Daily Fantasy Sports Glossary
Last Updated: 05/23/14
Does the banter in your favorite Daily Fantasy site’s chat box, or our forums, have you confused? Do you feel like you’re missing out on some valuable strategy day-in and day-out? RotoGrinders Daily Fantasy Glossary is here to help. RotoGrinders.com will be periodically updating and growing our Daily Fantasy Sports Glossary and Definitions as the Daily Fantasy industry grows to give you a thorough breakdown of the terminology you should know.
2014 Update
| $/Point | Dollars per point; the number of dollars you must spend (in cap space) for every point a player is projected to score. A lower $/point is preferable. |
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| 50/50 | A league type in which the top half of all entrants get paid and the bottom half lose their entry fee. 50/50 leagues are generally considered safe, but they can become dangerous if you enter the same lineup into multiple leagues. |
| Avoid | To stay away from a certain player or situation. |
| Balance | A term used when talking about taking a lot of players that are middle priced. |
| Bankroll | The amount of money you’re willing to invest in daily fantasy sports |
| Bearish | A pessimistic outlook on a particular player, team, or situation. If you’re bearish on a player, you wouldn’t use him in your lineups. |
| Bullish | The opposite of bearish; an optimistic outlook on a particular situation. If you’re bullish on a player, you’d use him in your daily fantasy lineups. |
| Buy-In | The amount of money needed to enter a particular league |
| Ceiling | A player, team, or lineup’s upside; the maximum number of points they could score |
| Commission/Rake | The fee charged by the daily fantasy sites to play in a league; typically around 10 percent of the total buy-ins |
| DFS | Acronym for daily fantasy sports |
| Exposure | The amount of money invested in a player; if you have a lot of exposure to a particular player, it means you have a relatively high percentage of your bankroll placed on him. |
| Fade | To avoid a particular player or game, i.e. “I’m fading the Patriots game because there are 30 MPH winds.” |
| Floor | A player, team, or lineup’s downside; the minimum number of points they could score |
| Freeroll | A daily fantasy league that’s free to enter but has cash prizes |
| GPP | “Guaranteed Prize Pool”; a league in which the prize is guaranteed, regardless of the number of entrants |
| Head-to-head (Heads-Up) | A one-one-one daily fantasy league |
| Hedge | Actions taken to reduce the overall risk of your lineups; if you’re excessively bullish on a particular lineup, for example, you would hedge by creating other lineups without any of the same players, even if it’s sub-optimal. When you hedge, you’re reducing risk at the cost of also reducing upside. |
| High-Low | Also known as “stars and scrubs”; when you select multiple elite, high-salary players to accompany low-priced, bargain bin players (in contrast to a balanced strategy) |
| Multiplier | A league in which you can multiply your entry fee by a certain factor based on the payouts; in a 5x multiplier, for example, the winners get paid out five times their entry fee. The higher the multiplier, the more high-risk/high-reward the league. |
| Overlay | When a daily fantasy site loses money on a GPP; if $20,000 is guaranteed but there are only $18,000 worth of entrants, the overlay is $2,000. |
| PPR | Point per reception; a scoring system that provides a point for all catches and dramatically influences strategy |
| Qualifier | A league in which the winners don’t receive cash, but rather win a “ticket” into another league; a 10-team qualifier with an $11 buy-in might give away one ticket into a larger league with a $100 buy-in, for example; in opposition to cash games |
| Reach | To select a player who doesn’t provide great value, i.e. a high $/point; reaches typically result in -EV (negative expected value) situations |
| ROI | Return on Investment |
| Stacking | To pair multiple players from the same professional team in an effort to increase upside; stacking is particularly popular in daily fantasy baseball |
2010 Archives
| Autopick Draft | An Autopick draft is a Game Variant offered by FanDuel. Offered in Heads-Up league size formats only, you can either select a contestant that is waiting for an opponent or agree to be randomly matched. There is no Salary Cap and the selection process requires you to select two players for every roster spot, ranking them in the order of who you think will do better. After being paired with your opponent, you are then assigned a draft order, and a snake draft is performed selecting your roster basked on your player rankings. |
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| Bracket Challenge | The Bracket Challenge is an exclusive Game Variant offered by Draft Zone. It consists of a field of 8 or 64 entrants (with a maximum of 4 entries per contestant). Each entry is compiled into a Head-to-Head Bracket in the same style as the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Once per week, matched contestants will perform a Heads-Up, Live Sit and Draft for players for that week. The winners will advance and the losers are eliminated. This is repeated every week until there is a 1st place winner. |
| Buy-In | The Buy-In is your entrance fee to participate in a Daily Fantasy League. The Buy-In or Entrance Fee generally consists of two components: The Buy-In portion and The Rake. Alternatively Called: Entry Fee |
| Daily Fantasy League | Why we are all here. These are the games offered by every Daily Fantasy site in a variety of formats. They generally require a buy-in, have a fixed prize pool, and require assembling a roster of individual players from a variety of teams. Alternatively Called: Draft, Game, Contest, Matchup, or Challenge |
| FFFC | An acronym for FanDuel Fantasy Football Championship, held in Las Vegas annually. It is a series of Large-Field NFL Contests held throughout the season, culminating in a final competition held in Las Vegas with a grand prize of $25,000. |
| Field Size | The Field Size is the number of contestants competing in a Daily Fantasy Game. Each of the Daily Fantasy Sites offers a variety of field sizes ranging from Two Players (often called Heads-Up) to unlimited entrants, so make sure to try them out and figure out what field size you enjoy most. The most common Field Sizes are Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Ten Players. |
