It is a good article but he took 61 games against players that are just starting out venturing into the fantasy daily world at buy ins at 5 and 10 mostly. How many of those people will not come back now? I think he is doing the business at a whole a disservice. I take a crapload of games as well but player at higher buy in level and I play more multiples than heads up. I recognize the need for the beginners to establish themselves and gain confidence if they are going to put more money on the line down the road and more importantedly for the industry as a whole to grow. Just my thoughts.. Great Article and good luck this week.

I see your point GeneralIV, but I think we are all kidding ourselves with the ‘give the fish a chance to grow’ thing. There are guys who will do this for fun and guys who will do this for money. I doubt the guys doing it just for fun will ever evolve into guys doing it for money, because it just takes too much time and work for them. They will disappear no matter what, it’s just a matter of how long they can survive before they go busto. Truth is, if you aren’t good at it and don’t want to do the work, then you deserve the results you get. I know this sounds really harsh, but unfortunately, like any other endeavor in life, it’s true.

If this is such a worry, then sites need to QUICKLY figure out some way to keep the two types of players separate, but this appears to be nearly impossible.

Another problem is that you pretty much have to sign up to play others, even if they are fish. I put out a game yesterday and it sat there for FIVE hours before it got filled. A $5 game sat for FIVE hours on a day with 12 NBA games. I’m not the only one avoiding the guys on the leaderboard. If you want to play, then you have to seek out games. There’s really no other way around it.

I rarely play the $25 games for a couple of reasons, bankroll management and variance control. Take a look in the $25 and up games and it’s the same old players everyday. Unless you are into the whole macho pride thing, there really is no reason to be playing the sharks everyday. This is why good players doing this for money end up in the $5’s and $10’s. If I’m going to play $100 a day, why would I put it on a single game against a shark, when I could play 10 games against at least 5 or 6 weak players?

I don’t know what the solution to this huge industry problem is, but they better find it pretty quickly or we are all going to end up with only a pool of sharks and Grinders.

Thoughts?

@GeneralV said…

It is a good article but he took 61 games against players that are just starting out venturing into the fantasy daily world at buy ins at 5 and 10 mostly. How many of those people will not come back now? I think he is doing the business at a whole a disservice. I take a crapload of games as well but player at higher buy in level and I play more multiples than heads up. I recognize the need for the beginners to establish themselves and gain confidence if they are going to put more money on the line down the road and more importantedly for the industry as a whole to grow. Just my thoughts.. Great Article and good luck this week.

When I write strategy articles for Rotogrinders they are from the fantasy players perspective, not from the site owners perspective. Both players and owners should be focused on what is best for their own bottom lines. The article was about improving your hourly rate as a player, and table selection is a huge part of that just like in poker. The fact is that somebody is going to take on the beginners and it might as well be me if it helps my own bottom line. Site owners need to figure out how to protect and grow their new users, without relying on the sharks to do that for them. Sharks should be focused on feeding only.

I wanted to add that I will play at any stakes at FD if I think I am better than my opponent. Just like in poker there are bad players at all levels. Some people have enough money that a $10 game is meaningless stakes, so they play the $100s for the “action”. I once found and challenged a user with no wins at FD in the $100 buy-in (I lost). Also, once your bankroll hits a certain size, you can no longer put it all to work by limiting yourself to the $5s and $10s so you need to be actively seeking higher buy-in match-ups if favorable conditions exist. I was not able to get the whole roll in action last weekend for the first time (which cost me money!), and this weekend is looking even less likely so far.

I dont see MoneyMaker or Helmuth playing at the one two NL tables… I play at FD alot and i never see your name out there so Im really not sure how you can say you didnt get all your roll out there.. I think its because you choose to pick your spots and not leave yourself open to a good player taking your game or shall i say cash.. No big deal theres plenty of money to go around i just think it stinks we have top players going for the lowest buy ins 7,000 times instead of guys with the bigger rolls getting the higher buy ins going.

@GeneralV said…

I dont see MoneyMaker or Helmuth playing at the one two NL tables… I play at FD alot and i never see your name out there so Im really not sure how you can say you didnt get all your roll out there.. I think its because you choose to pick your spots and not leave yourself open to a good player taking your game or shall i say cash.. No big deal theres plenty of money to go around i just think it stinks we have top players going for the lowest buy ins 7,000 times instead of guys with the bigger rolls getting the higher buy ins going.

Of course you don’t see Moneymaker or Hellmuth at the 1-2, they have a roll big enough to play higher (of course Moneymaker probably should be at the 1-2 haha). And there is definitely nothing wrong with picking your spots and avoiding better players. That’s just smart gambling. It would take a pretty seriously big roll to play $1000 worth of games a night with proper money management and I just don’t think there are very many guys with a daily fantasy roll that size right now.

