Are you someone who wants to play for fun to make the games more exciting or are you someone who wants to play every week and make a consistent profit? It’s just fine if you consider yourself one of these extremes or even somewhere in the middle. The great thing about DFS is that it plays into a lot of different demographics and can be fun for both, regardless of your goals. It is an area of fantasy football that has taken off in recent years and this trend will only continue. For everyone involved, the goal is to win contests and make money, not to make a deposit each week. The ability to remain disciplined with your bankroll management is imperative.

Bankroll

Your bankroll is essentially the money that you set aside for your DFS adventures. When that money is gone, you will be unable to place any more bets until you add additional cash. The general consensus is that you should never play more than 10-15% of your bankroll on a given week and even less than that in the first few weeks of the season. There is a lot of variance early in the season and the off-season turnover in the NFL makes each year unique. So, it’s especially important to gain a larger sample size when evaluating players and defenses to identify positive matchups in your lineups. Take this variance into account when playing DFS in the first few weeks.

Deposit Bonuses

Nearly every site out there in daily fantasy will offer a bonus for your first deposit. Often times it is a slow moving bonus that will require you to play a lot of contests to unlock in its entirety, but the bonus is a guarantee. Keep in mind most of these are percentage based from that initial deposit amount so you want to take full advantage of the offer at its cap. It goes without saying not to make an initial investment that you are not comfortable with but if you’re in this for the long run you want to maximize this first time bonus. Also, be on the lookout for “reload bonuses.” They don’t come around often but the benefits are the same as with “deposit bonuses” and should not be ignored.

Game Choice and Overlay

As noted earlier, you should play 10-15% of your bankroll every week. To take that one step further, I recommend that 80% of that amount should be invested into cash games and only 20% into tournaments. DFS players should expect to hit on their cash games (50/50’s and head-to-head’s) at least 55% of the time. Tournaments will be a much smaller percentage, as the chance of finishing in the top 10% and being paid out are significantly lower. The idea is that if you are successful enough in cash games it will offset tournament losses while keeping you in the game to hit big on a tournament at some point during the season.

My article on “Single vs. Multiple Entry Tournaments” goes into tournament selection a bit deeper. In addition, overlay is a very important issue to consider and actively pursue whenever possible. In a tournament with a guaranteed prize pool, the site is obligated to pay out the total prize amount even if the tournament does not fill. From the site’s perspective they hope the entry fees cover the prize pool but there are instances where it does not. They then have to use their own cash to cover the deficit. This deficit is called “overlay” and these tournaments represent great value for the player.

Exposure and Opponent Selection

Exposure is a big factor to consider in regards to bankroll management. The last thing you want is to place your entire bankroll into one contest or leave yourself with significant exposure to one team or player on a given week. Stacks are a great tool to use especially in tournaments but don’t confuse them for exposure. Exposure is a bit different. Say for example you have Adrian Peterson in all of your lineups one week. That is 100% exposure. If he for some reason goes down to injury or the team plays poorly this affects 100% of your lineups. As a general rule I tend prefer to keep my exposure to a player to no more than 50% of my lineups.

Opponent selection is key, especially in cash games. When first starting out in DFS you should never be creating head-to-head games. You are leaving yourself vulnerable to sharks and many people will target your lack of experience. In comparison, you should not be targeting players in cash games that have a significantly more experience than yourself. You should make a habit of checking through profiles as you select your opponents and be very conservative on whom you decide to play against. On most sites, you can view an opponent’s history and see how many games he’s involved that week as well as their win totals for a given sport. This can give you great insight into how serious the player is. Finding new players is by no means a guarantee you will win but it is an easy method to improve your head-to head odds. You should always play multiple lower-stakes games rather than a couple high stakes games. By splitting up your investment into smaller pieces you spread your risk out more evenly thus reducing your variance.

The learning curve for everyone when they start out in DFS can be significant but that doesn’t mean you will necessarily leave with a poor taste in your mouth. A great way to avoid this is to balance your risk vs. reward, practice solid bankroll management and choose your opponent wisely. Follow these practices and you’ll be well on your way to a successful and profitable daily experience.