to include some players with low salaries that you feel will perform well. In other words, you’ll need to find undervalued players and sleepers to stay within the team’s salary cap.
What’s the best daily fantasy site?
Although there are many places to play daily and weekly salary cap games, we encourage you to stick with the most respected and well funded sites. The top 2 companies, in our opinion, are DraftKings (backed by Atlas Ventures) and FanDuel (backed by Comcast Ventures). You’ll find the most players, largest prize pools, and best games on these sites. Click on the logos to check out the sites:
Each site offers similar games but it’s important to know the differences in scoring settings and roster requirements. DraftKings goes with full PPR and also includes yardage bonuses while FanDuel uses a Half Point PPR format (0.5 points per reception) for fantasy football. In terms of roster requirements, DraftKings does not require a kicker (finally, someone realizes that kickers ruin fantasy football!). Instead, DraftKings has a FLEX position of RB, WR or TE. DraftKings offers late player swap. This is probably one of the most important features that make these sites different.
Is advice available for salary cap games?
We offer a number of tools to help give you an edge in daily fantasy competitions. As always, we focus on expert consensus advice, accuracy ratings, and automated custom analysis to help give you simple but accurate advice.
If you’re looking for a simple daily fantasy cheat sheet, check out our weekly Salary Cap Highlights. You’ll see the most undervalued players at each site and the players expected to score the most fantasy points. From this simple report, you’ll be able to narrow down your choices for who to play for the week. Here’s an example (click to view the full report):
Salary Cap Highlights Report available for DraftStreet, FanDuel, and DraftKings
Another valuable tool we provide is a weekly Salary Cap Analysis. The report analyzes our Expert Consensus Rankings against the Salary Rankings of each site. Through simple filters you’re able to see which players are the most over and undervalued for the week. We also provide projected fantasy points and cost per point to help you optimize your lineup. Here’s an example (click to view the full report):
Use our Salary Cap Analysis Report to filter and sort players to uncover the best values.
Who are the top daily fantasy experts?
As you probably know, we track the accuracy of all the top fantasy sites and experts, based on the accuracy of their fantasy rankings. Since the salary cap game requires more than an accurate set of rankings, we conduct a separate competition for the best daily fantasy experts called the FantasyPros DFAC (Daily Fantasy Accuracy Cup). Experts simply play against each other in a weekly salary cap game. We total all the points scored across the course of the season to determine who the best expert is. Check out our leaderboard for fantasy football. We encourage you to visit their sites, follow them on Twitter, and even combine the most accurate experts’ advice into a single consensus by using our daily fantasy tools.
What type of salary cap contests are there?
There are a lot of choices for games at these two sites. You can play heads up against one other player or play against a large field of players. Some contests are free to enter while others can cost hundreds of dollars. And all both sites offer games for NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and even college sports!
We’ve teamed up with DraftKings to offer a contests for our readers. The FantasyPros Start/Sit Challenge is a weekly game that lets you track your fantasy football accuracy to see how you stack up to experts and other participants. Best of all, the FantasyPros Start/Sit Challenge is completely free to play!
What do you get for playing? Our sponsor, DraftKings, is providing game credits to the most accurate participants each week. Each Week of the 2014 NFL Season, DraftKings will provide a $12 game credit to the 250 most accurate participants. So take the challenge now!
