Daily Fantasy Football for Beginners
by Brandon of RotoPicks.com
What is Daily Fantasy Football?
Daily Fantasy Football gives fanatics the joy of draft day every week throughout the entire football season. Each week you will select a new team to compete against other players. Daily leagues take a lot of injury risk away, so you are not stuck with an injury ridden team for the whole year. League sizes can range anywhere from 2-1000 people, depending on the site. (RotoPicks.com recommends Fanduel as the best daily fantasy football site.) Most sites offer a few different types of leagues. The most common of these leagues are salary cap, snake drafts, and pick 'em. Let's take a look at each!
Salary Cap
Salary Cap Leagues give you an allotted amount of money ($50,000 at Draftkings) to spend on players to fill your roster. Player salaries are based on recent performances with a touch of player popularity. It is very important to sift through all of the players to find some undervalued talent. These undervalued players will be huge in helping you secure a win. If you can find a few good bargain players and pair them with some solid high-scoring fantasy studs, you can really create a great team. This is the strategy that should be most used. Sometimes if there aren't many good bargain players, you might have to punt a position. Punt basically means to take a really cheap player in order to make the rest of your roster solid. Play around with both of these strategies, to find the one that works for you.
Snake Drafts
A Snake Draft is a live draft in which the picks go up the draft order and then back down (serpentine) the draft order until all rosters are full. Meaning if you select last in the first round, then you would select first in the second round. Usually, there will not be more than 10 teams in a snake draft. League size determines the amount of skill used in drafting a team. If you are doing a Head to Head draft, then obviously both teams will be great. Therefore, if you think you are a good drafter with deeper fantasy football knowledge than most, you should stick to 8 or 10 man leagues to help lessen the factor of luck.
Some basic tips (See ) in a snake would be to pay attention to what positions everybody else has drafted. By doing this, you can almost predict who the other players will select. It lets you know if you can wait another round on a player you want, or if you need to go ahead and pull the trigger to obtain him. Also, pay attention to your own team. I see people talking all the time about how they accidentally selected the wrong player. Do not be one of those guys.
Pick 'Em Leagues
Pick 'Em is where the site will give you a group of certain players to choose from throughout different levels of tiers. Each Pick 'Em game consists of roughly 7 or 8 tiers, which consist of roughly 5-10 players. Each tier is grouped with players who average approximately the same points scored each week. It is impossible to tell which player from each tier will score the highest in a given week. An educated guess is the best you can do. Pay close attention to matchups. Try to narrow the field down by crossing out players that have bad matchups (going up against good defenses). I would much rather pick between 3 players as opposed to 7. Use this strategy to help you select the best team possible.
Bankroll Management
Bankroll management is key to having long term success in Daily Fantasy Football. You should never place more than 10% of your bankroll in one league. If you want to play $10 games, then you should have minimum $100 in your account. Players who fail to do this end up having to deposit more money. The reason they fail is because they do not have a large enough bankroll to support the up and down swings that are involved in playing. With proper bankroll management, good players are able to overcome bad weeks and come out on top in the long run.
Rules To Live By
1. Always know how scoring works for each site.
2. Always know the roster setup is for each site.
3. Always know which players are starting and which ones aren't.
4. Always know which players have good/bad matchups.
5. Always know how much rake each site takes.
6. Always choose players with your head not your heart.
* For a full set of daily fantasy football rules relative to Draftkings, check out Elliot's article. He does a good job of explaning things an an easy-to-read form.
Conclusion
Daily fantasy sports are on the rise. Many people are expecting daily fantasy leagues to experience something close to what online poker experienced a few years back. If this happens, the traditional fantasy sports world will be overcome by these daily leagues. Get started now, so you can feed on the fish when the boom hits!
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Draftkings - Get a special 100% signup bonus up to $600 in FREE CASH when you register through our link and use promo code ROTOPICKS. Offers salary cap leagues, 50/50 leagues, survivor leagues and more! Earn points which are redeemable for league entries and swag!
Building a Winning Salary Cap Lineup - Adam gives great advice on how to turn that empty roster into a winner using positional point targets.
1.5 Points Per $1000 Strategy - Adam shares the secret sauce that many professional fantasy football players use to help them achieve success in salary cap leagues and guaranteed prize pool tournaments.
When Do Running Backs Decline - Rob takes an in depth look at some studies of current and past players to determine that magical age when running backs become non serviceable.
What is Fantasy Football? - We explain how the game works for those of you looking to get into the action!
What are PPR Leagues? - Ray explains what point per reception leagues are and how they work.
Daily Fantasy Football Rules - If you're going to play the game, you've got to know the rules! Elliot sets you straight on everything from salary cap leagues to snake drafts to survivor tournaments.
