Daily fantasy basketball is a lot of fun. It’s a lot more fun when you actually win.
Doing so on a consistent basis, even in cash games, is a lot easier said than done. Considering you have roughly a 50% chance to profit in that setting, it can be difficult for some to come to grips with the difficulty of consistently making money.
It gets even harder when people ignore the safety of mild profit stretched out over a long period of time and simply go for all the marbles.
Most people getting their start in the NBA DFS scene often bypass those head-to-head battles for the allure of big money in guaranteed prize pool (GPP) tournaments.
This can obviously be very rewarding, and you don’t have to play cash games, but if you only chase the upside, you’re going to frequently be met with the harsh reality that is the downside.
Why? Because these massive GPPs pay most of the big money to the very best finishers, and placing amongst the best is a lot harder than it looks.
It’s true that there is a lot of skill that goes into daily fantasy basketball. However, you also need a little bit of luck, and breaking even into the top 1,000 requires your team to fire on all cylinders at the exact right moment.
I’m here to tell anyone who is willing to listen, once and for all, that winning big money in daily fantasy basketball is not easy.
It takes volume, you need money, there needs to be actual strategy and research, and above all else, you need to have patience.
Having an open mind and not walking into these tournaments blindly can’t hurt, either.
That’s why acknowledging these four misconceptions about daily fantasy basketball tournaments could be the missing link to you winning and losing.
I touched on it loosely, but seriously, winning a huge prize in a massive GPP is just really hard to do.
You need a borderline perfect team, which requires some of the top scorers on any given night and usually means you can’t have a single gaffe on your roster.
This means none of your players can get hurt, benched, or produce at an abnormally low level.
It also means that pretty much every single one of them needs to either meet or exceed value, and at least a handful of them need to be amongst the best performers on the night you use them.
Even if everything goes well, you could build your best team ever on a night where everyone else does, too. If that happens, you could have a staggering team with 360-380 fantasy points and still (gulp) not really win that much money.
Each GPP is different based on what you can win by finishing in first, how the prize structure is built beyond first place, how many competitors you’ll face, and how much you need to pay to enter.
While things can vary, flat-out winning a tournament by finishing with the very best team is asking a lot.
The point? You should never just enter these tournaments blindly or without realistic expectations.
Put in the time and research to piece together a team you love, but don’t go in thinking you’re going to take down first place every time – or even finish in the top 100.
In fact, it’s wise to sprinkle in some cash game entries, just to ensure that when you do have a good team, you consistently bring back a profit when you play.
The best tip for trying to take down a tournament is two-fold.
Following these two tips does two things; it eliminates a saturated field and also increases your chances of winning.
You still need a great team, but if your best team is going up against the best minds in the business only once (instead of up to 150 times in some GPPs), then it levels the playing field.
Putting more money into a GPP also keeps the top prize fairly high, but should come with a smaller field in terms of competition.
Playing bigger-entry single-entry GPPs where you’re trying to beat out anywhere from 300-9,000 people is a lot better than throwing away smaller entry fees in crazy tourneys that accept 20,000 to 100,000 lineups.
If you don’t want to increase the entry fee, shrink the competition pool, or operate in single-entry tournaments, then you’re testing your luck in the biggest tourneys DraftKings and FanDuel have to offer.
That’s fine, as those tourneys really do offer insane upside with prizes that can work their way all the way up to $1,000,000. That’s usually not the case in daily fantasy basketball (GPPs tend to cap at about $100k), but you get the idea.
If you’re going big, you at least should understand that just tossing loads of lineups into the fray does not guarantee you anything.
Everyone can agree that quantity doesn’t always lead to quality. You can make 100 pancakes for your family, but if you do them fast, don’t mix them right, or leave them on too long, the odds of you getting even 10 perfect pancakes isn’t great.
Simply tossing in lineup after lineup does not mean you’re going to win big in daily fantasy basketball. In fact, it still could mean you don’t win anything at all.
One thing that is deceiving at both DraftKings and FanDuel is that once contests go live, you see how much money you have in play, and you also see how much you’re “winning.”
