June 22nd, 2011 marks the 4th anniversary of the launch Fantasy Sports Live, and the first salary cap based daily fantasy baseball. To celebrate this milestone, and to reward our loyal customers we will be offering a $4 free cash bonus to anyone who scores exactly 44 points in any fantasy baseball league at FSL between now and June 22nd, 2011. On our 4th year anniversary (June 22nd) we will up the bonus to $40 for anyone who scores exactly 44 points.
To claim your bonus cash, enter any fantasy baseball league at FSL between now and June 22nd 2011 and score exactly 44 points. Send an email to support@fantasysportslive.com with-in 48 hours of your score with the league ID and we will credit your Fantasy Sports Live account with the free bonus cash.
Thanks to everyone who have made our first four years in operation a success. We look forward to many more years of growth as we continue to rewrite the rules of fantasy sports.
Showing posts with label Daily Fantasy Baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daily Fantasy Baseball. Show all posts
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Fantasy Baseball 2011
Looking for the best fantasy baseball site in 2011? Look no further than Fantasy Sports Live. Next week will mark the beginning of our 5th season of daily fantasy baseball. We were the first site to offer salary cap based daily fantasy sports for money in June 2007, and have evolved our offering over the years based on customer feedback to what we feel is the best daily fantasy game on the web. For those new to the site or new to daily fantasy baseball, I am going to cover in detail the daily fantasy baseball leagues offered by FantasySportsLive.
Salary Cap Types
Performance based Ranking Cap Leagues (pts)
For our most popular ranking cap leagues, player costs are equal to their average fantasy points scored per game times 10. For example a left fielder who averages 4.2 fantasy points per game played in our scoring system will cost 42 points of cap to add to your fantasy baseball team. At the beginning of the season we use last year's average fantasy points. During the first month of the season we start to move player costs to their 2011 fantasy point averages. By the end of the first month, player costs will be entirely based on 2011 statistics. Player costs are updated weekly during the first few months of the season, and every two weeks after that. There is no maximum price for a player, but we use a minimum cost of 10 points for any hitter who averages less than 10 fantasy points per game, and 100 points for any pitcher who averages less than 10 fantasy points per game.
Pay Based True Salary Cap Leagues ($k)
Our Salary Cap leagues are true salary cap leagues in that they are based on actual player salaries. Pay is only loosely correlated with performance, so player pricing can be radically different in our salary cap leagues vs. our ranking cap leagues. For all players except starting pitchers, we take the MLB players 2011 actual salary and divide by 162 games to get their per game cost to the team. For starting pitchers we take the players salary and divide it by 32 expected starts to get their per game cost to the team (starting pitchers only play in games that they start typically). Position players get a minimum cap of $10,000 if they earn less than 1.62 Million per year. Their is no maximum cap value for position players. For starting pitchers we use a maximum cap value of $350,000 and a minimum cap value of $100,000. The maximum cap is in place, because many top paid pitchers would cost more than the entire cap amount for your fantasy team if not capped. We use the minimum cap level because drafting a pitcher who cost less than 100k would leave you with too many options for top hitters. We find that this balance works pretty well for our salary cap leagues. Since player costs are based on actual salaries and not in season performance, these costs are fixed for the entire season and are not updated. The total cap value of your team represent what it would cost you in actual dollars to field your fantasy baseball roster for one game.
No Cap Leagues (No)
If your not very good at math, or are a top investment banker our No Cap leagues may be right for you. For our no Cap leagues all players cost the same ($0), so you just draft whoever you want for each of the nine fantasy baseball starting positions. The skill for these leagues comes from the ability to project the top fantasy scoring player at each position without any concern for cost. You generally end up with star studded fantasy dream teams that put up epic fantasy scores, which can make for some pretty exciting fantasy leagues.
Auto Draft Leagues (Auto)
If you don't like the possibility of sharing a fantasy player with your opponent, an Auto Draft league may be right for you. In our Autodraft leagues you rank your top two choices at each of the nine fantasy baseball positions. Your heads-up opponent does the same. At the start time of the league we use an automated procedure to select nine unique players for you and your opponent, among the 18 players that you each ranked. We use a modified snake draft to go through each position, minimizing any draft order advantage. First pick is determined by the lowest ranking cap total of the 18 players selected between the two heads-up opponents. Our auto leagues were designed from the ground-up for daily fantasy baseball, and are not simply an automated live draft. This makes them fast and easy to use daily.
Daily Fantasy Baseball Scoring
Our fantasy baseball scoring system from 2010 remains in place for 2011. Our scoring system is designed to allow for the widest variety of competitive fantasy baseball teams to be created among our draft pool. Keep in mind that for ranking cap leagues a player's cost is exactly 10x their average fantasy points scored per game. Players that score high in our scoring system cost a lot, and players that don't score much, don't cost much. You can build a competitive fantasy team using any mix of high scoring and low scoring players that you like.
Hitter Scoring
Single = 1 pt
Double = 2 pts
Triple = 3 pts
Home Run = 4 pts
Walk = 1 pt
Run Scored = 2 pts
RBI = 2 pts
Stolen Base = 2 pts
Strike Out = -1 pt
Starting Pitcher Scoring (hitting stats not counted)
1/3 Inning pitched = 1 pt
Strike Out - 1 pt
Win = 8 pts
Hit allowed = -1 pt
Walk allowed = -1pt
Earned Run allowed = -2 pts
What's New for Fantasy Baseball 2011
Lower Rake
We have new lower rake for our Heads-up leagues in 2011. We now keep just 6-7.4% of entry fees in all heads-up leagues. We lowered our rake to allow for a much larger percentage of our players to make money long-term from fantasy baseball, and it works. FSL has more profitable players than any competing site that we are aware of, because of our rake structure that is 26-40% lower than a typical 10% rake site. For multiplayer leagues our rake is now 9% maximum, and we continue to offer guaranteed prizes in multis. For example any league that has 2 or more entries will run and pay out the listed prizes, even if the league does not completely fill up. As a result of this the long-term rake we get for multiplayer leagues is in the 7-8% range, and much lower than other sites that cancel all leagues that do not fill up.
