“People have a tendency to think that professional bettors win an enormously high percentage of their wages — 70 or 80 percent. That’s nonsense. The best bettors in the world, the best bettors long term across sports, are going to be hitting 55, 56 percent. And that’s enough of an edge when you’re betting good numbers, not to just make a good living, to make a real good living.” – Ted Sevransky (Pro-Gambler)
Ted was spot on in the quote above. Whether you play the stock market, daily fantasy sports, poker, black jack, or just bet against the spread the key to going from amateur to professional is getting your winning percentage over 55%. Over time this will lead to consistent profits. In a previous life I worked as a proprietary day trader. The concepts we were taught were the same. We look for a slight edge over the competition which can increase the odds just enough to separate yourself from the crowd. In day trading the tool we used was technical analysis. For daily fantasy sports the tools we use are detailed research and exploiting opportunities.
We have already gone over the betting strategy to use that gives the most opportunity for both winning percentage and high stakes tournament success. In this follow up I will cover some in depth strategies for constructing lineups as well as selecting tournaments and contests to enter.
Getting the Edge
According to the Ted Sevransky quote above, the difference between a professional better and the amateurs is a matter of just a few percentage points in their winning percentage. Most amateur betters don’t have the knowledge or patience to take advantage of opportunity when it presents itself. I will speak here in the context of Fantasy Football but this applies to all sports equally.
What do I mean when I talk about taking advantage of opportunity? Opportunity arises when the unexpected occurs. The daily fantasy sites for the most part lock in salaries for players at particular times. Each site has their own methodology for when they adjust salaries. If a starter at a position gets injured and their backup is in play that represents an opportunity. These opportunities arise virtually every week of the season. It’s up to us to identify and exploit them. When a star player gets injured mid-week there is generally an opportunity to grab their backup on the cheap for daily fantasy purposes. Look for those opportunities and exploit them whenever possible. Remember that while many people in the Daily Fantasy Sports community are well researched there are plenty of folks that are not.
Taking Advantage of Opportunity
The next way to skew the odds in your favor are to take advantage of tournaments and contests that don’t fill. If you read here regularly the two daily fantasy sports sites I recommend using are FanDuel and DraftKings. I’ve gone over the reasons why in previous posts but in the end it boils down to the size and scale of the sites, the user interface, and personal preference. Both FanDuel and Draftkings are large scale sites with great user interfaces and plenty of tournaments and contests on any given week. Both also offer contests with guaranteed payouts. What that means is the site will fix the prize amount regardless of if the contest fills or not. This represents an opportunity to skew the odds to your favor.
The Plan of Action
Regardless of the sport you choose to play, taking advantage of “guaranteed” contests are a great way to skew the odds in your favor. Last season during week 2 of the Fantasy Football season we posted a FanDuel Partners Double Contest which was a 50/50 guaranteed contest designed to include 660 players and “double up” on the top 300 finishers. It was a partners exclusive tournament meaning it was not shown on the FanDuel lobby. Partner sites like this one were given the link as a promotion to our readers. Well the contest didn’t fill. It didn’t even make it to 300 entries. As a result everyone that entered the contest won it. That was awesome but those types of opportunities don’t come around every day. What does happen daily are guaranteed contests that don’t completely fill up. To take advantage of these simply log in to DraftKings or FanDuel 10 minutes or so before game time. Browse the contests and look for ones that are less then 75-80% full. Then simply import an existing lineup you have created and enter it in the unfilled contest. If you are lucky and a contest is even 10% unfilled you are at an advantage in that contest. Over time skewing the odds slightly in your favor is enough to differentiate you from the crowd and push you to the “Professional Level”
Additional Tools:
A real pro uses every tool at their disposal to gain an advantage over their competition. Rake back bonuses are another way to get an edge. The rake back bonus are the deposit matches offered by some of the sites on a promotional basis. We covered that in our previous daily fantasy strategy article. In addition the more time you are willing to invest in expanding your knowledge base regarding advanced strategies for choosing contests to enter and constructing lineups the better. To help with both of these we have the following offer:
We are currently running a Deposit Match Promotion for all of our readers:
Click Here To Open a New FanDuel Account and recieve a 75% initial deposit match! Make Sure to use Promo Code: CHIEFST
Click Here to Open a New DraftKings Account and recieve a 100% initial Deposit Match!
In addition you get THE BOOK on Daily Fantasy Strategies to take you from amateur to professional! This is a 140 page in depth strategy guide that takes some of the concepts we discuss here in the blog and expands on them on an advanced level!
As our special offer we are offering a PDF copy of the book FREE for anyone that signs up for DraftKings or FanDuel through our referral links. As a bonus on top of the book, we still have a 100% initial deposit bonus for anyone that signs up for DraftKings through this link, as well as a 75% initial deposit bonus for anyone that signs up to FanDuel and uses Referral Code: CHIEFST
To get the book simply open a daily fantasy account using one of the above links, make an initial deposit, then either tweet me at @ffootballgeek that you registered or drop a note in the comments section below.