Whether you’re new to fantasy baseball or a seasoned pro, our Fantasy Baseball 101: Strategy Tips & Advice page is for you. You can get started with our Sabermetrics Glossary or head to more advanced strategy — like The Tough Choices Required Down the Stretch to Win a Title — to learn more.
If you’re just starting out in the world of daily fantasy sports, it’s a blast. While season-long games have a great, established place in the fantasy world, DFS games have developed quite a following. One of the many reasons that daily fantasy is so great is that it allows players to have constant action. One potential downside? Well, constant money action. Without a budget, new players can lose a lot of money rather quickly.
It’s critical that new players establish an early-season budget and learn to stick to it.
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Create a Timeline
Look to the future and establish a timeline for your budget. If you’re starting at the beginning of the MLB season, the end of the season makes a logical place to end your current plans. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t continue on the same path once the established time frame is over.
Set Your Price
As is the case with any gambling, you should only risk funds you’re prepared to lose when it comes to DFS. Once again, let’s use the MLB season as a guide. In a standard year, the MLB season will last around seven months. How much money are you willing to risk and potentially lose in seven months? While that might sound a bit serious to new players, it’s the nature of the game. Without that monetary figure in mind, things can get reckless. Once you’ve found that number, you can plan the rest of your budget.
Do the Math
One profoundly effective way of sticking to a budget is to have every minor detail planned out. It’s great to have a number you’re comfortable losing over a period of time, but that alone isn’t enough. It’s time to do the math. Assume the number you are comfortable spending on DFS over the seven-month MLB season is $500. That amounts to around $2.40 daily. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to or will play every single day. Weekly, that amounts to being able to spend around $17. Establishing a weekly dollar amount that you can spend is the best and most practical way to go.
Determine Your Strategy
Are you comfortable winning some spare change to buy a beer with here and there as a recreational player? Or are you trying to go a little bigger? Determining what you’re playing for is a critical next step of your budget planning.
If you are happy joining smaller contests and lowering your winning potential, stick to only playing your weekly budget, regardless of wins or losses. Profit the previous week’s winnings and move on.
If you are trying to win bigger, add some or all of your previous week’s revenue to your future weeks’ budgets. You will still never go in the red even if you spend all of the previous weeks’ revenue. Just be aware that operating like this has a much higher chance of burning through your bankroll. Finally, never touch future weeks’ allowances, no matter what the circumstances.
Choose one of the two strategies before you start. Without choosing, you have a much higher chance of wasting your budget.
Map It Out
I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard, but you are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down. Map out your budget. Whether you actually write out your budget on a calendar or do it on some form of technology is up to you, but do it. Creating your budget is tough, but sticking to it is even harder. Mapping it out is one of the best ways to help.
Allot for Research
Lastly, it’s always a smart idea to save a little bit of your DFS budget for research. New players might find FantasyPros’ tools especially useful. Allotting anywhere from 30 to several hundred dollars for research, lineup optimizers, and other tools might very well pay off in the long run.
Go!
Once your budget has been created and you’ve mapped everything out, you’re ready to go bask in the vast world of daily fantasy sports. Go have fun!
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Alex Altmix is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Alex, check out his archive or follow him @Altmix_23.