Larger Fields
We are now running 25 and 50 player fantasy leagues with the top 5 paid. Last year we had a maximum league size of 10 players.
Beginner Leagues
Beginner leagues do not allow players with more than 100 cash wins on Fantasy Sports Live to enter them. If you are new to FSL, they are a great place to try out our leagues and build-up a nice bankroll before taking on some of the stiffer competition on the site.
Daily Fantasy Baseball Strategy
This is a pretty big topic, so I am just going to touch on it briefly here, and specifically for our most popular ranking cap leagues. The best daily fantasy players try to project what each MLB player will score in each of a daily league's games, and then try to build the highest projected scoring team that will fit under the salary cap. Its both as simple and as complicated as that. Some players use advanced mathematics and statistics to project fantasy baseball scoring and some just have it all in their head from years of following Major League Baseball. Let me cover a couple of strategy topics.
Top Pitcher, Top Hitters, or Some Kind of Mix?
Lets take a typical 450 point ranking cap league. Since player costs are 10 times their average fantasy points scored per game, if you use all 450 points blindly you will have a team that scores 45 fantasy points on average. When you apply some skill to your selections, your average score should be even higher. The texture of your fantasy team is an important consideration. Top pitchers can cost 225 points or more, and low end pitchers can cost 100 points. If you go with a 225 point pitcher in a 450 point cap, you are planning on getting 50% of your fantasy score from the starting pitcher position. If you go with a 100 point pitcher, you are planning on getting less than 25% of you fantasy score from your pitcher. These are huge differences. If you are better at handicapping hitters, than starting pitchers, you may want to spend your cap money on top hitters vs. a top pitcher. If you really know starting pitchers, you may want to do the opposite. The point is that the most important decision you make may be how much to spend on your pitcher, because that has a lot to do with the texture of your fantasy baseball team.
How to Project a Starting Pitcher's Fantasy Score
I like to start with their average fantasy points scored per game, and then adjust for any game specific factors that would tend to make a pitcher score higher or lower than average. Game specific factors to consider include:
1) Offensive strength of the opposing team
2) Strength of the opposing pitcher
3) Home or Away
4) Quality of relief pitching on both teams
5) Pitchers recent performance
How to Project a Hitters Fantasy Score
For hitters it is the same routine. Start with their average fantasy points scored per game, and then adjust for any game specific factors that would tend to make a hitter score higher or lower than average. Game specific factors for hitters include:
1) Strength of the opponents starting pitcher
2) Strength of the opponents relief pitching
3) Starting pitchers throwing hand
4) Home or Away
5) Hitters recent performance
Building Your Daily Fantasy Baseball Team
Once you have projected your players, and know what each players cost is, you draft the team that is projected to score the most points while staying under the cap. This sounds easy, but is often one of the tougher things to do. What I like to look at is a players projection relative to their cost. Lets say a player is projected to score 30 points and costs 15 points, while another player at the same position is projected to score 40 points and costs 25 points. The player projected to score 30 points is actually a better selection, because he is projected to score a higher percentage above his cap value than the 40 point player. So you don't necessarily want the top fantasy point projected player, but want the one who is expected to be the best value relative to their cost. Saving the 10 cap points by going with the 30 point player allows you to spend it elsewhere on other players who are likely to exceed their cap values greatly.
Stay Away From Top Name Players If You Can
Often some top name, more expensive players will have some value. While you may want or have to draft them you need to be careful. It is often better to build a team from lesser known players as long as they project out to similar or better values. Less skillful players will tend to gravitate towards names that they recognize, so there is a bigger chance your teams will have overlapping players, reducing your skill advantage. Also, top name players tend to be expensive, and have more difficulty blowing through their cap cost vs. lesser known players. The sweet spot is typically in second tier type players that look to have excellent match-ups vs. that top name player that consistently puts up big numbers.
Final Thoughts
I am going to stop here for now, but will touch more on daily fantasy baseball strategy going forward, so stay tuned, and good luck with Fantasy Baseball 2011 at Fantasy Sports Live
Salary Cap Types
Performance based Ranking Cap Leagues (pts)
For our most popular ranking cap leagues, player costs are equal to their average fantasy points scored per game times 10. For example a left fielder who averages 4.2 fantasy points per game played in our scoring system will cost 42 points of cap to add to your fantasy baseball team. At the beginning of the season we use last year's average fantasy points. During the first month of the season we start to move player costs to their 2011 fantasy point averages. By the end of the first month, player costs will be entirely based on 2011 statistics. Player costs are updated weekly during the first few months of the season, and every two weeks after that. There is no maximum price for a player, but we use a minimum cost of 10 points for any hitter who averages less than 10 fantasy points per game, and 100 points for any pitcher who averages less than 10 fantasy points per game.
Pay Based True Salary Cap Leagues ($k)
Our Salary Cap leagues are true salary cap leagues in that they are based on actual player salaries. Pay is only loosely correlated with performance, so player pricing can be radically different in our salary cap leagues vs. our ranking cap leagues. For all players except starting pitchers, we take the MLB players 2011 actual salary and divide by 162 games to get their per game cost to the team. For starting pitchers we take the players salary and divide it by 32 expected starts to get their per game cost to the team (starting pitchers only play in games that they start typically). Position players get a minimum cap of $10,000 if they earn less than 1.62 Million per year. Their is no maximum cap value for position players. For starting pitchers we use a maximum cap value of $350,000 and a minimum cap value of $100,000. The maximum cap is in place, because many top paid pitchers would cost more than the entire cap amount for your fantasy team if not capped. We use the minimum cap level because drafting a pitcher who cost less than 100k would leave you with too many options for top hitters. We find that this balance works pretty well for our salary cap leagues. Since player costs are based on actual salaries and not in season performance, these costs are fixed for the entire season and are not updated. The total cap value of your team represent what it would cost you in actual dollars to field your fantasy baseball roster for one game.
No Cap Leagues (No)
If your not very good at math, or are a top investment banker our No Cap leagues may be right for you. For our no Cap leagues all players cost the same ($0), so you just draft whoever you want for each of the nine fantasy baseball starting positions. The skill for these leagues comes from the ability to project the top fantasy scoring player at each position without any concern for cost. You generally end up with star studded fantasy dream teams that put up epic fantasy scores, which can make for some pretty exciting fantasy leagues.
