GETTING-STARTED FORUM

I have read numerous times the key to DFS is good bankroll management. The idea is to play somewhere around 10% of your bankroll per night or something close to that. DFS is a hobby to me and I would classify myself as slightly above casual. I enjoy playing most days and enjoy playing multiple sports each day and have found very mild success across the board. Curious how bankroll management applies across multiple sports and multiple sites. Do you have a separate bankroll for each site and each sport or consider all of your $$ in play as the total bankroll. Are you readjusting your percentage each time you enter a sport/site/slate? For the max entry guys playing multiple sports/sites, bankroll management has got to be much more complex than most people make it sound. I am nowhere near this level and don’t ever plan to be, but am quite curious how it works.

The 10% thing is a starting point, but you’re likely to play more in Football per week because it’s a much shorter season than MLB or NBA. So if you’re playing 10% of your bankroll a weekend for NFL, you’re probably playing 3-5% per night in daily sports, if not smaller depending on the slate size and time.

This is classic Dunning Kruger effect right here. The very fact you even have a rotogrinders account (and post a thread) indicates you are orders of magnitude more involved than the casual player.

You may not be a pro but you definitely invest more time and thought into this than the vast majority.

For example, Yahoo gives ratings and the dozen Yahoo regs here all seemed so surprised they were all in the top 1%, totally unaware of their place way up high on the food chain because they keep comparing themselves not to the anonymous public at large but to those handful of high volume pros.

Just something to keep in mind going forward.

But to answer your question. There isn’t too much benefit to playing multiple sites unless you’ve literally maxed out entries in one and still looking for more. You’re doubling your research and prep time without much benefit.

And also agree with the others. You gotta remember overwhelming majority of generic DFS advice is for NFL. With such a short season and so much money on the line, it makes sense to stretch the brm and take a more aggressive approach.

Having said that, for daily stuff I wouldn’t do more than 5%, even less for something really random like hockey or golf.

I had an incredible baseball season. I ran ridiculously well and increased my bankroll by several multiples through cash games. A few times in the season I kept telling myself I was being too conservative, I am leaving a lot of money on the table each night yadda yadda yadda. The former poker player in me convinced me to stay the course.

Then it hit me, I ran into a two week period where basically nothing went right. My starters exited early or got crushed and my hitters just watched strike 3. It was brutal, lost over 90% of my cash games for about two weeks. Had I played 10% each night I would have gone bankrupt. Instead, I was more conservative and survived to rebound and have a great overall season.

Let’s say 1k br. You play 5%, 10% and 15% a night. If you lose 5 nights in a row (guaranteed to happen) then you’ll haven’t a bankroll of $815, $655 and $523. If it’s 10 then $630, $387, $231.

For me it was about 15 straight days. At 5% I am not wiped, still have half my roll at $487 but if 10-15% down to $228 and $103.

Now I don’t adhere to a number strictly, especially given I can’t control how many people sit my h2h each slate, it’s more a general concept I follow but you get the idea.

It is just one of the keys. I play about 15% during football and about 3% in the rest of the sports. not each sport but 3% per day across basketball, baseball, hockey. I think the real key is finding the contests you do well in and stick with those. I play the same contests daily/weekly, they are usually the smaller, limited entry type. I have been on some good rolls but I have also had bad spells too. In fact I had one lost Baseball season a couple years ago were I was a big loser for 3 months. It always seems like you don’t play enough when you win and play too much when you are losing.

Play at the lowest levels for as long as you can. Crush the quarters and after say you’ve profited $500-1,000 playing quarter contests only, step it up to the $1’s as well. Give yourself a 20% stop gap. For instance if you run your account up to $1,000 playing at the quarters, step up your action to include the $1’s until you fall below $800 or your 20% stop gap. Drop back down to the quarters only until you go back over $1,000. Starting at the lowest buy ins and becoming a winning player while you’re there will help you learn a ton while not losing your mind trying to figure out your preferred style of play and preference in contest and game selection.