Arizona DFS: Best DraftKings & FanDuel MLB DFS Contests for Beginners (Plus Sign-up Bonuses!)
With the debut of daily fantasy sports in Arizona (and AZ sports betting is right around the corner!), I wanted to put together a brief primer for any of you who might be new to the game. There are a lot of really good DFS players out there. And while you are going to have to take them on if you want to, say, win $1,000,000 during Week 1 of the NFL season, there are also plenty of contests that allow you to get your money in with a much better chance of turning a solid ROI.
So let’s dive in to see what the best contests are for you beginners out there. If any of this is confusing or you want me to elaborate on something, feel free to message me here on RotoGrinders (click on my profile above and you will see where you can send me a private message) and I will be sure to respond.
Arizona DFS Tips: Start with Fair Play
First and foremost, I encourage all of you to check out what DraftKings (link here) and FanDuel (link here) like to call ‘Fair Play’. For purposes of what we are discussing here, I will break down a few of the noteworthy items below.
1. Beginner Contests: Never played DFS before? Well, good news: you can solely play against other contestants who never have either. Both FanDuel and DraftKings offer Beginner Contests, which you can register for as long as you don’t have an ‘Experience Badge’ (more on that in a second) and have played in 50 or less contests. Sure, the prizes aren’t as appealing, but the competition is extremely soft. You will want to hop in those contests right from the get-go while you are getting your feet wet in the DFS streets.
2. Experience Badges: When you are scrolling through all of the users in the various contests, you will often see a badge next to their name. I will refer to you both of their sites (FanDuel link here; DraftKings link here) so you can see exactly which badge means what. And if you see a user with no badge at all? Well then, they are probably a beginner like you!
3. Entry Limits: I will again refer you each of the respective sites to get the exact explanation (FanDuel link here; DraftKings link here), but essentially what I want to point out here is that DFS players who have played a certain amount of volume ($$$) in their DFS “careers” are not allowed to play in low-dollar contests. On FanDuel, that specific subset of players cannot play in contests that have an entry fee of less than $3 (note: I don’t see this information specifically listed anywhere on FanDuel, but I just tried to enter a $0.25 MLB contest and it wouldn’t let me due to my experience level…so I know for a fact that rule is still in place). And as you can see from the link above, DraftKings has essentially the same rule, with even slightly more restrictions: “The highest-volume DraftKings players across all sports are ineligible to enter contests if the entry fee is less than $3. The highest-volume DraftKings players are also ineligible to enter contests when the entry fee is less than $5, if the prize pool is less than $25,000 guaranteed.”
While the above are what I deem to be the three most important bullet points, that certainly isn’t the extent of it. There are plenty of other rules in place to protect the player, so I urge you to read everything I linked above in order for you to utilize all of the advantages that are offered when you start entering contests.
And exactly which contests might those be, you ask? Well, let’s find out!
SPECIFIC CONTESTS
What I am going to discuss below is notwithstanding the Beginner Contests I noted above. I will reiterate that you should enter the Beginner Contests first before moving on to everything else that these sites offer. For the record, what I talk about from here on out is what I have personally found to be useful in my DFS play. These are just my opinions and are in no way cold, hard facts. And nor is this list exhaustive, as I’m sure other DFS players you talk to would prioritize other things.
Cash Games
DFS cash games essentially means a contest in which half of the field gets paid. The most popular are double-ups, 50/50’s, and head-to-heads. Here are a few pointers when entering these contests:
1. First and foremost (which goes for any format of contest really), you should look for the contest with the lowest amount of rake (i.e. the contest in which DraftKings and FanDuel take the lowest cut). The easiest way to do that? We’ve got you covered! Download the RotoGrinders Daily Fantasy Browser Extensions (details here), and you can see exactly how much the sites are taking in from each contest (amongst other things) right there on the screen.
2. Your priority should be contests with the a) lowest entry fee possible, and b) most amount of entrants. Why? For one, the lower the entry fee, the softer the competition. And secondly, the more entrants that are in a contest, the more people there are that are likely to make a mistake. So, for example, let’s say you want to enter $25 worth of cash games on FanDuel’s MLB slate on Friday, August 27th.
