11 Beginner XFL DFS Tips.
If you have ever been interested in playing daily fantasy football the XFL provides a unique opportunity to test yourself and develop a process. With only 4 games a week and 8 total teams it's a great way to sharpen your skills without having to dedicate the time it would take for the NFL. I play on Draft Kings almost exclusively (not being paid for this) so all examples will be based on DK scoring and prices.
I'm going to give you the basics to get you going playing XFL DFS. What to expect, what to know, how to build a winning roster. Again these are the basics, a very high level overview. But you can win with these steps. I know because I do it all the time in both XFL and NFL. I plan to dive deeper into most of these points in the future.
1. You're not going to become a millionaire playing DFS.
I know you will see people who say they have won X amount of thousands of dollars. What they won't tell you is how many thousands of dollars they put into play every week. The reality is that these "pros" are making their base income some other way. Probably by selling you a product to make you a "better" DFS player.
It is possible to win huge sums of money playing DFS, but it's unlikely and you need to accept that going in.
2. Don't invest more than you are willing to lose.
You need to be willing to lose everything you invest. If you can't afford to lose your deposit, don't make a deposit. Whether it's $500 a week or $5 doesn't matter. Chances are you are going to lose money the first few weeks. Even if those first couple weeks go great, you will have a bad week. You're going to miss on a player or a player will under perform. no one is perfect and certainly no one can predict the future.
You need to manage your bankroll. If you determine you can lose $100 on the rest of the XFL season than divide that by the 7 remaining weeks. That's just over $14 dollars a week. You should not play more than that. I prefer not to deposit more than I am willing to put in play each week. So if i decide I am willing to lose $70 for the remainder of the XFL season I will deposit $10 on Friday night or Saturday morning. Another key to managing bankroll is to withdrawal any winnings you earn. If I put my $10 in play and win $20 then I will withdrawal $10, leaving $10 for the following week, This way I never have more than I am willing to lose in my Draft Kings account at any given time.
3. Know the game you are playing.
Now that you know to temper your expectations you need to know what you are playing. XFL DFS rosters are made up of 7 roster spots, 1 QB. 1 RB, 2 WR, 2 Flex, 1 Defense. Each player will have a salary based on their expected value (scoring), you will have a $50,000 salary cap (Draft Kings) that you will have to stay under to fill your roster. To determine which positions should take priority you need to be familiar with scoring. On Draft Kings a catch is worth 1 point. So a running back who has 10 carries and 5 catches is often more valuable than a running back who has 20 carries and no catches. You won't be able to determine value on your own if you don't know how scoring works, you will lose money. Play around with the create a lineup feature so you can get an idea of how a lineup is going to look.
4. Know the types of contests and their benefits and shortcomings.
Now you need to know what kind of contests there are to enter and where you focus your attention.
Cash games - Higher chances to hit cash, lower payouts.
- Head to Heads (H2H) are contests in which you and another player go 1 on 1.
- 50/50 are contest with 4 or more players where half of the entries cash and all winning entries are rewarded an equal prize.
- Double ups are contests where the prize for cashing is double the entry fee and nearly half of the entries cash.
Tournaments - Bigger payouts but lower odds to win.
- Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) are the big boys on the block. These are massive tournaments usually consisting of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of entries. These contests do not have to fill to run, thus the guaranteed part. These are likely what you hear about the most. They have low entry fees in comparison to the prize pool. However the number of entries that cash is usually 20% or worse with the bulk of the prize money going to the top 1% or so.
- Qualifiers are tournaments that pay out in the form of an entry, or a ticket, into to a much bigger contest. The field is smaller but the odds of winning that ticket are small. The benefit is that you could turn say $1 into a $25 ticket for a shot at a huge top prize. These usually have between 1-5 tickets to be won and hundreds or thousands of entries available. So you have to be right at the top, often less than the top 1% to net yourself one of these tickets.
