Buffalo Hold 'Em

I'm back from Las Vegas. I had a much needed vacation, along with a chance to test out my index wagering methodology. I finished 96-76-5 (55.8%)for a profit of 35.3 units. Not outstanding, but I would take that every week.

I also had a lot of time to think on my trip. I've discussed betting with my runners and I've come up with a pretty good mantra to help keep my head right while placing wagers. Just remind yourself of the three phrases before each day of action:

1. Don't be greedy. I saw so many players at the book throw down 4-8 team parlays. I'm not against parlays, but I'm a straight bettor by choice. I wager within my limits and my bets are spread out so that one wager lost will not make or break me. Sometime a boring moneyline bet at -300 is the easiest money of the day.

2. Don't be desperate. If you find yourself in the hole or outside of your comfort zone, take a time out. If you get desperate, you might make poor betting choices (such as taking risks on long shots that are -EV). I heard one bettor in the book say, "I'm short on the rent." From a psychological perspective, you do not bet to make the rent - you pay the rent out of your bankroll (or life roll). In other words, keep your life choices and your betting choices separate.

3. Don't be scared. As in poker, scared money rarely wins over time. You have to have confidence in your wagering plan and stick to it. If your model has Team X as an outright winner, you should bet them even if they are +380 on the board. You can't be afraid to bet big on a game you really like, but you have to balance that with staying within your limits/system.

I just tell myself these three things every day and it helps get me ready for the sports book. I hope it will help you too.

Thanks to "Cyber Monday" I scored a great deal for Las Vegas. I'm leaving tomorrow for a week. Looking forward to testing out my wagering methodology without relying on the betting options in Canada.

Anyway, while I'm away, you can check out a couple of blogs from some DFS ballers:

Condia now has a blog. He is probably the best bankrolled DFS player. I know a lot of people visited this space searching for Condia on the google machine. Now you can hear what he has to say for yourself.

Brettfarve444 also has his own special place on the internet. He is strictly a Draftstreet guy, but he's very entertaining when he posts. And their are surprise appearances by Tuttle if you read the comments.

So hopefully some good content will show up before I'm back in Buffalo. I'll try to keep my Wagerminds picks up while I'm away.

Sorry if it seems like I've been neglecting the blog lately. I've been incredibly busy for an unemployed slob.

I've been meaning to write this post for awhile. As daily fantasy sports continues to grow, the nature of the games offered evolve. As the markets expand, the contest sites respond to the growing player base in different ways.

Having played DFS for 6 years now, I've learned you have to adjust strategies when switching sites (or seasons). Let me try to tie all of these thoughts together:

I haven't played much NFL this year. But the little I have played hasn't been very successful. Why?

I played mostly large field tournaments on Fan Duel. While I put up some very good scores that cashed, I never hit that exceptional score needed to take the tourney down.

Now I won several large fields last season. Was I just unlucky this season? Was I a luckbox last year? Is this just normal variance? IMO, no it's not.

The tournaments are salary cap games. And the salary cap is very different from year to year.

This is the first year Fan Duel starting national media advertising. And the response to that was a huge influx of new players. On the surface this seems great - a whole bunch of dead money driving up the prize pools.

This is where the fly hits the ointment. Now that Fan Duel has all of the new players, it has to keep them interested & involved. To do that, they loosen up the salary cap to allow users to make a team of studs. Unfortunately, this sucks a lot of the skill out of the game.

Ask anyone who played there last season and they will agree it's much easier to fit under the cap this year. Which makes the tourneys much more lottery than ever before, especially when you're playing the largest entry pools.

I realize the DFS sites are a business. The easier they make the games, the more people will play. The more skill involved, the more hardcore ballers will spend. It seems at the moment the casual players are more valuable to the sites.

It's no coincidence that the most high stakes action takes place on Draftstreet. They have the lowest rake at high stakes, the most fluid pricing for salary caps, the option to play draft games and complex scoring tables. All of the big names in DFS right now are well represented there.

As for me, I'm still spending my time on sports betting model & planning a trip to Vegas. I reached the #1 ranking on Wagerminds, let's see if I can stay there.

Have a great start to the holiday season.

Lately, I've been spending a fair amount of time with single event sports betting.

I'd been looking for a way to create a record of my play when I stumbled across Wagerminds. While you cannot wager real money, it's a pretty clean set-up.

Right away I noticed you could not practice Kelly criterion wagering, which left me disappointed. I also was frustrated with the lack of CFL betting. (They have WNBA for goodness sake!)

Resigned to a flat betting scheme, I experimented with wagering similar to my last trip to Vegas: Picking my spots, looking for lines wavering from my personal models. And pretty much I sucked for the first month. I couldn't hit a total to save my life.