Auto Draft Leagues (Auto)
If you don't like the possibility of sharing a fantasy player with your opponent, an Auto Draft league may be right for you. In our Autodraft leagues you rank your top two choices at each of the nine fantasy baseball positions. Your heads-up opponent does the same. At the start time of the league we use an automated procedure to select nine unique players for you and your opponent, among the 18 players that you each ranked. We use a modified snake draft to go through each position, minimizing any draft order advantage. First pick is determined by the lowest ranking cap total of the 18 players selected between the two heads-up opponents. Our auto leagues were designed from the ground-up for daily fantasy baseball, and are not simply an automated live draft. This makes them fast and easy to use daily.
Daily Fantasy Baseball Scoring
Our fantasy baseball scoring system from 2010 remains in place for 2011. Our scoring system is designed to allow for the widest variety of competitive fantasy baseball teams to be created among our draft pool. Keep in mind that for ranking cap leagues a player's cost is exactly 10x their average fantasy points scored per game. Players that score high in our scoring system cost a lot, and players that don't score much, don't cost much. You can build a competitive fantasy team using any mix of high scoring and low scoring players that you like.
Hitter Scoring
Single = 1 pt
Double = 2 pts
Triple = 3 pts
Home Run = 4 pts
Walk = 1 pt
Run Scored = 2 pts
RBI = 2 pts
Stolen Base = 2 pts
Strike Out = -1 pt
Starting Pitcher Scoring (hitting stats not counted)
1/3 Inning pitched = 1 pt
Strike Out - 1 pt
Win = 8 pts
Hit allowed = -1 pt
Walk allowed = -1pt
Earned Run allowed = -2 pts
What's New for Fantasy Baseball 2011
Lower Rake
We have new lower rake for our Heads-up leagues in 2011. We now keep just 6-7.4% of entry fees in all heads-up leagues. We lowered our rake to allow for a much larger percentage of our players to make money long-term from fantasy baseball, and it works. FSL has more profitable players than any competing site that we are aware of, because of our rake structure that is 26-40% lower than a typical 10% rake site. For multiplayer leagues our rake is now 9% maximum, and we continue to offer guaranteed prizes in multis. For example any league that has 2 or more entries will run and pay out the listed prizes, even if the league does not completely fill up. As a result of this the long-term rake we get for multiplayer leagues is in the 7-8% range, and much lower than other sites that cancel all leagues that do not fill up.
Larger Fields
We are now running 25 and 50 player fantasy leagues with the top 5 paid. Last year we had a maximum league size of 10 players.
Beginner Leagues
Beginner leagues do not allow players with more than 100 cash wins on Fantasy Sports Live to enter them. If you are new to FSL, they are a great place to try out our leagues and build-up a nice bankroll before taking on some of the stiffer competition on the site.
Daily Fantasy Baseball Strategy
This is a pretty big topic, so I am just going to touch on it briefly here, and specifically for our most popular ranking cap leagues. The best daily fantasy players try to project what each MLB player will score in each of a daily league's games, and then try to build the highest projected scoring team that will fit under the salary cap. Its both as simple and as complicated as that. Some players use advanced mathematics and statistics to project fantasy baseball scoring and some just have it all in their head from years of following Major League Baseball. Let me cover a couple of strategy topics.
Top Pitcher, Top Hitters, or Some Kind of Mix?
Lets take a typical 450 point ranking cap league. Since player costs are 10 times their average fantasy points scored per game, if you use all 450 points blindly you will have a team that scores 45 fantasy points on average. When you apply some skill to your selections, your average score should be even higher. The texture of your fantasy team is an important consideration. Top pitchers can cost 225 points or more, and low end pitchers can cost 100 points. If you go with a 225 point pitcher in a 450 point cap, you are planning on getting 50% of your fantasy score from the starting pitcher position. If you go with a 100 point pitcher, you are planning on getting less than 25% of you fantasy score from your pitcher. These are huge differences. If you are better at handicapping hitters, than starting pitchers, you may want to spend your cap money on top hitters vs. a top pitcher. If you really know starting pitchers, you may want to do the opposite. The point is that the most important decision you make may be how much to spend on your pitcher, because that has a lot to do with the texture of your fantasy baseball team.
How to Project a Starting Pitcher's Fantasy Score
I like to start with their average fantasy points scored per game, and then adjust for any game specific factors that would tend to make a pitcher score higher or lower than average. Game specific factors to consider include:
1) Offensive strength of the opposing team
2) Strength of the opposing pitcher
3) Home or Away
4) Quality of relief pitching on both teams
5) Pitchers recent performance
How to Project a Hitters Fantasy Score
For hitters it is the same routine. Start with their average fantasy points scored per game, and then adjust for any game specific factors that would tend to make a hitter score higher or lower than average. Game specific factors for hitters include:
1) Strength of the opponents starting pitcher
2) Strength of the opponents relief pitching
3) Starting pitchers throwing hand
4) Home or Away
5) Hitters recent performance
Building Your Daily Fantasy Baseball Team
Once you have projected your players, and know what each players cost is, you draft the team that is projected to score the most points while staying under the cap. This sounds easy, but is often one of the tougher things to do. What I like to look at is a players projection relative to their cost. Lets say a player is projected to score 30 points and costs 15 points, while another player at the same position is projected to score 40 points and costs 25 points. The player projected to score 30 points is actually a better selection, because he is projected to score a higher percentage above his cap value than the 40 point player. So you don't necessarily want the top fantasy point projected player, but want the one who is expected to be the best value relative to their cost. Saving the 10 cap points by going with the 30 point player allows you to spend it elsewhere on other players who are likely to exceed their cap values greatly.
Stay Away From Top Name Players If You Can
Often some top name, more expensive players will have some value. While you may want or have to draft them you need to be careful. It is often better to build a team from lesser known players as long as they project out to similar or better values. Less skillful players will tend to gravitate towards names that they recognize, so there is a bigger chance your teams will have overlapping players, reducing your skill advantage. Also, top name players tend to be expensive, and have more difficulty blowing through their cap cost vs. lesser known players. The sweet spot is typically in second tier type players that look to have excellent match-ups vs. that top name player that consistently puts up big numbers.