In an ideal world, I would want to enter 25 separate contests, at $1 a pop, with thousands of entrants in each. But since we can only play what the site offers, we have to take what we can get. Here is what is offered for double-ups on this slate for $2 or less:
As you can see, I have the aforementioned RotoGrinders Chrome Extension installed, which is telling me that the BIG $2 Double Up is raked at 12.99%. Let’s look at the 50/50 contests before making a decision:
These $1 50/50 contests are only raked at 10%. So in my opinion, I would get in as many of those 100-entrant $1 50/50 contests as you can (new contests reload once the others get filled). Yes, the entry field is smaller than the BIG $2 Double Up, but that contest isn’t as “BIG” as they make it out to be. Why do I say that? Because they allow each user to enter that contest 137 times! So what you will see happen a lot is each user enters the same lineup in that contest…wait for it…137 different times! So while that contest may allow 4,597 entrants, the actual amount of different lineups in there is going to be way smaller.
3) The last thing I want to discuss here are head-to-heads. While it would technically be prudent for you to get some of that $25 of cash game action in some head-to-head contests, it is tough for me to speak on what exactly the competition is like at the lower price-points since I am not allowed to enter contests at that level. For example, if you are a beginner and you post a $25 head-to-head contest in the lobby, that contest will get scooped up in seconds (not an exaggeration, by the way) by a far more experienced player. Remember, your “experience” is denoted quite clearly by the kind of badge you have, like we discussed above. No badge at all? It will be glaringly obvious, and you will be shocked at how quickly that contest is picked up by another player. But again, I don’t know if it’s like that at the lower price-points. So if you think you can ultimately get some head-to-head competition at the low price-points against equal competition, by all means, fire away. I hesitate to officially recommend it since I don’t know what the competition is like at the low entry fee levels.
So my official answer if you want to play $25 worth of cash games on the above MLB slate? If you can play 25 of those 100-entrant $1 50/50’s, do it! If enough of those contests don’t show up, then maybe up that to a few of the $2 100-entrant 50/50 contests. Even though I can’t say I always follow this advice personally, the correct answer is to avoid that BIG $2 Double Up since the rake is higher.
DFS Tournaments
Let me get this small piece of “DFS Vocabulary 101” out of the way first. Even though the term is incorrectly used, you will often hear tournaments referred to as GPP’s. GPP stands for “guaranteed prize pool” which essentially means that, once the contest is offered by the site, it is going to run even if they don’t get the required amount of entrants for it. A GPP used to be a big deal in the early days of DFS, and it used to almost always be associated with a site’s biggest tournament. But now, even the aforementioned cash games have “guaranteed prize pools”, so they are technically GPP’s too. But alas, everyone still calls tournaments GPP’s. The more you know…!
And I will reiterate yet again that what I am about to discuss is notwithstanding those Beginner Contests. I don’t know what contests are being offered at that level since I can’t see them, but make sure you utilize those contests before moving on to the rest of the DFS lobby. Again, that is going to be the softest competition you can find despite the prize pools not being as big.
Ok, so what should we be looking at here when wanting to play tournaments? Personally, I am not a huge tournament player, but I have been around the DFS game long enough to still give out what I deem is some good advice. Let’s get the lay of the land first by looking at what tournaments are being offered for the FanDuel MLB slate on Friday, August 27th. The below screenshot shows contests from $0-$500 and is filtered by prize pool amount.
The normal caveat applies here in that you’d ideally want to find contests that have the lowest rake. But unfortunately, the lowest raked contests are also usually the ones with the most expensive entry fee. And since you are going to run into the very best DFS players out there if you want to win the $450 entry fee MLB Monster contest (that pays out $100,000 to 1st place), it probably makes more sense for a beginner to enter contests at a far lower price-point. Besides, I’m guessing there are plenty of you reading this that don’t just have $450 set aside to throw in a DFS contest. And if you do, it might be the equivalent of just flushing it down the toilet until you know what you are doing!
So which contests are best for you then? Well, there are essentially two very different types of contests when it comes to DFS tournaments: the single entry types and the mass multi entry (MME) types. As you can see from the lobby above, there are also some middle-ground contests offered every now and then too. For example, that contest with a $2.22 entry fee has “25 Entries Max”. But a lot of the contests offered are either “you can enter 1-5 different lineups” or “you can enter up to 150 different lineups”.
Let’s briefly discuss the two and see what makes sense for you from that list of contests above. The different strategy for each of these types of tournaments is probably outside the scope of this article, but you will pick up on differences the more you play and the more content you absorb.
Single Entry Tournaments
A single-entry tournament is just what it sounds like: you are only allowed to enter one lineup into it. You will also quite often see 3-max tournaments and 5-max tournaments. The negative of tournaments like this is that the prize pools aren’t nearly as big. It makes sense when you think about it. There are only X amount of DFS players out there entering contests. And if each of them is only able to enter one lineup into a contest (as opposed to 150 lineups), there just isn’t as much money going into the pot. The positive of single-entry type tournaments is that, especially for beginners, they are arguably a little easier to win.