| Freeroll | Some of the Daily Fantasy Sports sites offer freerolls. These are contests that the sites run entirely for free. Sometimes they are simply for fun, but sometimes a site will put up a Prizepool for a Freeroll. |
| Game Variants | Game Variants refers to the different Daily Fantasy Game option rules and styles available to you. There are several Game Variants for Daily Fantasy Sports, across all of the sites. No one site covers all of the options, and each Drafter has their own personal preference, so make sure to try them all out and figure out which Daily Fantasy site is best for YOU. In general, there are two main Game Variants |
| GPP | GPP stands for Guaranteed Prize Pool, and represents a large-field contest in Daily Fantasy (26 or more contestants) that has a set, and generally large, guaranteed prize pool – regardless of the number of entrants |
| GL | GL is an acronym short for Good Luck. It will often be used in a chat box at the end of a Sit and Draft as a courteous sign off. |
| Large-Field Contests | Large-Field contests are an up and coming Game Variant in Daily Fantasy Sports. Large-Field Contests offer unlimited entrants, have a guaranteed prize-pool, and pay out multiple spots. They often use larger rosters than standard leagues and use a tiebreaker in order to prevent duplicate entries. Analogies are often made that Large-Field Daily Fantasy Contests are to the Daily Fantasy Industry what Multi-Table Tournaments are to Online Poker. |
| Overlay | An Overlay is an amount of prize money awarded to participants in a contest that were not covered by the total buy-ins of all entrants to that contest. Daily Fantasy Sports sites must guarantee their prize pool in accordance with UIGEA regulations , and when that guarantee is not met, the site adds money from their pocket to the prizes awarded. This added value is the overlay. |
| PPR | An acronym for ‘Points Per Reception’. PPR is an oft-used statistical category used in Daily Fantasy Sports. If this stat is used, than a player receives a certain amount of points for every reception they record. |
| Prizepool | A Prizepool is the total amount of money that will be paid out to winning contestants in a league. Generally it is all of the Buy-Ins from all contestants less the Rake. Some sites however, offer Guaranteed Prizepools! This can create an Overlay between the Prizepool and the actually Buy-In total, creating extra value for the contestant and sometimes HUGE first prizes! |
| Rake | The Rake is the portion of each contestant’s Buy-In that each Daily Fantasy Sports site keeps as revenue for their operations. The Rake will vary between Daily Fantasy Sports sites, so make sure to check them all carefully to find the best value. |
| Reach | In Daily Salary Drafts, a Reach pick is when a contestant selects a player whose Daily Salary Cost is noticeably more expensive than his actual value would indicate his Salary Cost should be. In Daily Sit and Drafts, a Reach pick is when you select a player in a Draft Spot that comes before where that player is traditionally, or should be, drafted. A Reach pick is not necessarily a bad thing. Balancing skillful Reach and Value picks together will lead to higher profits and more wins for the skilled Grinder. |
| Roster | Your Roster is the final lineup of players you select within a Daily Fantasy Contest. Alternatively Called: Lineup |
| Salary Cap | You select your team roster from a pool of players that are playing on the day you choose to compete. Each player has a price assigned to them from that Daily Fantasy Site. Each team in the league has the same salary cap. The objective is to fill up your roster with the team that will score the most Fantasy Points for that day without going over the Salary Cap. Each team in the league chooses from the same player pool. Each of the Daily Fantasy Sites has their own method for assigning costs to players, so make sure to try all of them out and find which one works best for you. |
| Sit and Draft or Snake Draft | The traditional Snake Draft used for season-long fantasy applied to Daily Fantasy Sports. This draft is Live and involves no Salary Cap. You sign up for a Sit and Draft league, when it fills up each person is assigned a draft spot. You go down the line in Snake Draft order selecting the best available player for your roster. Whoever picks last in Round 1, picks first in Round 2. Whoever picks first overall, picks last in Round 2 and first in Round 3, and so on. Each player drafted is unique to one team. |
| Sleeper | A Sleeper is a player that is generally undervalued for a particular sport. Finding good Sleeper picks will lead to higher profits and more wins for the skilled Grinder. |
| Synergy | Coined by the legendary Illinois power-duo Kaiseroll13 and SClement21, synergy is using players from the same MLB team, usually those hitting in consecutive order, in order to increase your scoring potential. Example: By playing Chris Young and “”(player-popup)Justin Upton”:/players/justin-upton-10554(player-profile)”:/players/Justin_Upton-10554, if Chris Young is on base and “”(player-popup)Justin Upton”:/players/justin-upton-10554(player-profile)”:/players/Justin_Upton-10554 hits a Home Run then you get an RBI and R factored in where you wouldn’t had you chose a player other than Upton. |
| Team Name | A Team Name is an optional field separate from one’s Username, that some Daily Fantasy Sites offer, which has different meanings depending on the site. For example, on Fantasy Sports Live you can enter a Team Name for every contest you enter which is displayed under your Username in that contest. On Draft Zone however, your Team Name is an editable name displayed in every contest separate from one’s Username. For the RotoGrinders Rankings make sure to use your Team Name for Draft Zone in order to be accurately tracked. |
| Value | In Daily Salary Drafts, a Value pick is when a contestant selects a player whose Daily Salary Cost is noticeably cheaper than his actual value would indicate his Salary Cost should be. In Daily Sit and Drafts, a Value pick is when you are able to select a player in a Draft Spot that comes after where that player is traditionally, or should be, drafted. Finding good Value picks will lead to higher profits and more wins for the skilled Grinder. |
1 – 2014 Update made in conjunction with Jonathan Bales, author of Fantasy Football (and Baseball) for Smart People: How to Turn Your Hobby into a Fortune
Last Updated: 05/23/2014