Final Thoughts
I am going to stop here for now, but will touch more on daily fantasy baseball strategy going forward, so stay tuned, and good luck with Fantasy Baseball 2011 at Fantasy Sports Live
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Fantasy Basketball Large Field Fridays
Fantasy Sports Live is rolling out new larger field fantasy basketball leagues on Fridays. The size of the fields and guaranteed cash prizes will be based on demand, so if you like 50+ player fantasy basketball leagues, help us fill them and we will keep upping the guarantees and field sizes. For this Friday we are offering three large filed fantasy basketball leagues with two of them the largest offered to date. Keep in mind that our fantasy league prizes are guaranteed even if a league does not fill. You may want to check on Friday before 7PM Eastern to see if they are going to fill, and if there is potential for an overlay (More prizes paid than fees collected)
Large Field Friday Fantasy Basketball Leagues
1) $1 Entry, 50 Player, $50 Guaranteed, Top 5 Paid
2) $5.5 Entry, 50 Player, $250 Guaranteed, Top 5 Paid
3) $11 Entry, 25 Player, $250 Guaranteed, Top 5 Paid
Large Field Friday Fantasy Basketball Leagues
1) $1 Entry, 50 Player, $50 Guaranteed, Top 5 Paid
2) $5.5 Entry, 50 Player, $250 Guaranteed, Top 5 Paid
3) $11 Entry, 25 Player, $250 Guaranteed, Top 5 Paid
Friday, August 6, 2010
Daily Fantasy Baseball Strategy Guide
I have been playing a little daily fantasy baseball at a competing site, and I have picked up a few more strategy tips for success at selecting a fantasy baseball team that might help you earn a little extra cash. Rather than focus on these few new tips I thought I would go the whole nine yards and offer a complete strategy guide that includes everything you should be thinking about before you go out to play some daily fantasy baseball. Let’s go through them one by one.
Site Selection
If you want to win money playing fantasy sports, site selection is a HUGE factor. The rake and structures vary from site to site. Some sites are friendlier to new players while others are friendlier to sharks. No matter how good you are at daily fantasy sports, site selection can have a huge impact on your ROI. Now I am going to go ahead and recommend our site, FantasySportsLive.com over all of the others. I will give you several reasons why, but please go out and look around if you don’t want to take my word for it.
1) Rake: Fantasy Sports Live has the best rake, with rake free leagues everyday, and 9% and lower rake for all leagues $5.5 and above. Rake is taken directly out of your winnings, so keeping this low can only increase your winnings and ROI. Typical rake is 10-20% in the daily fantasy sports industry.
2) League Structures: Fantasy Sports Live has the widest variety of league structures in the industry by far. If you have an edge in picking scrubs, or picking stars we have the cap structure that will let you take advantage. We also have the fastest and easiest automated draft for those of you who don’t like to share your players for the day. Also, our individual player cap values are the most transparent in the industry. For performance based caps they are exactly proportional to the average fantasy points a player earns per game. For salary based caps they are the player’s actual salary per game. Other sites use complicated formulas that you would need a PhD to understand. The last thing you want to do playing daily fantasy sports is to try to adjust for bad player cap values. Bad player cap values also tend to take the skill out of the game, and make it more of a luck fest.
3) Overlays and Guarantees: Fantasy Sports Live league prizes are all guaranteed, and all multi-player leagues can pay an overlay. Overlays are when the site is paying out more than they are taking in for a league. This is money in the bank for the profitable daily fantasy sports player, and those in the know are all over them. Nearly all sites with the exception of Fantasy Sports Live prohibit overlays in their rules. This means that the prizes are not really guaranteed, because they will not run a league unless they (the site) are guaranteed to make money. At FSL we value our customers and do not want them wasting valuable time entering a league that may or may not run. So anytime 2+ players can compete to make the fantasy baseball league skill based, the prizes are paid out as advertised. When this happens enjoy some extra free cash from FSL for your efforts.
4) New player or shark friendly: Fantasy Sports Live is new player friendly which tends to lower the quality of competition. Most competing sites are shark friendly which tends to raise the level of competition. I will not go into detail as to why, but I will say that it is easier to win money in daily fantasy sports from a new player than a shark.
5) League Traffic: Fantasy Sports Live has a large traffic base from over three years in operation, the longest in the industry. Most competing sites are pretty light on traffic lowering your chance for the match-up you are interested in.
These are the most important site selection factors for profiting at fantasy sports and FSL is the best or nearly the best at every single one of them. OK, enough about fantasy sports live. Now for the good stuff.
League Selection (aka Table Selection)
I can’t over emphasize the importance of this. Daily fantasy sports in most cases are played head to head against another opponent. There is no set score to beat, you just need to beat your opponent's score. You could literally be the second worst daily fantasy baseball player in the world and still earn a profit if you were matching yourself against the worst player in the world. Also, the second best fantasy sports player in the world would have a losing record if they were constantly matched up against the best. As you can see, opponent selection can be even more important than your own daily fantasy sports skill set. Luckily for everyone, there is the new site called RotoGrinders where you can look up info on your opponent. You can’t see their complete win/loss record, but you can see how much they have won which is a decent indication of how good they are. Choose your matches wisely and try to get matched up with unknown players or players with a limited track record in daily fantasy sports and you are bound to increase your cash winnings and ROI.
Team Selection – Salary Cap Drafts
Before I go into fantasy baseball specifically, I want to cover a general concept in Salary Cap drafts that is sometimes overlooked. You want to try to figure out how many fantasy points players are likely to score (projected to score), but you do not necessarily want to pick the players with the highest projections. What I like to do is look at cost per projected fantasy point that day. For example a player with a cost of 50 pts and a projection of 4 fantasy points is a worse choice than a player with a cost of 30 pts and a projection of 3 fantasy points. The 50 pt player will likely score more fantasy points, but is overpriced relative to the 30 pt player. You want to try to draft the team with the highest projected total fantasy score, and the only way to do this is to minimize the cost per fantasy point that you are paying, while spending the entire cap if possible. So be careful before selecting that obvious choice that may actually be not quite the best.
