Back to Basics: Understanding Break Even Percentage

When playing DFS on a regular basis there are many variables you need to consider to develop a winning strategy including:

• Player Selection
• Format (H2H, GPP, Draft, etc.)
• Game Size (2, 3, 6, …, Uncapped)
• Buy-in Level ($5, $10, etc.)
• Payout Structure (Winner Take All vs. Runner Up Payouts)
• Opponent Selection
• Site Selection
• The weather in cities across the US
• And the list goes on and on…

However, before you develop your strategy you need to understand a simple calculation that we’ll call your break even percentage [BE%]. Put simply, your BE% is the percentage of bets you need to win in order to break even (not lose any money and continue to play DFS). Here is how you can calculate your BE%:

BE% = ($b/$TP)*#p

• where $b = your buy-in amount
• $TP = the total payout amount
• #p = number of payouts

It is a relatively simple formula and easy to calculate. Here’s an example of the calculation in action:

This example shows a standard two person head-to-head matchup. You would have to win the matchup 55.56% of the time to break-even.

Is it possible? Yes.

However, if you are working with a small budget or playing higher stakes games you want to do everything within your power to lower your BE% because the the lower your BE% the higher your profits!

So what can you do? Take advantage of reload bonuses when offered because they lower your buy-in amount. At DraftStreet you get your bonus back at a 20% clip! In the example above you saw that a standard two person head-to-head matchup had a rake of 11.11% based on the buy-ins and payouts. However when you factor in the 20% reduction to your buy-in your BE% shifts to:

Your BE% is now 44.44% compared to the 55.56% BE% without the bonus. You can lose more than half your games and still be profitable!

*Note: The bonus does impact the rake, however, it is incorrect to think that a bonus of 4% on a 11.11% rake equals a rake of 7.11%. It actually leads to a 8.89% rake if only only player uses the bonus in the h2h or a 6.67% rake if both players receives the bonus in a h2h.

Luckily, if you play at DraftStreet you don’t have to worry about that. Based on my limited play so far they are the only site that pays back your bonus at 20%!

So far we’ve focused our analysis of BE% on H2H matchups, but it also applies to larger GPP games. Remember from earlier the calculation:

BE% = ($b/$TP)*#p

• where $b = your buy-in amount
• $TP = the total payout amount
• #p = number of payouts

In a GPP the total payout and number of payouts will be much larger, however, your odds of placing “in the money” will be much lower. Here is a breakdown of your BE% in a 333 person GPP with and without a bonus:

As you can see your BE% went down drastically compared to the H2H leagues, however, so did the Paid column. The BE above are calculated using an average payout for the tournaments, so if you only won the minimum prize 10% of the time you would likely not break even. It’s also important to point out that their is a lot more variability in these tournaments and your odds of succeeding with a small bankroll is minimal.

For additional information on profitability check out this great post by Blinders: How Lower Rake Dramatically Increases the Percentage of Profitable Players He discusses the impact of rake on the profitability of players. If you combine his reduced rake advice with the reload bonus strategy we looked at before you’ll be on your way to DFS success.