Daily Joust Review

Daily Joust Review

I’m excited for Daily Joust. When I first took a peek at their site, it was a questionable landing page, so I dismissed them. Today, I’m blown away at how far they’ve come. It’s apparent that the Palo Alto based staff did an excellent job developing their product. Having obtained venture capital, it looks like they’ve put the money to good use in building what players want in Daily Fantasy. Here’s a breakdown of Daily Joust pre-launch, with only up to go from here.

Game Offerings

At first glance, the game offerings bare a striking resemblance to aspects of FanDuel, with a medieval twist. But when you peel back the head-to-head contests, 5-Man leagues and Challenge-A-Friends, there is one offering that does give Daily Joust a unique twist: the ‘Solo’ contest.

A solo contest is a contest where you are the only entrant, building a team to achieve a pre-set target number of points to win a prize. You can play solo contests without worrying about another user’s player performances or ability level. And any players you choose will be uniquely your own in the contest. Daily Joust offers solo contests from time-to-time and to select users. You need to check the Open Contests section to see if one is being offered to you at the moment. Only a limited number of solo contests are offered, so it is possible that these may fill before the contest closing time. So far the target to hit is 50 for MLB and 90 for football. Solos are a great option for guaranteed action and as an option for newer players that want to avoid having their games grabbed by the top-Grinders. I’m also guessing that the contests are capped in total number so the ‘house’ can control its potential losses in a single day.

Solos are an interesting spin on the standard Daily Fantasy games we’ve seen to date, and I’m excited to see how it does. While I like the creativity and admire the structuring of the new game, I do have some concerns as to whether it is a step in the wrong direction, as players seem to be craving more engagement and interaction with the community of players at the moment. But with Daily Joust being such a new site still, I anticipate the variety and quality of game offerings to increase with time. It currently feels naked without a Large-Field option in their arsenal, but Daily Joust has a ‘Tournaments’ link on their header, likely reserving a spot for these in the future.

College Jousts

In addition to the Solo Contest innovation, Joust also offers TWO forms of football: NFL and NCAA Football. In our resident fantasy college football expert’s blog he gave raving reviews to the options available…and I agree. Not only can you select a contest based on each of the main conferences alone, you can enter contests using the entire player pool. Personally, I only have time to follow my Gators and the SEC these days, so I love the option of not having to choose players from teams which don’t play anyone and rack up tons of points, or from more obscure teams.

Software and Interface

Daily Joust has one of the most user-friendly experiences in the Daily Fantasy Industry. Word is that the Daily Joust team received venture capital, and that they’ve staffed themselves with former video game developers (ever heard of EA Sports?)…and it shows in their product. It took me very little time to learn and master the site and team-building software. The site left no stone unturned, and integrates chat and all aspects of your player account seamlessly. However, the strongest part of the site has to be the ‘Build a Team’ functionality. Daily Joust has combined Player Pricing, Recent Performance, Player News, Player Stats and Salary Cap considerations in a way that is both intuitive and resourceful. On Daily Joust, you’ll have no trouble getting the information you want for a specific player, when and how you want it.

The care for detail was shown in the presentation: Players you can’t afford have their prices grayed-out, the number of appearances in last 10 games is shown in parentheses next to each player name so you can quickly identify an accurate FPPG average from a one-hit wonder fill-in player, clicking a player name brings up Recent News and their Game Log…the presentation of these little features all add up for an awesome experience.

DailyJoust also has one of the best Live Scoring experiences that exist. You can quickly and easily view all of your opponents, view in-game stats, and see where you stand in a contest with a lot of opponents. One of the smaller live scoring features that I really love, is that you can see what your score is in a contest in the tab of your browser, without having to visit the page. This is great b/c you can keep track of your progress while you browse the web, and you don’t have to stay glued to your game page to track progress…but you’ll probably want to!

One of the cool features of Daily Joust is that you are able to sign-up for SMS notifications. It makes playing Daily Fantasy on-the-go much simpler. You get notifications to your cell phone for Cancelled Contests, Contest Begin, Contest Complete, Promotions, Deposit Confirmation and Withdrawal Confirmation. However, I had issues building a team from my iPhone, which kind of defeats the purpose of some of these notifications. They could be a sign of Live Sit and Drafts to come, but next time I get a notification that a contest is cancelled and I’m on the run, I’d like to be able to use all aspects of the site from that same phone.

