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Winning Fantasy Football On A Budget – Tips, Advice, and Strategy for Fanduel and Draftkings Contest Selection NFL Week 5 (FREE!)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have $1000/day, or even per week, to plunk down on hundreds of different fantasy football contests like the big boys.  I’m a #Smallaballa through and through, and I need to be smart and efficient with my budget.  Contest selection is paramount to my success, and probably yours.  Every week, I will be drafted by DFS Army to offer you a roadmap towards building your own fantasy football bankroll smartly with tips, advice, strategy, and templates for several different budgets.

The track record is there on both Fanduel and Draftkings.  In 2020 alone, I have won an MLB contest containing more than 140,000 people.  I placed 4th out of 217,000+ in NBA.  I placed 2nd of 15,000+ in NHL, 4th of 7800+ in NASCAR, and 12th of 3500+ in PGA.  Being smart and well-rounded is my game.  I can teach you to conquer giant tournaments on a budget, but I can also teach you to grind up that bankroll while you lay in wait of the huge night.  So, follow me, and let’s lay siege to our next sport of the calendar year….NFL!

baseball mlb

What Started It All?  Revisit “The Ladder System:  Revolutionize Your Game

After we assemble the sample budgets, we will also discuss the types of players we are looking to utilize in these types of lineups.  When layering contests like 5050s and triple ups with only one or two lineups, we will operate from a smaller player pool than if we were playing giant MME formats with dozens of lineups.  We won’t focus on speculative, pure upside plays.  Those are for the huge life-changing gpps.  The focus here is grinding up bankroll with sensible upside and fun, not for playing the lottery.

For the more speculative types of players, please consult our GPP NFL Cheatsheets and our Coaching Forums.  The feedback you get from our coaches will change your game!

Week 5 Fantasy Football Sample Budgets

So far, I have offered several different budget sizes and combinations.  I love the feedback and questions, but please understand these are examples not rigid rules. Pay more attention to the amounts generally going towards which type of contest.  Pay less attention to emulating it perfectly. These examples are very flexible and many options make plenty of sense.  That’s the fun!

$60 Sample Budget – For the Cash Game Lover

Old school here.  Heavy on head-to-heads (remember to be the guy picking opponents, not the guy getting picked) and some double ups.  A splash of triple up for a little boost, but mostly just head-to-head volume.

  • $50 in head-to-heads.  Start with $1 entries until the site forces you into the $2 range where you finish off the remainder of the $50.
  • $5 Single-Entry Double Up
  • $5 Single-Entry Triple Up

The magic of this structure is in it’s simplicity.  Build one great lineup using our Cheatsheets and NFL Chalkboard Tool.  Focus heavily on absorbing chalk plays, and let the fish try to beat you.  Even in bad weeks, you should get back 1/3 to 1/2 of your $40 investment, allowing you to play a methodical, plodding style often on a single $100 deposit almost all year long as you ride the ups and downs and learn to hone your research process for future endeavors.

As a student of the game, you should also be looking at all your opponents and their lineups.  See if they stack, if they take risk, if they are unnecessarily gambling.  Mark those opponents on a sheet of paper, or spreadsheet, and go get them next week (remember YOU are choosing your opponents here, not being chosen).  They are showing you they don’t know how to build a proper cash lineup, and you will beat them over time.  Take note, and punish them while you learn to get better and better.

Draftkings MME for the Noob

If you don’t want to play the nickels on Fanduel or the dimes on Draftkings (I can’t blame you, those contests have hundreds of thousands of people in them), but want to learn to mass-multi-entry like a cash game player (where you get something back even in your losing weeks), then try the smaller contests….and learn to manipulate our Domination Station Optimizer projections to completely customize your personal attack gameplan for the slate.

I have identified the 594 man (17-max) and 237 man (7-max) as quite good for this type of learning.  Let’s look at the 237 man a little closer in terms of it’s payout…

1st place wins $40.  That’s 40x your buy in.  That will boost a bankroll.  And, you only have to beat 237 people to do it.  Beating 237 people means you only need to create a 1 in 237, or top 0.5% strength lineup to get in the hunt.  You don’t need fancy, contrarian plays for these.  You don’t need big stacks and game theory.  Sure, you can use a little as you learn, but you don’t NEED it to win.  You can start off very chalky and close to the vest and do very well here.

In a typical large field mass multi entry contest, a top 1% lineup will pay you about 4x your buy in.  A 1% lineup here is going finish in 2nd or 3rd place…..and return $15 to $20 each time you make one!  Would you rather get paid 15x or 4x?  Obvious, huh?

Also, 55 of the 237 get paid, or 23.2%.  And, if you just get to that top 1%, you only have one more player to beat to win it all rather than playing a 300,000 player contest where that same top 1% score finishes 3000th and needs to still beat 2,999 players to win first place.  These smaller MME gpps are the perfect training ground for those wanting to add some fun and dimension to their game.

The Trick to Making These “MME” Contests…

Many people think they are capped at just the seven lineups.  Those people are thinking too binary.  If you wanted to practice your 20-max skills, why not make 21 lineups and max-enter three of these?  If you wanted to make 50 lineups, why not max-enter 6 of these?

On a $50 budget, you can put $1 on each lineup, and build several QB/WR stacks off our NFL Leverage Tool.  You can practice player groups, building rules where “no more than one WR and one RB from the opposing team” into secondary stacks (the real gpp winning techniques), and you can open your player pool to include players you like in great matchups like Tre’Quan Smith last week.

If you just spread your player pool out a little (something you can’t do if you build only one lineup), you insulate yourself from bad games and will stun yourself at the safety of this strategy.  A few of your 25 or 50 lineups are going to cash in these tourneys every time.  You might get completely blanked once a year, if even.  And, you will be surprised at how often you return more than half of your money, even in poor performance weeks.