- Small field tournaments are tournaments with far fewer player than GPP's. Generally in the hundreds as far as entries. The top prizes won't be thousands of dollars or more and they still have top heavy prize structures, but your path to the top prize is usually much easier.
5. Do your research
You will not win anything if you just plug players in, enter a contest and hope. The term research sounds like it may be difficult and time consuming. It's really not.
There is no right way to do research or one set of particular statistics that will guarantee success. I'll tell you what I use that has proven consistent and keeps my bankroll full.
Vegas
Vegas betting odds, specifically over under and spread. The over under represents how many total points both teams will score per Vegas and the spread determines the favorite to win and by how much. So how do we use these in DFS?
Higher over unders imply more points. This should translate into more statistics for the players involved, therefore more points for your DFS lineup. TD's are huge for DFS. You want as many as you can get. In the XFL with only 4 games a week you likely wont want to exclude players from a game based wholly on over under. But you should focus on players in a game with a high over under.
The spread indicates which team Vegas believes will win and by how much. A -3 means they expect a team to win a close game. A -12 means they expect that team to win by 12 or more points. Teams with big leads tend to run more. Target running backs. If a team is expected to lose by a large margin target quarterbacks and wide receivers as they will likely throw a lot in a comeback attempt.
Stats
Actual results are less important than opportunity. That's not to say you shouldn't factor results in, just don't make it your main focus. You want to target player who are getting constant touches. You want quarterbacks who throw a lot or who have multiple carries for significant rushing yardage. Running backs need touches. You should be looking to target guys who get 15+ touches a game whether they be rushes or receptions. Wide receivers need to be thrown to to accumulate points. Prioritize guys who are getting a large share of a teams targets.
Points against aren't as important for a defense as you would think. Sacks and turnovers are key. Target defenses who are playing teams who turn the ball over and can pressure the quarterback.
6. Build a player pool.
You should take some time before you start building a lineup to create a player pool. Rank each position based on your research. This is where you'll need to know their Draft Kings salary. For cash you want to hit 2.5-3x value. Meaning if the player salary is 10k you need that player to score 25-30 points to hit value. For tournaments you want at least 4x value. So you would need that player to score 40+ points.
Build your player pool based on this. The likely outcome based on a players opportunity, historical production, Vegas odds, and the defense they are playing. Then evaluate weather that player is likely to hit the value you are targeting. Rank them based on that likely hood.
You should build your roster with the players you have in your pool. Ignore players that don't make the cut.
7. Build your lineup.
The way you build your lineup will depend on what contests you want to play.
Cash lineups should be safe. You should have players in the best possible situations. Ideally you would want the top at all of the positions on your player pool, but it is highly unlikely you can fit them all in. So make sure your lineup has players throughout that have a high chance of hitting value, even if they aren't the option you believe is likely to score the most points at that position.
A tournament lineup will need to be far more risky to win the whole thing. You will wan't to pay a premium at some positions but this will hurt you elsewhere. So you will need some cheap options at some positions that have low odds of hitting value but could make the most of the situation they are in and score you that big payday.
I prefer not to build more than one lineup. But if you are building lineups for tournaments you should build multiple and enter all of them into tournaments that allow multi entries.
Stacking is a great way to maximize your points potential. Stacking is just playing a QB and a WR from the same team. If your QB throws a TD to your WR your lineup gets 11 points and that's before yards. Another way is to stack a defense and RB from the same team that is expected to win big. The defense would be presumed to keep the apposing team off the field and likely accumulate turnovers. In theory this maximizes the RB's time and opportunity to accumulate points.
8. Join contests.
Which contests you join is going to depend on what you wan't to accomplish. If you want to play DFS in the hopes of making a few bucks a week then you should play cash games.
If you don't mind losing a lot but want the excitement of hitting submit on a lineup that could win you thousands of dollars then tournaments are for you.
If you are like me and hate losing but want to take a shot at a big payday you can go somewhere in between. I play about 70% cash. The other 30% is usually put into single entry tournaments or small stakes tournaments. It's a lot easier to win a cash game. So you are hedging your bets in a way by maximizing your ability to at least break even.
9. Evaluate your results.
Remember when I said you will probably lose your first couple of weeks. You will keep losing if you don't evaluate your results.
Look at your lineup after all games are complete. You need to determine where you went wrong and what you did right. Evaluate your opponents lineups as well. Try to figure out why they rostered the player they did.
Did you have a really high scoring player that just took up too much salary and forced you to roster some bad plays? Was there a guy you rostered that under performed that could have been replaced by a player in a better position?
You also have to learn to accept that sometimes you make all the right decisions and things just don't work out.
10. Trust yourself more than "experts".
There is nothing wrong with listening to someone's advice. But make sure they are telling you why they think a certain player is a good play. If their analyses is I feel good about this guy, forget everything they just said.
Don't listen to too many opinions. Things can get convoluted if you are listening to too many opinions. It's likely that you will here one person loves a guy and another hates him. At some point when you hear too many opinions your picture will become clouded and you may forget where you were to start.
Trust yourself. If an expert says they dislike someone you like don't let them talk you off of that player unless they bring up information you hadn't considered and it outweighs the reason you were on them in the first place. Don't let someone talk you into someone you don't like either.
11. Don't pay for DFS tools and products.
There are hundreds of websites dedicated to making you a "better" DFS player. They are usually expensive and almost entirely useless. If you are just starting out you wont know how to use all of their tools and and advanced stats. By the time you do you won't need them. Don't get trapped by optimisers and fancy graphs. I promise you that you don't need them.
If you put in a little bit of work and are honest with yourself about your results you will figure out what works best for you and keep getting better.
I know I just said trust yourself. I will be posting my core plays either late Fridays or early Saturdays every week during the XFL season and will likely do so during the NFL season as well. You will be able to see how I use these tips and why I have chosen the players I will be highlighting. I am not doing this intent on you taking my picks as gospel. It's just another way that I hope to help you win some money. Trust yourself first.
I'm going to give you the basics to get you going playing XFL DFS. What to expect, what to know, how to build a winning roster. Again these are the basics, a very high level overview. But you can win with these steps. I know because I do it all the time in both XFL and NFL. I plan to dive deeper into most of these points in the future.
1. You're not going to become a millionaire playing DFS.
I know you will see people who say they have won X amount of thousands of dollars. What they won't tell you is how many thousands of dollars they put into play every week. The reality is that these "pros" are making their base income some other way. Probably by selling you a product to make you a "better" DFS player.
It is possible to win huge sums of money playing DFS, but it's unlikely and you need to accept that going in.
2. Don't invest more than you are willing to lose.
You need to be willing to lose everything you invest. If you can't afford to lose your deposit, don't make a deposit. Whether it's $500 a week or $5 doesn't matter. Chances are you are going to lose money the first few weeks. Even if those first couple weeks go great, you will have a bad week. You're going to miss on a player or a player will under perform. no one is perfect and certainly no one can predict the future.
You need to manage your bankroll. If you determine you can lose $100 on the rest of the XFL season than divide that by the 7 remaining weeks. That's just over $14 dollars a week. You should not play more than that. I prefer not to deposit more than I am willing to put in play each week. So if i decide I am willing to lose $70 for the remainder of the XFL season I will deposit $10 on Friday night or Saturday morning. Another key to managing bankroll is to withdrawal any winnings you earn. If I put my $10 in play and win $20 then I will withdrawal $10, leaving $10 for the following week, This way I never have more than I am willing to lose in my Draft Kings account at any given time.
3. Know the game you are playing.
Now that you know to temper your expectations you need to know what you are playing. XFL DFS rosters are made up of 7 roster spots, 1 QB. 1 RB, 2 WR, 2 Flex, 1 Defense. Each player will have a salary based on their expected value (scoring), you will have a $50,000 salary cap (Draft Kings) that you will have to stay under to fill your roster. To determine which positions should take priority you need to be familiar with scoring. On Draft Kings a catch is worth 1 point. So a running back who has 10 carries and 5 catches is often more valuable than a running back who has 20 carries and no catches. You won't be able to determine value on your own if you don't know how scoring works, you will lose money. Play around with the create a lineup feature so you can get an idea of how a lineup is going to look.
4. Know the types of contests and their benefits and shortcomings.
Now you need to know what kind of contests there are to enter and where you focus your attention.
Cash games - Higher chances to hit cash, lower payouts.
- Head to Heads (H2H) are contests in which you and another player go 1 on 1.
- 50/50 are contest with 4 or more players where half of the entries cash and all winning entries are rewarded an equal prize.
- Double ups are contests where the prize for cashing is double the entry fee and nearly half of the entries cash.
Tournaments - Bigger payouts but lower odds to win.
- Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) are the big boys on the block. These are massive tournaments usually consisting of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of entries. These contests do not have to fill to run, thus the guaranteed part. These are likely what you hear about the most. They have low entry fees in comparison to the prize pool. However the number of entries that cash is usually 20% or worse with the bulk of the prize money going to the top 1% or so.
- Qualifiers are tournaments that pay out in the form of an entry, or a ticket, into to a much bigger contest. The field is smaller but the odds of winning that ticket are small. The benefit is that you could turn say $1 into a $25 ticket for a shot at a huge top prize. These usually have between 1-5 tickets to be won and hundreds or thousands of entries available. So you have to be right at the top, often less than the top 1% to net yourself one of these tickets.
- Small field tournaments are tournaments with far fewer player than GPP's. Generally in the hundreds as far as entries. The top prizes won't be thousands of dollars or more and they still have top heavy prize structures, but your path to the top prize is usually much easier.
5. Do your research
You will not win anything if you just plug players in, enter a contest and hope. The term research sounds like it may be difficult and time consuming. It's really not.
There is no right way to do research or one set of particular statistics that will guarantee success. I'll tell you what I use that has proven consistent and keeps my bankroll full.
Vegas
Vegas betting odds, specifically over under and spread. The over under represents how many total points both teams will score per Vegas and the spread determines the favorite to win and by how much. So how do we use these in DFS?
Higher over unders imply more points. This should translate into more statistics for the players involved, therefore more points for your DFS lineup. TD's are huge for DFS. You want as many as you can get. In the XFL with only 4 games a week you likely wont want to exclude players from a game based wholly on over under. But you should focus on players in a game with a high over under.
The spread indicates which team Vegas believes will win and by how much. A -3 means they expect a team to win a close game. A -12 means they expect that team to win by 12 or more points. Teams with big leads tend to run more. Target running backs. If a team is expected to lose by a large margin target quarterbacks and wide receivers as they will likely throw a lot in a comeback attempt.
Stats
Actual results are less important than opportunity. That's not to say you shouldn't factor results in, just don't make it your main focus. You want to target player who are getting constant touches. You want quarterbacks who throw a lot or who have multiple carries for significant rushing yardage. Running backs need touches. You should be looking to target guys who get 15+ touches a game whether they be rushes or receptions. Wide receivers need to be thrown to to accumulate points. Prioritize guys who are getting a large share of a teams targets.
Points against aren't as important for a defense as you would think. Sacks and turnovers are key. Target defenses who are playing teams who turn the ball over and can pressure the quarterback.
6. Build a player pool.
You should take some time before you start building a lineup to create a player pool. Rank each position based on your research. This is where you'll need to know their Draft Kings salary. For cash you want to hit 2.5-3x value. Meaning if the player salary is 10k you need that player to score 25-30 points to hit value. For tournaments you want at least 4x value. So you would need that player to score 40+ points.