Player Projections – Fantasy Baseball Hitters
Player projection can be found on other websites, you can develop your own mathematical models, or you may just intuitively understand player projections from your high level of baseball knowledge. No matter how you do it, this is where to start. I like to use a players average fantasy points per game as a base, and try to determine all of the factors in today’s game that would cause them to tend to score higher or lower than their season average score. Factors to consider are listed below.
1) Opponent's starting pitcher’s strength: You want your hitter against a poor pitcher and not an ace.
2) Opponent team's relief pitching: The starter will not likely complete the whole game, so you will probably get a few innings with relievers. Are your opponent's relievers better or worse than average?
3) Opponent starting pitcher's throwing hand: How does your hitter do against left and right handed pitchers? Are they going to do better or worse than average based on the opposing starter?
4) Home or Away game: Is the game at home or away, and does the hitter perform better at home or away? Also keep in mind that home batters may get fewer at bats at home vs. away, as the home team may not play the bottom of the ninth.
5) Heat Factor: How has your hitter been playing lately? Baseball players are pretty streaky. Hot players tend to stay hot and cold players tend to stay cold in the short-term. Try to select players that have been playing very well lately.
Player Projections – Fantasy Pitchers
Below are the factors to consider for fantasy pitcher projections.
1) Opponent hitter strength: What teams are easiest for fantasy pitchers to score highly against and are more likely to get the win against, and what teams tend to shell starting pitchers and chase them out of games? Give your pitcher a good match-up and he will score higher than normal over the long-term.
2) Opposing pitcher strength: Are you pitching against an ace or a scrub? This matters if you want to get the win because of it's high fantasy score. A good pitcher will still likely lose if they are up against a better pitcher. So not only do you want a good pitcher, you want to make sure that the opposing pitcher is bad.
3) Home or away game: How does your pitcher do at home vs. away? Some ballparks work very well with starting pitchers and others do not. Also, pitchers in general tend to score higher at home because home teams are more likely to get the win.
4) What are the odds?: I always like to check an online sports book to see who the highest favored teams are that day to win. The highest favored teams are the most likely to get the win according to the public's consensus. A highly favored starting pitcher is simply more likely to win than they are to lose. It is good, if not required, that the pitcher you select is also on a highly favored team that day.
Is your selected player going to play?
Picking the best possible daily fantasy baseball team will not get you too far if the manager decides to rest your player or the game gets rained out. This is what makes daily fantasy baseball much more complicated than other fantasy sports where rain outs are not possible, and players tend to play every game during the regular season. Below are two things you can do here.
1) Verify that your player is in the starting line-up: This can get a bit tough, but in general starting line-ups are announced about 1 hour before game time. If you are on twitter you can use MLBStarting9 which tweets out the starting line-ups as they are announced, or find another source. So you should be able to get the lineups for the games starting with-in an hour of the league's start time. Try to favor confirmed players if you can. Many starting-line-ups will not be confirmed in time for the league's start. If you select a player from one of those games you are taking a decent risk. If you have to do it anyway, try to make sure that your player is not injured and tends to start all games, and then cross your fingers and hope your player actually plays. I tend to select players that are confirmed over players that are not when it is a close choice.
2) Verify the weather: You should check out the game time weather for the games your fantasy baseball players are playing in. The Sports Network has a pretty nice summary of the weather and chances of rain, so I would use that rather than trying to look up the weather forecasts for each stadium yourself.
Final Thoughts
I tried to cover the most important factors to consider when trying to profit from daily fantasy baseball. You don’t necessarily need to cover them all to be successful (covering them all is a lot of work). Also, you may find some other factors that are pretty important that I did not list. Keep those ones to yourself and exploit them all day long. Another thing to keep in mind is that Daily Fantasy Baseball is pretty high variance. It is possibly the highest variance daily fantasy sport that there is. You can select a great fantasy baseball team and still lose, and you can select a very poor team and still win. You need to take a long-term view if you want to see if your system really works. So don’t get discouraged if your results are not stellar from the beginning. Overtime you will be able to see if you are a winning daily fantasy baseball player or not, but that can’t be decided in one day or one week.
Site Selection
If you want to win money playing fantasy sports, site selection is a HUGE factor. The rake and structures vary from site to site. Some sites are friendlier to new players while others are friendlier to sharks. No matter how good you are at daily fantasy sports, site selection can have a huge impact on your ROI. Now I am going to go ahead and recommend our site, FantasySportsLive.com over all of the others. I will give you several reasons why, but please go out and look around if you don’t want to take my word for it.
1) Rake: Fantasy Sports Live has the best rake, with rake free leagues everyday, and 9% and lower rake for all leagues $5.5 and above. Rake is taken directly out of your winnings, so keeping this low can only increase your winnings and ROI. Typical rake is 10-20% in the daily fantasy sports industry.
2) League Structures: Fantasy Sports Live has the widest variety of league structures in the industry by far. If you have an edge in picking scrubs, or picking stars we have the cap structure that will let you take advantage. We also have the fastest and easiest automated draft for those of you who don’t like to share your players for the day. Also, our individual player cap values are the most transparent in the industry. For performance based caps they are exactly proportional to the average fantasy points a player earns per game. For salary based caps they are the player’s actual salary per game. Other sites use complicated formulas that you would need a PhD to understand. The last thing you want to do playing daily fantasy sports is to try to adjust for bad player cap values. Bad player cap values also tend to take the skill out of the game, and make it more of a luck fest.
3) Overlays and Guarantees: Fantasy Sports Live league prizes are all guaranteed, and all multi-player leagues can pay an overlay. Overlays are when the site is paying out more than they are taking in for a league. This is money in the bank for the profitable daily fantasy sports player, and those in the know are all over them. Nearly all sites with the exception of Fantasy Sports Live prohibit overlays in their rules. This means that the prizes are not really guaranteed, because they will not run a league unless they (the site) are guaranteed to make money. At FSL we value our customers and do not want them wasting valuable time entering a league that may or may not run. So anytime 2+ players can compete to make the fantasy baseball league skill based, the prizes are paid out as advertised. When this happens enjoy some extra free cash from FSL for your efforts.