Using concepts that we have already discussed, the contests that I’d recommend from this specific DFS lobby are the $1 entry fee MLB Bunt ($200 1st place prize) and the $2 entry fee MLB Stolen Base ($300 1st place prize). No, those aren’t going to be huge sums of money if you do end up winning, but it is a great way to build your bankroll in softer contests. As noted above in previous sections, there is huge chunk of really good DFS players that aren’t allowed to play in contests at this low of a price-point. Want to win the $5,000 1st place prize in the $30 entry fee MLB Pickoff? Well, then you are going to have to beat the best of the best! I would never tell anyone not to enter those contests if it is in your budget, but just know that the level of difficulty is much higher than the $1 and $2 contests.
Mass Multi Entry (MME) Tournaments
MME tournaments are a different beast altogether as, unless you are some sort of crazy person, you would almost certainly need to utilize some sort of lineup builder tool like our LineupHQ at RotoGrinders if you want to enter upwards of 150 lineups. But luckily, if you do want to learn the skill that is MME, there are some options.
First and foremost, that $2.22 entry fee MLB Bean Ball contest that I noted above is a nice middle ground to get your feet wet. It is far from a single entry contest, but it is also not as overwhelming (or expensive) as a 150-max contest like the $4.44 entry fee MLB Squeeze. If you max-enter that $2.22 entry fee contest, it will cost you $55.50. And if you max-enter the $4.44 entry fee contest? That will cost you $666.
If you do want to practice on what it takes to enter a 150-max contest though, FanDuel has just the contest for you: the $0.25 entry fee MLB Pinch Hit. If you max-enter that specific contest, it will cost you $37.50…and 1st place is $500! And if you want to go even lower, there is a $0.05 entry fee contest called the MLB Wiffle Ball. First place prize on that one is $250, but you will also have to beat out 119,000 other entrants!
SUMMARY
If you could walk away from this article with just one rule of thumb, then I’d recommend always having in the back of your mind this simple statement: “the lower the entry fee, the softer the competition”. The 1st place prizes aren’t going to be as sexy, but it is going to be the surest way to build yourself a bankroll. And as noted at the very top of this article, FanDuel and DraftKings do have things in place to protect those of you who are beginners at this thing we call DFS. If you want to have the best shot at becoming a profitable player, you should utilize every single one of them.
Online Sportsbook Promos in Arizona
Online sports betting in Arizona kicks off on Thursday, September 9th, but you can get a head start NOW by claiming these awesome promo offers from DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, and Caesars — four of the best sportsbooks in Arizona.
In total, you’ll have up to $525 IN FREE BETS when September 9th, the first day of the NFL season, rolls around! You’ll also get $25 in free DFS credit at FanDuel, which you can start using today!
Here’s how to get started.
DraftKings Sportsbook Arizona
Offer: Complete the DK Sportsbook registration process & opt-in upon sign up for a $150 FREE bet
There isn’t actually a DraftKings promo code to enter, but if you follow the steps below, you’ll receive $150 in free bets when online sports betting goes live in the Grand Canyon State.
Step 1: Click here
Step 2: Complete the full DraftKings Sportsbook registration process and opt-in upon sign up for a $150 FREE bet.
Step 3: Start betting on Thursday, September 9th
FanDuel Sportsbook Arizona
Offer: Pre-register for FanDuel Sportsbook and DFS, and get a $100 in site credit split: $25 in your DFS account and $75 at the sportsbook
Step 1: Click here
Step 2: Complete the FanDuel registration process
Step 3: Start playing DFS with a FREE $25 on Saturday, August 28th and begin betting online with your FREE $75 in two weeks!
BetMGM Sportsbook Arizona
Offer: Pre-register for BetMGM Sportbook and get $200 in FREE BETS
Step 1: Click here
Step 2: Complete the BetMGM registration process
Step 3: Start betting with a FREE $200 in your account when Arizona sports betting launches on Thursday, September 9th
Caesars Sportsbook Arizona
Offer: Get a $100 FREE BET + $1 free bet for every point/run in the following games (see below) when you place a bet before 9/13
Step 1: Click here
Step 2: Complete the Caesars registration process
Step 3: Once sports betting launches on Thursday (9/9), bet on any game before September 13th and get $1 for every point/run scored in the Diamondbacks vs. Mariners series (three-game series between 9/10-12), Arizona vs. San Diego State (Sat. 9/11), ASU vs. UNLV (Sat. 9/11), and Arizona Cardinals vs. Tennessee Titans (Sun. 9/12). Watch the dollars stack up!
Image Credit: Imagn