Build your player pool based on this. The likely outcome based on a players opportunity, historical production, Vegas odds, and the defense they are playing. Then evaluate weather that player is likely to hit the value you are targeting. Rank them based on that likely hood.
You should build your roster with the players you have in your pool. Ignore players that don't make the cut.
7. Build your lineup.
The way you build your lineup will depend on what contests you want to play.
Cash lineups should be safe. You should have players in the best possible situations. Ideally you would want the top at all of the positions on your player pool, but it is highly unlikely you can fit them all in. So make sure your lineup has players throughout that have a high chance of hitting value, even if they aren't the option you believe is likely to score the most points at that position.
A tournament lineup will need to be far more risky to win the whole thing. You will wan't to pay a premium at some positions but this will hurt you elsewhere. So you will need some cheap options at some positions that have low odds of hitting value but could make the most of the situation they are in and score you that big payday.
I prefer not to build more than one lineup. But if you are building lineups for tournaments you should build multiple and enter all of them into tournaments that allow multi entries.
Stacking is a great way to maximize your points potential. Stacking is just playing a QB and a WR from the same team. If your QB throws a TD to your WR your lineup gets 11 points and that's before yards. Another way is to stack a defense and RB from the same team that is expected to win big. The defense would be presumed to keep the apposing team off the field and likely accumulate turnovers. In theory this maximizes the RB's time and opportunity to accumulate points.
8. Join contests.
Which contests you join is going to depend on what you wan't to accomplish. If you want to play DFS in the hopes of making a few bucks a week then you should play cash games.
If you don't mind losing a lot but want the excitement of hitting submit on a lineup that could win you thousands of dollars then tournaments are for you.
If you are like me and hate losing but want to take a shot at a big payday you can go somewhere in between. I play about 70% cash. The other 30% is usually put into single entry tournaments or small stakes tournaments. It's a lot easier to win a cash game. So you are hedging your bets in a way by maximizing your ability to at least break even.
9. Evaluate your results.
Remember when I said you will probably lose your first couple of weeks. You will keep losing if you don't evaluate your results.
Look at your lineup after all games are complete. You need to determine where you went wrong and what you did right. Evaluate your opponents lineups as well. Try to figure out why they rostered the player they did.
Did you have a really high scoring player that just took up too much salary and forced you to roster some bad plays? Was there a guy you rostered that under performed that could have been replaced by a player in a better position?
You also have to learn to accept that sometimes you make all the right decisions and things just don't work out.
10. Trust yourself more than "experts".
There is nothing wrong with listening to someone's advice. But make sure they are telling you why they think a certain player is a good play. If their analyses is I feel good about this guy, forget everything they just said.
Don't listen to too many opinions. Things can get convoluted if you are listening to too many opinions. It's likely that you will here one person loves a guy and another hates him. At some point when you hear too many opinions your picture will become clouded and you may forget where you were to start.
Trust yourself. If an expert says they dislike someone you like don't let them talk you off of that player unless they bring up information you hadn't considered and it outweighs the reason you were on them in the first place. Don't let someone talk you into someone you don't like either.
11. Don't pay for DFS tools and products.
There are hundreds of websites dedicated to making you a "better" DFS player. They are usually expensive and almost entirely useless. If you are just starting out you wont know how to use all of their tools and and advanced stats. By the time you do you won't need them. Don't get trapped by optimisers and fancy graphs. I promise you that you don't need them.
If you put in a little bit of work and are honest with yourself about your results you will figure out what works best for you and keep getting better.
I know I just said trust yourself. I will be posting my core plays either late Fridays or early Saturdays every week during the XFL season and will likely do so during the NFL season as well. You will be able to see how I use these tips and why I have chosen the players I will be highlighting. I am not doing this intent on you taking my picks as gospel. It's just another way that I hope to help you win some money. Trust yourself first.
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