4) New player or shark friendly: Fantasy Sports Live is new player friendly which tends to lower the quality of competition. Most competing sites are shark friendly which tends to raise the level of competition. I will not go into detail as to why, but I will say that it is easier to win money in daily fantasy sports from a new player than a shark.
5) League Traffic: Fantasy Sports Live has a large traffic base from over three years in operation, the longest in the industry. Most competing sites are pretty light on traffic lowering your chance for the match-up you are interested in.
These are the most important site selection factors for profiting at fantasy sports and FSL is the best or nearly the best at every single one of them. OK, enough about fantasy sports live. Now for the good stuff.
League Selection (aka Table Selection)
I can’t over emphasize the importance of this. Daily fantasy sports in most cases are played head to head against another opponent. There is no set score to beat, you just need to beat your opponent's score. You could literally be the second worst daily fantasy baseball player in the world and still earn a profit if you were matching yourself against the worst player in the world. Also, the second best fantasy sports player in the world would have a losing record if they were constantly matched up against the best. As you can see, opponent selection can be even more important than your own daily fantasy sports skill set. Luckily for everyone, there is the new site called RotoGrinders where you can look up info on your opponent. You can’t see their complete win/loss record, but you can see how much they have won which is a decent indication of how good they are. Choose your matches wisely and try to get matched up with unknown players or players with a limited track record in daily fantasy sports and you are bound to increase your cash winnings and ROI.
Team Selection – Salary Cap Drafts
Before I go into fantasy baseball specifically, I want to cover a general concept in Salary Cap drafts that is sometimes overlooked. You want to try to figure out how many fantasy points players are likely to score (projected to score), but you do not necessarily want to pick the players with the highest projections. What I like to do is look at cost per projected fantasy point that day. For example a player with a cost of 50 pts and a projection of 4 fantasy points is a worse choice than a player with a cost of 30 pts and a projection of 3 fantasy points. The 50 pt player will likely score more fantasy points, but is overpriced relative to the 30 pt player. You want to try to draft the team with the highest projected total fantasy score, and the only way to do this is to minimize the cost per fantasy point that you are paying, while spending the entire cap if possible. So be careful before selecting that obvious choice that may actually be not quite the best.
Player Projections – Fantasy Baseball Hitters
Player projection can be found on other websites, you can develop your own mathematical models, or you may just intuitively understand player projections from your high level of baseball knowledge. No matter how you do it, this is where to start. I like to use a players average fantasy points per game as a base, and try to determine all of the factors in today’s game that would cause them to tend to score higher or lower than their season average score. Factors to consider are listed below.
1) Opponent's starting pitcher’s strength: You want your hitter against a poor pitcher and not an ace.
2) Opponent team's relief pitching: The starter will not likely complete the whole game, so you will probably get a few innings with relievers. Are your opponent's relievers better or worse than average?
3) Opponent starting pitcher's throwing hand: How does your hitter do against left and right handed pitchers? Are they going to do better or worse than average based on the opposing starter?
4) Home or Away game: Is the game at home or away, and does the hitter perform better at home or away? Also keep in mind that home batters may get fewer at bats at home vs. away, as the home team may not play the bottom of the ninth.
5) Heat Factor: How has your hitter been playing lately? Baseball players are pretty streaky. Hot players tend to stay hot and cold players tend to stay cold in the short-term. Try to select players that have been playing very well lately.
Player Projections – Fantasy Pitchers
Below are the factors to consider for fantasy pitcher projections.
1) Opponent hitter strength: What teams are easiest for fantasy pitchers to score highly against and are more likely to get the win against, and what teams tend to shell starting pitchers and chase them out of games? Give your pitcher a good match-up and he will score higher than normal over the long-term.
2) Opposing pitcher strength: Are you pitching against an ace or a scrub? This matters if you want to get the win because of it's high fantasy score. A good pitcher will still likely lose if they are up against a better pitcher. So not only do you want a good pitcher, you want to make sure that the opposing pitcher is bad.
3) Home or away game: How does your pitcher do at home vs. away? Some ballparks work very well with starting pitchers and others do not. Also, pitchers in general tend to score higher at home because home teams are more likely to get the win.
4) What are the odds?: I always like to check an online sports book to see who the highest favored teams are that day to win. The highest favored teams are the most likely to get the win according to the public's consensus. A highly favored starting pitcher is simply more likely to win than they are to lose. It is good, if not required, that the pitcher you select is also on a highly favored team that day.
Is your selected player going to play?
Picking the best possible daily fantasy baseball team will not get you too far if the manager decides to rest your player or the game gets rained out. This is what makes daily fantasy baseball much more complicated than other fantasy sports where rain outs are not possible, and players tend to play every game during the regular season. Below are two things you can do here.
1) Verify that your player is in the starting line-up: This can get a bit tough, but in general starting line-ups are announced about 1 hour before game time. If you are on twitter you can use MLBStarting9 which tweets out the starting line-ups as they are announced, or find another source. So you should be able to get the lineups for the games starting with-in an hour of the league's start time. Try to favor confirmed players if you can. Many starting-line-ups will not be confirmed in time for the league's start. If you select a player from one of those games you are taking a decent risk. If you have to do it anyway, try to make sure that your player is not injured and tends to start all games, and then cross your fingers and hope your player actually plays. I tend to select players that are confirmed over players that are not when it is a close choice.
2) Verify the weather: You should check out the game time weather for the games your fantasy baseball players are playing in. The Sports Network has a pretty nice summary of the weather and chances of rain, so I would use that rather than trying to look up the weather forecasts for each stadium yourself.
