Daily Fantasy Bank Roll Management (1 Viewer)

I'm hoping there are some other daily players out there who can help me with a bankroll management question, specifically where to spend the money. I know Dodds will have a book coming out about this after he had his $50,000 Fanduel run last season, so I'm guessing there are some other daily players out there.

I got into daily in a big way last season. I had never done it before and figured I would get my FBG subscription free by doing it so what the hell. I got hooked almost instantly, and turned about $200 into $2400 over the course of the season. After giving $80 of it away trying to figure out how these maniacs play daily baseball (the variance is soul crushing), I want to plot out how to bet what I have next season.

Even if I lost every single bet made, I could spend roughly $140 a week for 17 weeks. Losing it all is not a financial issue for me, so this is just about making profit and increasing the bankroll. That's about 5% of the initial bankroll per week, which is maybe way too conservative, I don't know (up it to 10%?). Here is what I am thinking and the reasons why:

• $25 on the Weekly Bomb - go big or go home.
• $25 on other GPPs - at least one Thursday matchup to try to predict ownership percentages for the Sunday games
• $50 on Double Ups / 50/50s
• $40 on Head to Head Matrix

The goal here is to take shots on the huge returns from the GPPs while maintaining the bankroll through Double Ups and H2Hs. I think the player pools in the $5-$10 double ups and 50/50s are easier victories than playing in $25 3-man+ leagues or $25+ 50/50s, so I would just play multiple entries toward the lower end. I'm not entirely sold on the H2H matrix or if I should just try to snipe fish. Part of me says I have enough ability to beat the rake on the double ups and 50/50s consistently enough that I should just drop the H2H altogether, but I'm not sure. Everyone I talk to seems to think that H2H is the cornerstone of building profit.

Any comments on this plan? Should I be allocating more money to the more profitable side of the entries?

Awesome to get the daily fantasy discussion! Looking forward to that Dodd's e-book as well.

I too started out last year, and didn't quite match your success... started at $100 before getting to about $450, and then two bad weeks dropped me down to below where I started (of course I had 100% in-play). The goal this year is to steadily increase the bankroll without going on tilt and losing it all in a week or two.

As to what % of your bankroll should be in play, I think you're being overly conservative. For one thing, clearly you know what you're doing, and while you might have a couple bad weeks, you probably won't have more than 3-4 bad weeks in a row. I think you could go up from 10% in play every week to something around 25%.

However, given that you had such a huge return on initial deposit, it could be that you're the type of player who sticks to only a few "called shots" each week and really goes all-in with a few guys you target. This could lead to major bankroll swings. If instead you're the kind of player that really diversifies any given week, the chances of losing big on any given week goes down. If you diversify well within a week, I think you could jump up from 25% to 30-40%. That's certainly aggressive, but making money is fun and you seem to know what you're doing. Conservative bankroll management is for grinders who "need" their money, either because they use it for income or because they hate the sting of losing. If you're just playing with house money, there less reason to be risk-averse.

My initial plan for next season is to stay very conservative week 1/2 when there is so much uncertainty, and then to get really aggressive after week 2/3 through the middle of the season. It could be coincidence, but I found that the going got much tougher at about the 75% mark thru last season. It could be that the 'easy money' players eventually lost all their money and didn't re-up. Burnout also plays a factor so the players that are left by week 13 or so could be the really hardcore (therefore the inference of "good") players. As a result, your in-play % could vary week to week.

I'd start off with around 5-10% in the very early weeks, and then push it pretty heavy up to about 25-40% through the middle of the season, and then dial it back to 10-25% for the end of the season. This is just based on inference, however, and not mathematical bankroll management, which certainly exists and might be more useful to you.

I am looking at some DFS type of articles this year and want to get a solid piece out about Bankroll management. It is really one of the hidden aspects of the industry and if you don't have a system in place it would be each to keep depositing throughout the year and not really having any control over your money.

Any ideas from the shark pool are welcome.

I got into it last year too. Started with $100, lost it, re-upped with another $100, and ended up cashing out $1500 during the playoffs last year.

Honestly, I used no bankroll management at all. Often times, I would have my entire roll in play (but on different lineups). I could probably do better with that this year.

My strategy was all about looking for 50/50s, small leagues, and head to heads without a lot of folks in them with high NFL win totals. Those 3 and 5 man leagues against 2 to 4 noobs were big money makers for me last year.

I haven't invested as nearly as much as some but regardless I've lost it all. I look forward to reading other people in the forums strategies. Hope to give it another go this year.

Also when does Dodd's book come out? I search, found the blog, but nothing about release date.

I am currently putting together a series of articles (subscriber content) that detail the mindset, mechanics, and overall methodology of a successful (lucrative) daily fantasy football player...the last installment of that series will contain some information on bankroll management, which should address some of the questions posed here.

Stay tuned...

I posted something in the fanduel thread last year - if only I could find that thread again. I believe it breaks down according to your expected win %, house %, and contest type, yielding something like 20-25% of bank roll per week, allocated among the contest types by payout * expected win %, prorated over your budget for the week.

For me, it yielded something like 1k bankroll = 250/week allocated 75 in h2h, 50/50, 50 in double ups, 30 in 4x and 20 in gpp.

Playing the game of money management is sometimes extremely difficult.

I told myself I was going to start slow this year based on the unknown of the beginning of the season. I averaged playing in around 25 games a week last year but I am now in 210 games for week one this year spread 60% Cash and 40% GPP (although a lot are small GPP 3-20 teams). I find it hard to look at the H2H and see so many people out there with little to no experience offering up games and end up joining them.

How many people hold back week one and how many people get swept up into looking at the opponents and fall to the temptation?

topman said:

Playing the game of money management is sometimes extremely difficult.

I told myself I was going to start slow this year based on the unknown of the beginning of the season. I averaged playing in around 25 games a week last year but I am now in 210 games for week one this year spread 60% Cash and 40% GPP (although a lot are small GPP 3-20 teams). I find it hard to look at the H2H and see so many people out there with little to no experience offering up games and end up joining them.

How many people hold back week one and how many people get swept up into looking at the opponents and fall to the temptation?

Click to expand...

Will definitely hold back somewhat, but was planning on 5% of bankroll week 1 and now leaning towards 10%. Over-confidence and excitement for the new season!

Is the roughly 10x increase in the number of "games" also a 10x increase in the amount of cash outlay? If you're focused on $1 and $2 games, that's a big increase. If your bankroll compared to last year increased too, that might not be a huge concern, but could be otherwise.

Also depends on your season goals. Is this a hobby for you to get entertainment (in which case wager all you want), or are you making a concerted effort to turn a profit (in which case BR management is key)?

[bTW - working on a new article for BR Management for this weekend]

Its tough because an actual bankroll can be hard to define. One is willing to include more assets into their BR if he or she was confident in being a profitable player over time. If you keep to a 5% or so per week, and you consistently win, there isn't that much risk that you will lose much unless you happen to hit a cold streak.

Since the NFL season is a small window, you have to play a lot regularly in order to get anywhere. This is why some may want to take more GPP chances in order to get a bigger BR.

I ran a pretty small bankroll last year and put 20-30% in play each week and pretty much avoided temptation to play more(think one week I put 40% in). Had a awful week 1 but ended up even on the year. Putting more work into daily this year but staying with a small bankroll. Plan to put 15-20% in play week 1 and probably push that up 25-30% later in the season. Don't plan to increase the bankroll regardless of what happens. If things go well this year then maybe the bank roll is larger next year but while I look to make money at this my primary motivation is I enjoy doing it. If daily FF or FF in general ever became a grind that I didn't enjoy I would stop doing it

Fantasysports1 said:

Its tough because an actual bankroll can be hard to define. One is willing to include more assets into their BR if he or she was confident in being a profitable player over time. If you keep to a 5% or so per week, and you consistently win, there isn't that much risk that you will lose much unless you happen to hit a cold streak.

Since the NFL season is a small window, you have to play a lot regularly in order to get anywhere. This is why some may want to take more GPP chances in order to get a bigger BR.

Click to expand...

That's a good point. I really tried to define my bankroll coming in to the season so that I could have a solid number to benchmark weekly % in play. Basically took my winnings from last year and some money I made in the off-season from selling some old stuff on eBay and put the mark at $2,500. Whereas last year I deposited $200 to start off the year and built it up, it wasn't technically a 'bankroll' as I could have deposited more.

I toyed with the idea of just depositing $500 or so this year, and keeping the remaining $2000 in my own bank to earn a little interest and earmarking it as "Fanduel Bankroll." But, since you can deposit with a credit card on Fanduel, you can do a few things to your benefit:

• (1) if you use a 2% cashback card like the Capital One Venture, Barclay Arrival+ or Citi Double cash, essentially you're cutting the rake from 10% to 8%, at least with respect to your first usage of that money. The benefit goes away after you've 'cycled through' your deposit, since you only get the 2% once but pay the rake every time. However, you could withdraw and redeposit any amounts wagered in order to keep the benefit going: e.g., deposit $200, wager $100 week 1, withdraw $100 and redeposit $100 for week 2. This is necessary because you have to 'play through' amounts deposited on Fanduel before you can withdraw them when using a credit card.

• (2) depositing on Fanduel can unlock some credit card sign-up bonuses where you have to spend a certain amount in the first 3 months to unlock the bonus. Recently I signed up for the Citi American Airlines Executive card that has 75k in AAdvantage miles as a bonus, but requires spending of $7,500 on the card in the first 3 months to unlock it. That would be a tough requirement to meet for me, unless I use the card to pay rent at a 3% fee (adds up to $225 in fees if used for the whole amount). So I used that card for the majority of the deposit, and paid some rent, and bought some plane tickets. This unlocked almost 85,000 AA miles (easily worth over $1,000 when redeemed for flights, could be worth thousands if redeemed for first or business class flights).

It's a little nerve racking to have my Fanduel balance so high, but makes book keeping easy and should make the season's journey more interesting to track.

Right now I'm looking at around 7.5% of bankroll in play for week 1.