While I was floundering, I scouted the more successful bettors on the site and asked, "What are they doing differently?" First of all, they were betting the max (5 units) on almost every wager. Also, they wagered more often than me.

It became clear that to climb the rankings at Wagerminds, you needed to handicap a HUGE volume of games.

Now I don't mess with markets I know little about (WNBA) or derivative betting (1st half, etc.) My forecast models are all based on full game simulations. And I believe my data brought me an advantage: The ability to handicap many games quickly.

So a few weeks ago I began the grand experiment. I capped the entire NCAA football card.

Now that does NOT mean I bet every game. Some games I made 3 wagers (spread, ML, total). Some games I might have not wagered at all. But I'm certain I had action on 50+ of the 60 games going.

Much to my surprise I finished up +106.5 units on that week. The next two weeks were also winners (65 & 28 units). And I zoomed up the Wagerminds leaderboard.

I'm learning that volume betting diversifies risk (and tilt factor). No single game is make or break for you. If you have a wide variety of markets to bet on, index style wagering might work for you.

I'll keep you posted on the results.

It's pretty obvious when you are playing fantasy tournaments that you need to figure out where your money is going.

How much rake are you paying? (If there's an overlay, sometimes none.)

When you become experienced enough to actually compete for the top prize in a tourney, you also need to consider the potential reward for what you are spending.

In other words, How much return (ROI) can you get for your entry fee(s)?

The easiest way to measure this is buy-ins.

Here's a quick example. the $3k Fan Duel baseball tourney has a $25 buy-in and a top prize of $750. Therefore the max buy-ins I can win off one entry is $750/$25 = 30 buy-ins.

Now let's move on to NFL which has a much bigger user base. The $1, $2 & $5 tourneys they run (and fill) each week offer a top prize return of 350 BUY-INS.

That's an amazing value. If you're just starting out, playing these cheap tourneys multiple times would probably be the best way to grow your bankroll.

Let's compare this return to the largest multi-entry Fan Duel NFL tourneys:

The $535 pays out $7,500 for 1st, a return of 14.01 buy-ins.

The $100 pays out $5,000 for 1st, a return of 50 buy-ins. (In this tourney you are paying the SAME RAKE as the small tourneys!)

And consider this about the FFFC: If you entered the $270 qualifier that didn't fill, you played with no rake. However, even if you made the final and finished 3rd for $25k... You still made less than 93 buy-ins on your investment.

And so it has begun.

As it approaches six years of existence, I call this "stage 2" of the daily fantasy sports industry.

There are now well over a dozen live contest sites (maybe even 20 if there's a few I haven't spotted yet).

In this very moment, all of the sites are vying for your dollar just before the start of the NFL season. This is the Black Friday of DFS.

There are plenty of deposit bonuses, freerolls and contest promotions. Play against your favorite fantasy expert or fantasy hottie. (I maintain that none of the experts are good looking and none of the hotties are experts.)

Fan Duel even got mentioned on Deadspin for doing a Jim Rome rip off in one of its commercials.

At first glance, it seems all of this competition is great for the player, and to some extent that's true. If you're just starting out and trying to build bankroll, you can bonus whore a little bit.

What is disappointing (from my point of view) is that the traffic simply cannot support all of the sites at this time.

Why does this suck?

Simply stated, it forces the tournament prize pools down. Sites will roll out a big tourney and if it doesn't fill they adjust the tourney size downwards.

I suppose if you are strictly a heads-up player, this would mean little to you. However, there is so much dead money in the large fields, any decent player would be foolish not to invest in them.

One really great development of this fierce competition is the lowering of rake. Fantasy Sports Live just announced that all of its HU games are now down to 5%. I would be all over that.

So what's "stage 3" of the DFS industry?

There's going to be eventual consolidation. Some of the sites will be bought out. Some will go under. Players will be pissed they lost money with a failing site.

But hopefully traffic will grow steadily so when the consolidation occurs, there will be bigger prize pools for the player.

Just a quck thought about the Fan Duel FFFC, since it seems to be generating a lot of interest.

If you had a "Condia sized" bankroll, would you buy your way into the FFFC final?

Since the $270 qualifiers are limited to 99 entries, would you buy all 99 entries to get a shot at the $150,000?

If you did buy all of the entries, it would only cost you $20,480 because you would receive all of the $6,250 runner-up prizes.

A finals seat has an average value of $14,583. However, you would need to finish 3rd or better to make a certain profit.

I'm assuming anyone as wealthy as Condia wouldn't mind taking a $5k loss for a shot at glory, right?