Final Thoughts
I tried to cover the most important factors to consider when trying to profit from daily fantasy baseball. You don’t necessarily need to cover them all to be successful (covering them all is a lot of work). Also, you may find some other factors that are pretty important that I did not list. Keep those ones to yourself and exploit them all day long. Another thing to keep in mind is that Daily Fantasy Baseball is pretty high variance. It is possibly the highest variance daily fantasy sport that there is. You can select a great fantasy baseball team and still lose, and you can select a very poor team and still win. You need to take a long-term view if you want to see if your system really works. So don’t get discouraged if your results are not stellar from the beginning. Overtime you will be able to see if you are a winning daily fantasy baseball player or not, but that can’t be decided in one day or one week.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Rainouts and Double-Headers in Daily Fantasy Baseball
When we launched Salary Cap based Daily Fantasy Baseball in June 2007, it became obvious pretty quickly that daily fantasy baseball could throw a lot of unexpected curves at you due to the issue of rain-outs. Baseball is pretty much the only sport where there is no guarantee that a scheduled game will be played, and has a dynamic daily schedule as a result. So we started putting into place rules, and systems to deal with the fact that baseball games get rained out, and can be rescheduled at anytime. It is not so much of a big deal for season long fantasy baseball, but because we were stepping into uncharted waters with daily fantasy baseball we had to be careful, and react quickly to what can happen. Below are some of the important rules that come into play with rain outs and double headers, and some of the things we do to make things go smoothly.
1) No fantasy points are scored for players in rained out games.
We can't wait all season for a game to be rescheduled, and must settle our fantasy leagues with-in 24 hours. So for rain-outs, your players in that game will not be scored. We do score official statistics however. If a game is suspended due to rain, and the statistics are official we will count them. Early in the season, you can get a little bit more of an edge by favoring west coast stadiums and domes. You can also check weather reports as required. One thing that is important to remember is that the no scoring rule can both help and hurt you. It sucks when your starting pitcher gets rained out, but not so bad when this happens to your opponent. Things will tend to even out over the lenght of a season.
2) We only schedule one game of a double-header.
We want to offer competitive fantasy sports games of skill. We do not like gimmicky loopholes that ruin the game. Doubleheaders are a perfect example. If we were to schedule both games into a league, the smart players would choose players from the double header only, since they can earn 2 games worth of statistics for those players if they play both games. So everyone would pick very similar teams from the double header players, disadvantaging those who were not aware of the double header. Basically the most important skill would be knowledge of the doubleheader. We don't want that to be the deciding factor, and we want a wide variety of possible fantasy teams, so we just try to eliminate the double-header loophole.
3) Double-Headers can be scheduled at anytime
This is very tough issue for daily fantasy baseball. When we schedule fantasy baseball leagues we pick and choose the baseball games to include. If there is a double header on the schedule we will pick the last game. Sometimes the double-header is scheduled after we schedule a days leagues. An example of this was today. Two games were rained out yesterday, and rescheduled for today. They were rescheduled long after we scheduled today's leagues. In this case we would be including the "regularly scheduled" game of the double header. This could be the first or second game, and they sometimes also move the start time of the regularly scheduled game as well. So this is what we do as a result. If the regularly scheduled game's start time does not move there are no issues. If they reschedule the start time of the game already in the league, nothing happens unless they reschedule it to start before the start of the leagues. If this happens we must cancel all fantasy baseball leagues with the moved start time. We can't change the start time of a league once it has been published, and we can't run a league that would allow fantasy points to accumulated before the start time. This usually happens once or twice a season, and it gets pretty ugly when it does. I wish that the MLB would never move up the start time of a regularly scheduled game, but they get to do what they want.
So there is a quick recap of the issues involved with rain-outs and double-headers and how we deal with them. If you have any suggestions for our approach drop us a comment.
1) No fantasy points are scored for players in rained out games.
We can't wait all season for a game to be rescheduled, and must settle our fantasy leagues with-in 24 hours. So for rain-outs, your players in that game will not be scored. We do score official statistics however. If a game is suspended due to rain, and the statistics are official we will count them. Early in the season, you can get a little bit more of an edge by favoring west coast stadiums and domes. You can also check weather reports as required. One thing that is important to remember is that the no scoring rule can both help and hurt you. It sucks when your starting pitcher gets rained out, but not so bad when this happens to your opponent. Things will tend to even out over the lenght of a season.
2) We only schedule one game of a double-header.
We want to offer competitive fantasy sports games of skill. We do not like gimmicky loopholes that ruin the game. Doubleheaders are a perfect example. If we were to schedule both games into a league, the smart players would choose players from the double header only, since they can earn 2 games worth of statistics for those players if they play both games. So everyone would pick very similar teams from the double header players, disadvantaging those who were not aware of the double header. Basically the most important skill would be knowledge of the doubleheader. We don't want that to be the deciding factor, and we want a wide variety of possible fantasy teams, so we just try to eliminate the double-header loophole.
3) Double-Headers can be scheduled at anytime
This is very tough issue for daily fantasy baseball. When we schedule fantasy baseball leagues we pick and choose the baseball games to include. If there is a double header on the schedule we will pick the last game. Sometimes the double-header is scheduled after we schedule a days leagues. An example of this was today. Two games were rained out yesterday, and rescheduled for today. They were rescheduled long after we scheduled today's leagues. In this case we would be including the "regularly scheduled" game of the double header. This could be the first or second game, and they sometimes also move the start time of the regularly scheduled game as well. So this is what we do as a result. If the regularly scheduled game's start time does not move there are no issues. If they reschedule the start time of the game already in the league, nothing happens unless they reschedule it to start before the start of the leagues. If this happens we must cancel all fantasy baseball leagues with the moved start time. We can't change the start time of a league once it has been published, and we can't run a league that would allow fantasy points to accumulated before the start time. This usually happens once or twice a season, and it gets pretty ugly when it does. I wish that the MLB would never move up the start time of a regularly scheduled game, but they get to do what they want.
So there is a quick recap of the issues involved with rain-outs and double-headers and how we deal with them. If you have any suggestions for our approach drop us a comment.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
NBA In Game Update Issue
I have some good news and some bad news for our fantasy NBA players. Do you want the good or the bad first? Let's just get the bad out of the way. We are having some issues with the end of quarter scoring updates this year. We are currently only getting the end of half and final box scores (2 updates per game). The first half update comes after the second half starts, and the final box is about 45 minutes to 1 hour after the game ends. We have the ability to manually score, and will be providing in-game updates prior to the end of the 1st half until this issue is resolved. After the end of half stats are in however, there will not be an update until the game is over for scoring accuracy reasons.