This safety also allows you to play on the same deposit for weeks and weeks and weeks.  And, while you are learning on the cheap, you have a shot to start grinding up a bankroll.  As you get better at using the industry tools like optimizers and game theory cheatsheets, you gain confidence.  And, you can start stepping into the bigger contests containing 3000, 15000, and even 300,000 players.  What you learn is by building many lineups all tied together, you can grind like a cash game……..but also carry the upside of massive paydays!  You have unlocked the best of both worlds, and you have discovered the reason so many in the industry play almost exclusively MME now.

Have fun with it.  Learn on the cheap, build your confidence, and scale up when you are ready.  If you want to see the contest selection math a little more detailed, watch “Winning Fantasy Football – Contest Selection Analysis.”

The Fantasy Football 100man Challenge!

Last week, we built 9 lineups and nothing landed in the top 12% on Fanduel to get paid off.  However, 7 of the 9 were in the top 40% which means we would have easily cashed 5050s and Double Ups with 78% of the lineups we built.  4 of the 7 were in the top 30, meaning 57% would have been cashing, or on the bubble, in our Triple Ups.  All in all, a solid week for the overall player pool we produced by following fundamentally sound, historical parameters that lead to players paying off their salaries consistently.

As we roll into Week 5, we will compile our “NFL Modules” videos one by one, and put them all in a VIP-only article to catch all in the same place by the weekend.  Each video is 15 minutes or less, and we go position by position laying out our player pool for the week’s matchups.  This player pool comprises nearly 95% of what we build with for the week, as we keep focused on smart lineups designed to demolish cash games with just enough upside to get into bigger leagues and smaller gpps (like our 237-man contests on Draftkings shown above).

Games to Watch

Higher totals matter.  Vegas is more and more correct as the season goes on. Concentrating on game totals over 50 is just a nice benchmark to start with.

Las Vegas @ Kansas City – Patty Mahomes in Arrowhead?  Yes, please.  But, you are going to want to devise stacks upon stacks in this game.  A simple Mahomes to Kelce isn’t going to get it done being it’s obvious and will be popular.  Mahomes is expensive, but projections show he is still likely to return nearly 3x his price tag.  And, Clyde Edwards-Helaire is a home, favored running back featured in the passing game and near the goal line.  He’s probably one place we easily start our cash game builds.  Darren Waller makes a lot of sense on the other side being Vegas figures to be playing from behind and Waller is their focal point.  So far this year, Kansas City has shown very middling numbers defending tight ends.  Give me Waller’s consistent 7-10 targets and goal line usage please.

New York Giants @ Dallas – Yes, we are going to just keep pounding Dallas both offensively and with their opponents.  Dallas has nothing for a defense, and they know it.  So, rather than shore up defense, they are just going to try and play hyper-fast and outscore you.  Period.  All hands on deck in this one on the Dallas side of the ball.  Daniel Jones is also in play here, and you can be a little different using him with a Slayton or Evan Engram for value, then focus over on the Dallas side of the ball.  While some might say that is a tourney move, it’s also proven this year to be safe enough for cash games when the opposing QB is priced really low.

Players to Build Around

Quarterbacks heading for my lineups – I try to stick with “home favorites” as much as possible, and I love favorites projected to score a lot of points.  Dak fits the bill again.  As does Patrick Mahomes.  Others are Lamar Jackson, DeShaun Watson, even Big Ben Rothlisberger.  Yet, my favorite right now might be Matty Ice.  Matt Ryan has a dinged up receiving corps, which gives me a little pause…….but that price tag is so juicy, and his historical splits are very much in his favor.

Running backs are similar, but I try to avoid committees.  Zeke draws my eye again.  And, the more people bitch about him, the more I love him because his situation is just so ripe for a big game.  This is where I don’t care much about ownership in cash games.  If Zeke is lower-owned than he should be, great……I’m loving using him in cash games even more.  I’m not intentionally playing against the chalk.  I’m intentionally playing another cherry matchup and fundamental situation that produces high floor, high ceiling games from running backs.  Edwards-Helaire is another in play big time.  As are James Conner and Kareem Hunt.  We don’t really have much in the way of perfect box-checking matchups for RBs, so if you wanted to add a Mike Davis into the mix, I’m not going to stop you.  Even names like James Robinson are in play this week as site-specific plays according to BigMarley’s Clipping Coupons article.

Receivers and tight ends are volatile, so I’ll save those for this week’s Modules.  Defenses are easy; I’ve already narrowed myself down to two or three.  And, I’ll be consulting our NFL Cheatsheets compiled by our best fantasy football coaches this week, too.  Last week, my last video was a crosscheck with the Geek’s Sheet, and we were spot-on.  90%+ of our players matched his player pool….and we found them on our own.  That’s how you get better.  You put in the work, and play a game of “who would my coach like?”  Get good at figuring out your coach’s player pool, and you are on the right track to building better lineups.

Our coaching rooms are ready to offer you feedback as you put into practice what you learn.  I highly encourage you to check us out!!

The Secret to Winning Fantasy Football on a Budget

The secret is simple.  Employing the right tools in the right contests with the right support system.  We offer that inside our VIP walls at DFS Army.  And, as the weeks go on, I will give you small tidbits of different combinations for different budget levels.  But, if you want to really take your game seriously, jump inside and dive even deeper into contest selection with our coaches.  Stop putting the wrong lineups into the wrong contests.  Stop getting eaten alive by the sharks.  Become a shark instead!!

Join DFS Army

And, use coupon code DFSARMY for a 20% discount as a thank you from me for reading this article and passing it around social media.  I will see you again next week with a different set of contests and combinations for new budgets.

 

Featured Image:

Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports