This article is part of our DFS Football 101 series.
This week marks the third installment in my "Important Tips for New Players" series I am doing this football season for RotoWire. Recapping the first two weeks, I wrote about the research process, how to play your D/ST and K positions, being prepared before Sunday kickoff, and game selection. This series is designed to give you some insight on how to play daily fantasy football because it takes more than just picking the best players each week to win on a consistent basis. Round three will cover how to play head-to-head contests in DFS.
In deciding to play head-to-head contests, you need to realize from the beginning that the deck is stacked against you. The contest lobbies for FanDuel and DraftKings are loaded with sharks that are lurking to scoop up the "fish". Here, "fish" is a term that higher volume players use to classify new players. If you want to put it in laymens terms, sharks eat fish.
Fortunately, each site is different in how their head-to-head contests are laid out and have different options you can utilize.
Rules of thumb for playing Head-to-Head contests:
1. Never post contests – Sharks will take all of your action with no shame. The part that is even worse is when one shark takes all of your contests at once. This is frowned upon in the daily fantasy community.
2. Avoid any opponent that has posted more than five contests – Sharks post huge volume, anywhere from five contests up to 200
This week marks the third installment in my "Important Tips for New Players" series I am doing this football season for RotoWire. Recapping the first two weeks, I wrote about the research process, how to play your D/ST and K positions, being prepared before Sunday kickoff, and game selection. This series is designed to give you some insight on how to play daily fantasy football because it takes more than just picking the best players each week to win on a consistent basis. Round three will cover how to play head-to-head contests in DFS.
In deciding to play head-to-head contests, you need to realize from the beginning that the deck is stacked against you. The contest lobbies for FanDuel and DraftKings are loaded with sharks that are lurking to scoop up the "fish". Here, "fish" is a term that higher volume players use to classify new players. If you want to put it in laymens terms, sharks eat fish.
Fortunately, each site is different in how their head-to-head contests are laid out and have different options you can utilize.
Rules of thumb for playing Head-to-Head contests:
1. Never post contests – Sharks will take all of your action with no shame. The part that is even worse is when one shark takes all of your contests at once. This is frowned upon in the daily fantasy community.
2. Avoid any opponent that has posted more than five contests – Sharks post huge volume, anywhere from five contests up to 200 in some instances. If you do the quick math, someone with 200 $5 contests has $1,000 in play at just that one price point. If they are playing with a significantly higher bankroll than you, you need to avoid them at all costs.
3. If you take a head-to-head, make sure to only play each opponent one time – You want as much variance as possible.
4. Don't be afraid to play a shark...at $1 or $2 – This is a great learning tool for new players to get a feel for what top players' strategies are in head-to-heads. Look for players who have posted contests $109 and up; if they happen to also post something for $1 or $2, spend $5-$10 a week and play them. Then, track all of their picks and see what the common themes are. These players are usually very profitable, which is why they play higher volume, so this is a very inexpensive way to learn from some of the best.
5. Play the largest slate possible – You want as many players to pick from to increase variance of player selection. People who play H2H on smaller slates are only going to run into similar lineups, making it a 2v2 or 3v3 situation instead of 9v9, for example.
6. Track your results – By doing this, you can avoid players you keep losing to and focus on taking contests from the players you consistently beat. You can then download your contest history on most sites as a CSV File and import it into Excel. There, you can sort by contest type and opponent.
7. Only play a small percent of your bankroll in H2H – If you are playing 80-90 percent in cash games, make sure to diversify your portfolio between 50/50, double ups, and head-to-heads. Here, H2Hs should be the smallest percentage you play of the three. While there is no real rule of thumb for this, I would start off by only playing 10-20 percent of your cash games in H2H. If you find that you are not winning these contests, forgo them and stick with 50/50s and double ups.
8. Use the matchup blocker on DraftKings – You can block up to three opponents from taking your head-to-head contests (if you post them). I would advise blocking condia, 1ucror, and saahilsud as they play the highest volume of head-to-head and are known pros. Also on DraftKings, you want to enable the multi-matchup blocker feature. This will limit someone to only be able to take one of your contests.
9. Only play one lineup in head-to-head contests – There is an urge for some to play multiple lineups in cash games, and while that is viable if you are playing larger volume in order to hedge your action, there is no reason to screw around with more than one in H2Hs.
10. Mix up the price points between $1, $2, and $5 – A good example would be a $20 budget for H2H, where you can play two $5 contests, three $2 contests, and four $1 contests. Track your results at each price point to see where you are most profitable.