Now for the good news. A bunch of people have asked for progressive scoring of our Daily Fantasy Basketball leagues like we offer with Daily Fantasy Baseball and Weekly Fantasy Football. This year, for the first time a progressive feed is available through TSN, and we are looking to get that up and running in the next few days. We have no experience with the new NBA feed, and have also been cautioned that it may not be as accurate as our progressive NFL and MLB feeds are. Keep in mind that in-game scoring is informational only. We toss the progressive scoring out and replace it with the final official box scores which resolves any errors in the in-game scoring. Progressive scoring is a nice step up vs. EOQ scoring, so hopefully all will go well, and we will get that rolled out in the next few days.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Snapdraft vs. Fantasy Sports Live - Fantasy Baseball
Lets face it, there is tons of competition out there in Daily Fantasy Baseball. Although, we were first with Salary Cap based daily fantasy baseball in June of 2007, there have been numerous other sites that have launched since then. Some have failed, and others continue on. Today the two largest sites in terms of traffic are FantasySportsLive.com and SnapDraft. We always check out new sites when they launch, and below is our comparison of the two sites in some of the more important areas.
Payouts
Snapdraft: Pays out 80% of contest fees in prizes.
Fantasy Sports Live: Pays out between 88-100% of contest fees in prizes with nearly all paying 91% and higher.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Overlays (Payouts in excess of 100%)
Snapdraft: Rules do not allow overlays.
Fantasy Sports Live: Any multiplayer league may pay an overlay.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Transparency
Snapdraft: Opponents are not disclosed prior to registering. Leaderboards are reset periodically and show only top 10 players.
Fantasy Sports Live. Registered opponents are always shown prior to registering. Leaderboards are all-time and show top 75 players.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Cash Prize Guaranty
Snapdraft: Only guaranteed in the event of a full contest.
Fantasy Sports Live: Always guaranteed if there are 2 or more competitors registered for the league.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Cap Structures
Snapdraft: Pay based salary cap draft. All contests use same cap amount.
Fantasy Sports Live: Pay Based, Performance Based, and No Salary Cap Drafts. Wide variety of cap amounts to choose from.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Contest Hogs (Good, experienced players who only play beginners on the site)
Snapdraft: Encourages this behaviour by concealing your opponent, and offering a single structure that allows for one click blanketing of all contests that are currently forming.
Fantasy Sports Live: Discourages this behaviour in many ways including: not concealing your opponent(s), not allowing for one click drafting, offering multiple cap types and amounts that require unique teams, and offering higher payout percentages on higher buy-in leagues.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live (Unless you are a contest hog)
Contest Traffic
Snapdraft: Generated a large user base from parent site / partner affiliation.
Fantasy Sports Live: Generated a large user base from two years of consistent growth.
Advantage ???? (Snapdraft hides contests that fill making it impossible to determine their exact traffic levels. Both sites have substantial contest traffic)
Winner Take All Leagues
Snapdraft: All leagues are winner take all
Fantasy Sports Live: Offers some winner take all leagues
Advantage: Snapdraft if you prefer winner take all
Hybrid Leagues (Multiple sport)
Snapdraft: Hybrid NASCAR and Golf leagues
Fantasy Sports Live: No Hybrid Leagues
Advantage: Snapdraft
2nd & 3rd Place Payouts
Snapdraft: Only pays first place in all leagues for a higher variance lottery style game.
Fantasy Sports Live: Pays top 2 in six player leagues, and top 3 in ten player leagues for a lower variance skill emphasized game.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Overall Winner
Is it not obvious? Fantasy Sports Live is still the leader in daily fantasy baseball with the highest payouts and most transparency. I am not really sure why people play at snapdraft beyond convenience. If you have not checked us out yet, click on this link to get $10/$20/$30 free with a $50/$100/$200 initial deposit. If you don't think we are better as shown above, just cash out after you use your bonus funds, and head back over to Snapdraft.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
2009 Daily Fantasy Baseball for Money
We are off and running with our third season of daily fantasy baseball for money at fantasysportslive.com. We made several tweaks to our scoring system to help balance starting pitching and position player scoring this year and it seems to be working out pretty well. The following changes were implemented.
Pitching:
Win - changed from 10 to 8 points
Earned Run Allowed – changed from -1 to -2 points
Batting:
Run Scored – changed from 1 to 2 points
Run Batted In – changed from 1 to 2 points
Overall, this brings the mix of scoring and ranking cap values for Fantasy Baseball to about 1/3 pitching, and 2/3 batting. Last year it was closer to 50/50. The player salaries have been updated for 2009. Position players get a salary equal to their 2009 actual salary divided by 162 games. Starting pitchers get a salary equal to their 2009 salary divided by 32 games. The maximum salary for a pitcher is 350k, and the minimum is 100k. Position players have no max salary, and a minimum of 10k per game. The ranking cap values start out based on 2008 statistics. Over the first month of the season these values will transition until they are entirely based on 2009 per game MLB statistics. New players will be added to the draft pool over time based on minimum start or at bat requirements. Since we are shaking things up a bit with the new scoring rules, we would love to get your feedback on Fantasy Baseball, so drop us a comment. Also let us know if there are any players you would like to see added to the draft pool.
Pitching:
Win - changed from 10 to 8 points
Earned Run Allowed – changed from -1 to -2 points
Batting:
Run Scored – changed from 1 to 2 points
Run Batted In – changed from 1 to 2 points
Overall, this brings the mix of scoring and ranking cap values for Fantasy Baseball to about 1/3 pitching, and 2/3 batting. Last year it was closer to 50/50. The player salaries have been updated for 2009. Position players get a salary equal to their 2009 actual salary divided by 162 games. Starting pitchers get a salary equal to their 2009 salary divided by 32 games. The maximum salary for a pitcher is 350k, and the minimum is 100k. Position players have no max salary, and a minimum of 10k per game. The ranking cap values start out based on 2008 statistics. Over the first month of the season these values will transition until they are entirely based on 2009 per game MLB statistics. New players will be added to the draft pool over time based on minimum start or at bat requirements. Since we are shaking things up a bit with the new scoring rules, we would love to get your feedback on Fantasy Baseball, so drop us a comment. Also let us know if there are any players you would like to see added to the draft pool.
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