If you put up $200 in entry fees and are “placing” in one entry for $6, you will see that you’re “winning” $6. In reality, you’re not winning anything. You’re just not losing the full $200.
There have been some pretty awful nights in NBA DFS, and you’ll often see it when gamers share their bad luck on Twitter. Needless to say, even the top sharks can have woeful experiences where they invest up to thousands and get minimal returns or even go the entire night without winning a thing.
Why does this happen? Numerous reasons, really.
For one, the competition and entry saturation in these bigger tournaments is insane. All of the sharks hit the max for entries, and usually these GPPs fill up completely. That means you’re facing a ton of smart DFS gamers with a slew of different lineups.
Then there’s your actual impact. Are you doing enough research and doing it the right way? Are you combining the right players at the right time? Are you attacking the right games and matchups?
Even if you answer “yes” across the board, your team still might not be good enough.
One or two of your players could perform below expectations and keep you from having a gem. That, or an injury could derail a promising team, too.
Overall, adding on more teams with lineup pivots can increase your odds. Just don’t go into the night confident you’ll win big just because you’re risking a lot of money with a bunch of different lineups.
That strategy can be met with good luck and work out, but it can also completely backfire.
Another misconception in daily fantasy basketball is the lazy notion that everything Vegas projects is what will happen.
Everyone knows that isn’t even the case in NBA betting in general, so it has to make sense that you can’t always trust the sportsbooks to deliver a perfect outline for each night.
This can apply to pretty much everything you’ll try to use in basketball betting.
Vegas does a really good job at gauging these games and setting spreads, but sometimes the oddsmakers don’t account for interesting narratives, scheduling, fatigue, injuries, or mismatches.
That, or maybe they’re even baiting the public to make bets they think will lose and make them money.
Whatever the case, following Vegas blindly can end very badly.
Doing this could have you stacking a game with a close spread and a high total, and then that goes horribly with the game being a blowout or low-scoring.
It can work the other way, too. Completely ignoring how Vegas sets up these slates is also a mistake.
The best sportsbooks are fairly accurate at calling these contests, and you really just need to put in some extra research on your own to decide what you feel is right.
Ultimately, you should always note what Vegas is saying and use it as a baseline for your research.
Flat-out ignoring that is shutting yourself out from useful information. Completely trusting it without questioning it is asking for trouble, too.
Finding the right balance at the right time is a huge piece of the “winning big” puzzle.
One other misconception in NBA DFS is that you always need to spend your salary cap on the most expensive players. An even more deceptive notion is that they won’t fail you.
Just like the best sportsbooks can try to lead you one way or another with your betting, DraftKings and FanDuel often price players and a DFS slate to encourage or deter ownership.
This is usually done to reflect value so it’s not easy to build a winning roster, but you’re not ever really going into a specific slate assessing player value. It’s already been determined for you.
Due to this, a great practice is to look at the day’s schedule without even going to your favorite DFS site. Before you ever see any salary, pick out the games, matchups, and players you like the most.
From there, apply how Vegas is looking at these contests, and then go to DraftKings or FanDuel already armed with ammunition to fight your way through the salary cap game.
Right away, you’ll see how quickly overpriced players stand out as inflated options and how underpriced players scream to you as elite value plays.
Value is always an intangible thing, and it gets even fuzzier if you allow the DFS sites to dictate how you rank them based simply on money value.
Diving into the world of value hunting is a whole different thing, of course. The idea here is to not go into any given slate assuming the best players are going to automatically be the best players on that specific day.
Because most of these sites operate with a salary cap structure, the top-performing players will be assigned the richest salaries. However, if you can accurately spot the top options that are worth your money and which are being overvalued, you can quickly separate yourself from the pack.
Collectively, these misconceptions should really just open up how you look at daily fantasy basketball and how you prepare for it.
Laziness, blind assumptions, and any lack of research or strategy combine for a quick and sad exit in tournaments.
Make sure you’re putting in the effort to really give yourself a sound foundation every single time you put money on the table.
If you do that, you won’t be tripped up by these DFS misconceptions, and avoiding them could give you a better shot at winning those elusive prizes atop even the biggest NBA DFS tournaments.
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