Daily fantasy sports is a strategy game and each game type and payout type should be approached with a strategy unique to that contest. This is rarely done, but can give users the edge they’ve been looking for. There’s a major difference in the way you should approach placing a lineup in a 50/50 payout game versus a large field, top-heavy tournament game type, that one is pretty obvious. However, what many don’t consider is that how you are approaching a game type can, and should, vary in your lineup building based on how many entries you are putting into the contest.
While we don’t need to dive into the debate of how many entries should be allowed in contests, we can have a spirited discussion of how the number of entries we are putting in should affect our lineup building. There are basically three types of players when it comes to big tournaments with massive first place prizes:
- The single bullet player
- The casual multi-entry player
- The mass multi-entry player
Each of these players needs to build their lineup in a unique way to get the most out of them, both from a return on investment perspective and an entertainment perspective, the latter often forgotten about.
Let’s break down each one individually.
The Single Lineup
First, I will say that you can have a ton of fun as a single lineup or single bullet player. Don’t let anyone convince you that you need to put in tons of entries to enjoy daily fantasy as a hobby or make some money. There are many DFS players out there, including myself, that started out playing one lineup per night on one site. The key here is extracting value out of your lineup. In this case, you are looking to give yourself the best chance to cash, rather than beat every single user. Yes, these two objectives differ greatly. Putting together the best team regardless of ownership will almost always give you the best chance to cash in a large-field game. As these tournaments have gotten bigger, more and more sub-optimal lineups are submitted due to ownership percentage and differentiation, making the “chalk” a pretty solid play for someone playing one lineup. This is why, in cases like this, you want to submit your best team and not second guess yourself. Just enjoy tracking your best lineup that night. Single-entry tournaments are great and potentially easier to “win” outright, but that’s relative. You’ll have a much easier time cashing in large-field games with one lineup.
Casual Multi-Entry
This is a nice middle-ground between the two extremes. Casual multi-entry can be a ton of fun, as you aren’t relying on just one lineup to give you the excitement and fun that everyone is looking for when they play DFS. When creating a small amount of lineups for a tournament, you’ll want to start with that team you would have used if you were only firing a single bullet. We’ll call that our “core” team. From this core, you’ll want to create 5-10 lineups from that team, making small changes to each one, maybe pairing some extra receivers and tight ends with the quarterback you are using in each one or loading up one lineup from a game you expect to be both competitive and high-scoring. Building around a core you feel good about should allow you to have at least one near-optimal team, as long as you were right about the core. This isn’t an exact science, but even as a casual multi-entrant, your goal is to cash as much as possible and grow your bankroll, so creating around your core gives you the best chance to do just that.
Mass Multi-Entry
This is where things start to get complicated. As much as people want to assume the process for this is, build a ton of lineups, enter them and profit, it simply doesn’t work that way. There is a lot of thought, complexity and risk that goes into playing a massive amount of lineups. If you use the “core” strategy from the previous paragraph, you could leave yourself way overexposed to injury or poor performance from one player, so what you want to do is limit your exposure to any one player or stack that you are overly fond of. You can do this with the eye test and building lineups manually, but it becomes a really tough task. Many mass multi-entry players use optimizers to create large amounts of lineups for them based on projections and track the number of times each player is used. If a player is used too much, they swap them out for a similarly projected and priced player for lineup diversity, which can help reduce variance. Creating an exposure cap for individual players, say 60% of lineups for my favorite players on that slate, is a great way to reduce variance in mass multi-entry and is something we use a ton at Daily Fantasy Cafe. Before just jumping head-first into mass multi-entry, you’ll want to read up more on strategy and take a real deep look at some of the top players and how they approach it. Not just their winning lineups, but also the ones that finish at the bottom of tournaments, to get a good feel for both the strategy that goes into it and the volatility that can ensue.
This piece is part of our article program that features quality content from experts exclusively at FantasyPros. Follow Scott Malewig on Twitter for more insight.