The problem is that the aren’t enough guys at the big buyins GeneralIV to make it a profitable venture with the big rake. No matter how much skill we think there is in this game, it’s still just picking 9 players and come gametime it’s out of our hands. There’s still A LOT of luck involved. I’d say there isn’t a huge difference in skill between most Grinders on any given night. It’s simply look at 7-8 games and pick the best players. It isn’t like poker where there are multiple plays in a realtime dynamic situation for us to apply skill. You got 12 hours to analyze games and finally pick some players. That’s it. It isn’t rocket science. If you make a habit of only playing other good players, the rake will eat you alive. There is no edge in doing this over the long term-unless you can find fish-and the fish aren’t usually in the $50+, they’re in the $5’s and $10’s. Sharks don’t feed on other sharks.

I think that in time as the sites grow, the bigger buyins will pick up, it is just going to take some time. I doubt though that the high buyins will be filled by casual players who start out in the $5 games.

@GeneralV said…

I dont see MoneyMaker or Helmuth playing at the one two NL tables… I play at FD alot and i never see your name out there so Im really not sure how you can say you didnt get all your roll out there.. I think its because you choose to pick your spots and not leave yourself open to a good player taking your game or shall i say cash.. No big deal theres plenty of money to go around i just think it stinks we have top players going for the lowest buy ins 7,000 times instead of guys with the bigger rolls getting the higher buy ins going.

For live poker when you can only play one table at a time, Helmuth’s hourly rate is maximized at much higher stakes. For daily fantasy sports, if the marginal cost of entering an additional league is 5 seconds of time, hourly rate is maximized at the lowest stakes where competition is the softest. Economics 101.

I am with Blinders here. As individual players, this is about winning money and not winning some kind of title as to who is the best of the best. It just doesn’t make much money sense to sacrifice ones own money at a higher risk rate just to be able to claim your are the #1 best in the world when that title holds no monetary value. I also do not believe that it is the individual players burden to protect the weak or new players. It is the individual players job to win as often as they can against whomever they can beat.

Daily Fantasy Games is not a charity. I play to win money, I don’t care if I beat an undefeated player or someone who has only $10 to his name. You enter the game with your skill and I enter the game with my skill and let the best player win. If you want to go out and help out new players go create a blog, and teach them strategy. The goal is to maximize your own profits, and the notion to build up the confidence of other players is absurd. Don’t you think your maybe building up false confidence?

I guess i look at things a little differently than the majority here. No big deal to me I just want more people to come and play. I just think about how much it costs to recruit new players then if they play for 5 bucks against a very good opponent they might sour off right away and not come back. Good conversations Good luck tomorrow!

“I hand pick all of my opponents, and never allow my opponents to hand pick me.”

If everyone practiced this strategy, no one would ever sign up 1st… except for total newbs.

This is how I view table selection, and it’s worked pretty good for me:

Since I consider myself a better than average player, I try to play the widest variety of opponents possible. This includes veteran “sharks”.

Through my diversification of opponents, I’m able to protect my bankroll. It will keep a fluke night (injury/variance) from wiping me out.

It’s a shame that true profit cannot be published here, because this discussion is all conjecture without the data to back it up.

I’m guessing my ROI & hourly rates are as good as anyone else’s – and I don’t even really play high stakes.

I forgot to add, if you want to increase your hourly rate, you need to learn & adapt – just like in poker.

If the money gravitates towards other sports, you need to learn how to beat them. If the fish play draft games instead of cap, you need to beat them there as well.

@Buffalo66 said…

“I hand pick all of my opponents, and never allow my opponents to hand pick me.”

If everyone practiced this strategy, no one would ever sign up 1st… except for total newbs.

This is how I view table selection, and it’s worked pretty good for me:

Since I consider myself a better than average player, I try to play the widest variety of opponents possible. This includes veteran “sharks”.

Through my diversification of opponents, I’m able to protect my bankroll. It will keep a fluke night (injury/variance) from wiping me out.

It’s a shame that true profit cannot be published here, because this discussion is all conjecture without the data to back it up.

I’m guessing my ROI & hourly rates are as good as anyone else’s – and I don’t even really play high stakes.

Have you ever looked at your win loss rate vs. the sharks by themselves and your other match-ups that don’t include any sharks by themselves? Playing sharks to reduce variance seems like a fools game. For example if you played HU poker at low stakes and wanted to add some opponents to lower your variance, you would not want challenge top pros like Ivey, Helmuth, Cunningham… Variance reduction is only worth doing if your ROI is positive, and your ROI starts to go negative (factoring in the rake) as your challengers skill level approaches your own. No one is doubting that you have a good hourly rate. The question is, does your technique of adding sharks to the mix increase or decrease your hourly rate long-term.

I have never profiled my opponents, it’s something that’s rather hard to do outside of FD.

You probably have a better winning percentage than I do, because you “hand pick” your opponents.

This fantasy stuff is a pretty simple concept:
-take you best guess to score points,
-if you score more than your opponent, you win.

If you score well you will beat almost everyone you play. If you score poorly, you still might win a few contests if you diversify.

I don’t think mixing in the veterans hurts me enough to give up the action. I believe it helps my hourly.

There is no question that my biggest winning days have come from beating some of the best players out there.