NFL DFS Bankroll Management: Week 5 Selection Guide
Hello Grinders. Week 5 is upon us, and once again, it’s time to take a look around the DFS industry and see what contests stand out. I’ve structured this Week 5 contest selection guide in such a way where I’ve highlighted the top contests across the major DFS sites based on a style of play. While I’m not able to cover every style of play, I hope this gives you some guidance as to which contests may give you the greatest bang for your buck.
One last thing I’ll mention is if you haven’t already, I highly recommend downloading the RotoGrinders browser extensions here. This will allow you to easily see Margin and Overlay for each contest. Let’s dive in!
Group 1 – Overlay Chasers
I decided to touch on overlay for another week as I think it’s worth pointing out that we’re now 25% into the NFL season and the DFS sites have started to adjust their contest sizes to restrict overlay as much as possible. Overlay is becoming incredibly hard to find now, and I think it’s becoming more important to find contests that just work for your bankroll and style of play.
Last week, DraftKings had a $4,444 Mega Millionaire contest with $1 million to 1st place and 631 seats. It filled nearly a day before lock and left people scrambling who didn’t get a chance to reserve the contest. That’s a clear sign there’s no lack of interest in NFL DFS with other major sports winding down.
Last week, I had also pointed out that Yahoo vastly reduced their main GPP from 39,775 to 22,715 seats, and went from a $10 to $15 buy-in. It turns out that it didn’t fill, and if you were monitoring it and lucky enough to take advantage of it, you noticed that only 19,139/22,715 seats filled (84.2%).
This week, Yahoo took another cut at their main GPP and shrunk it down to 19,000 seats and kept it at a $15 buy-in. In other words, they’re assuming this will now fully fill if they can get the same amount of entrants as last week. It seems like the potential overlay at Yahoo is close to being done with the cuts they’ve made in the last several weeks.
Group 2 – Top Heavy Chasers
DraftKings is running a $5 Flea Flicker GPP with 35.6K seats, but it has an extremely top-heavy payout structure. 1st place gets 33.3% of the prize pool, and the Top 10 get 48.93% of the prize pool:
As you can see, there’s a huge drop off after 1st place. The bottom of the prize structure is also not pretty, as just 21.63% of the field will min cash and if you do min cash, you only get back $8 on your $5 investment. If you decide to play this tournament, make sure you’ve factored all of this in mind as this tournament is going to reward someone who is more contrarian given the top-heavy payout.
Group 3 – Flat Structure Chasers
There are a lot of solid contests if you’re looking for a flat pay structure. The DraftKings Slant tournament remains one of the best, but I’m going to highlight a few others around the industry.
If you can tolerate something with a ton of entries, the DraftKings 20-max Play Action tournament for just $3 an entry remains one of the best options. It pays out just 6.67% of the pot to 1st place, while the Top 10 get just 14.97% of the pot. While trying to beat out over half a million entries is a tall task, the 1st place payout of $100,000 is very appealing at just a $3 entry fee.
If you’re looking for something a little smaller, the DraftKings Engage Eight tournament is appealing. There are only 18,382 seats and it’s a three-entry max contest, meaning you won’t be up against someone else’s 150 lineups. 1st place gets just 8% of the pot and the Top 10 get just 22.32% of the pot.
Group 4 – The Penny Pinchers
FanDuel’s Pooch Punt nickel contest remains one of the best in the business for those who remain on a budget. I’ve called this one out multiple times now and I’m going to keep calling it out as it’s an easy way to test your 150-max entry theories without having to break the bank.
I don’t love that it has a 16.5% margin for this contest, but it does pay out 30% of the field and min cash is $.10, so you’re doubling your entry fee if your lineup can do enough to sneak into the top 30%. The 1st place prize of $1,500 is also very appealing.
The other contest I’m going to highlight is the DraftKings Tiers First Down 20-max contest. There are 29,726 spots so it’s a bigger contest, but it’s a relatively flat payout with 1st place getting just 4% of the pot and the Top 10 getting just 13.6% of the pot. More impressive is that this contest pays out 27% of the field, which is one of the higher numbers you’ll see on DraftKings:
In last week’s Tiers First Down contest, there were over 35K+ entrants but one person took down 1st place solo. Tiers continues to be one of the softest contests because people don’t do enough to correlate their lineups. To prove my point, here’s the winning lineup from last week’s contest:
If you’re not familiar with Tiers, you select players from eight different tiers. But notice in the winning lineup, they stacked the Cowboys (Elliot, Prescott, Cooper, Lamb), which paid off as the Cowboys went bonkers last week. They also brought it back with Odell Beckham on the other side of that game, who also went bonkers and forced the Cowboys to play catch up. Over half this Tiers lineup was correlated, with Lamar Jackson, Alvin Kamara and Cooper Kupp rounding out the lineup. If you play Tiers, making sure you’re stacking it correctly for correlation is going to be key.
Group 5 – The Singles
Finally, for those of you who prefer single entry contests, FanDuel continues to have some of the best options as their rake remains much lower than DraftKings’:
As you can see from the screenshot, their $444 Read Option and $222 Fade GPPs have just a 9.91% margin. On DraftKings, the margin ranges more between 12%-16%, just for context. Both of these FanDuel single entry GPPs also have a decent pay structure in terms of being relatively flat, which is an added bonus.
Thanks for reading, and good luck this week. May variance be on your side.