FanDuel advice: How to minimize loss

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Full disclosure? I’m good at FanDuel, but I’m not great. I don’t have the fancy algorithms that the guys at the top of the top use to make their millions in fantasy football, fantasy baseball. What I do is pay attention, keep a spreadsheet of far too many stats, and work with a system.

I’ve said it before, but my goal in any given week is to not lose money, or at the very least not lose much. In any given week, I might hit it big in a tournament (where “big” is anything from a small multiplier on my entry to, you know, all the dollars) in some week, and so long as I keep my losses to a minimum in the rest of the weeks, the big(ish) wins are enough to make my season a success.

That’s the approach in these games. Assuming you aren’t one of those fancy algorithm folk, FanDuel isn’t a career. It’s a nice little supplement, with an outside chance at some real, significant money. That’s all I treat it as, and how I recommend just about anyone else should treat it as well.

To wit, there’s a strategy. In a given week, I’ll enter one, two, three tournaments. Any number, really, risking any amount. That part isn’t important, it just depends on how excited I am about a given week or matchups and how much I want to play.

But then I hedge. I pick a lineup or two that I feel is particularly strong for cash games (not tournaments) and I enter it over and over and over in 50/50 games, head-to-heads, what-have-you. I enter enough that, if my tournaments all lose and my cash-game entries all win, I’ve come out a few dollars ahead at worst. If I’m wrong about this lineup or two, well heck, I’m too bad at this anyway. But if I’m even sort of right about them, enough of the cash-game entries will win that my (theoretical) tournament losses are basically offset.

It’s not foolproof, of course. I can be wrong about my cash-game entries. But in 17 weeks, if I am wrong twice, win in tournaments four or five times, and break even the rest (not at all unreasonable, and more-or-less how my season has gone), I’ll come out well ahead. Not rich, not unless I get algorithm-lucky some week, but hey, money’s nice.

Profit’s profit. That’s the guiding principle. You want to have more than you started with. Do what it takes to make that happen.