Community Section

On of the coolest and innovative parts of Daily Joust is the their Community Section, which displays:

• Winnings
• Wins
• Lineups – Highest Scoring Lineups
• Performance – Sort by Individual Players FPPG Performances
• Popularity – Popularity of Players
• Streak – Jousters with longest winning streaks
• Rating – Rates each user by their ‘Jouster Ability’, the average of their lineups productions. Aimed to accurately compare skill of all players.
• Badges – See more info in Bonuses section below

Roster, Rules and Scoring

Daily Joust has a simple and effective setup for all aspects of Rostering and Scoring. In Baseball you have 1 pitcher and the 8 standard fielding spots (Designated Hitter is lumped in with first base). Scoring is a bit higher than you’re probably used to, but I like it. The top pitchers average close to 20 points per game and the top hitters average close to 6 points per game. Proportionally the scoring is similar to what you are used to seeing on most sites, but I like getting 1 point per 1/3 IP, instead of 0.33. It’s another example of care for detail in presentation that add up to a better Live Scoring experience, in my opinion.

There are tie-breakers for Daily Joust (as opposed to chopping the prizes automatically). As part of a specific multi-player contest’s entry, Daily Joust has users answer a tie-breaker question (e.g. How many points will my fantasy team score?). In the event of a tie for prize positions, the tied user closest to the actual number wins the higher prize position. In Solo contests there is no tie-breaker, the user either achieves the target or not. In Head-To-Head (aka Heads Up) contests, ties are broken by: the highest individual player score, next highest, etc down to the last player. Prizes won are credited after Daily Joust receives the feed of the final game or event’s official box score, typically within one to six hours after the last game. I’ve only witnessed MLB on Daily Joust so far, but I think that they nailed the Roster, Rules and Scoring setups.

See the Scoring Tab for full Scoring Details

Bonuses and Promotions

One of the coolest parts of Daily Joust are the badges. On Daily Joust, you can earn badges for a variety of accomplishments (both good and bad!). The range of tasks vary from depositing, to beating a Top 10 Jouster, to even writing a blog on DJ. Badges such as beating a Top 10 player are even cooler, because they’re dynamic – one day Joe Schmo could be ranked #9, the next day he might be #11. But the best part of the Badges are the rewards for them: Freerolls! That’s right, as you earn badges, you gain access to freerolls. In September and October of 2011, DJ awarded over $1,500 in Badge Freerolls.

In addition, DJ’s guaranteed contest schedule continues to grow. Currently you can win BIG money, in the following events:

For the 25% Bonus and Free Entry, half the Bonus Bucks are awarded upon initial deposit, the second half is awarded after you have entered 3 cash contests which must be completed within one week of the initial deposit. If you withdraw more than half your initial deposit before completing 3 cash contests then you will forfeit the second half of your Bonus Bucks. The Free Entry contest must be entered within one week of the initial deposit to be a valid contest entry. Read more on Daily Joust Badges here.

Daily Joust offers a virtual currency called Bonus Bucks. Bonus Bucks are awarded for various site activities, promotions and accomplishments. Bonus Bucks can also be transferred between user accounts, but they cannot be withdrawn. Bonus Bucks can be used to enter cash contests and any winnings from such contests may be withdrawn as cash. You can earn Bonus Bucks and cash on Joust in a variety of ways through various blog promos and referral options as well.

There is a missed opportunity in not having a ‘Joust Store’, or a similar Player Reward area to the ‘Street Cred Store’ on DraftStreet, but that is all I think I could say negative about DJ’s promos.

Customer Service

Daily Joust has awesome customer service in place. The site is easy to navigate, but if you can’t find what you are looking for, you have the following options for customer service:

• Live Chat Box (same style as FanDuel and DraftStreet)
• Toll-Free Customer Support Phone Number – Currently hooked up to Google Voice
• SMS Customer Support
• Support Email
• Community Section of Site – Blogs, Discussions, Ideas and other interactions
• Facebook and Twitter interactions from Site Owners

Rake

Daily Joust is taking the standard 10% of buy-in (~9% of prizepool) approach to rake as the site launches. Similar to the poker industry a $10+1 heads-up contest awards $20, a $20+2 heads-up contest awards $40 and so on. The exception to this is the the $5 contest to which a $5 heads-up contest awards $9 to the winner. As with most Daily Fantasy sites at the moment, Daily Joust could stand to lower their rake charged to add more long-term benefit to their users.

Cashier

Daily Joust’s cashier seems as simple and effective as they come! They offfer PayPal and all major credit cards for deposit, plus withdrawal via check. Here are some notes on the cashier:

• Cash can be withdrawn from a Daily Joust account balance at any time.
• Valid withdrawal requests will be immediately debited from the users account.
• An email confirmation of the withdrawal will be sent as soon as the request is received.
• Money Transferred to you via your PayPal account the next business day.
• Withdrawal requests for checks will be processed within two business days and mailed to the address on file for the user’s account. One free withdrawal from a Daily Joust account may be made every seven days. After the first free withdrawal, Daily
• Joust will charge a $10 fee for each subsequent withdrawal in the same seven day period.
• The minimum withdrawal amount is $25 unless the withdrawal is for the entire balance of the account.

All in all, I’d say Daily Joust seems poised for success. They’ve paid attention to the details and have a team with great experience and the possibility to propel the site to new levels. Sign up now to start jousting!