- Fantasy Basketball For Dummies 2019
- Yahoo Fantasy Basketball For Dummies
- What Is The Best Way To Play Fantasy Basketball
- Fantasy Basketball For Dummies 1st
- Fantasy Basketball For Dummies For Dummies
No real reason you shouldn’t be playing over at FanDuel!
Welcome to the exciting world of fantasy auto racing! This guide is for Fantasy Auto Racing (aka Fantasy NASCAR) rookies and anyone wanting to improve their knowledge of the game. Here you will find an explanation of the game, tips to select your drivers and links to additional resources on the web. The Fantasy NASCAR season is about to start! The drop-off in per-game value from the very best players in fantasy basketball to the tier below tends to be enormous, and chances are your 3 for 1 will bring you better overall value from your roster spots even if you lose a little from spots 2 and 3.
Fantasy Basketball Basketball For Dummies Cheat Sheet Basketball is the most popular participatory sport in the United States — even more popular than Angry Birds. This in-depth article will help educate beginners to the world of daily fantasy sports (DFS). It will show you the thought process of a professional DFS player, and the intricacies needed to build an effective NBA daily fantasy basketball lineup. Most default fantasy basketball leagues are “redraft” leagues, which means that the entire player pool is available to be drafted after the conclusion of each season. In a “keeper league,” players remain on the same fantasy team, with the duration ranging from one year to multiple seasons into the future.
So you’ve heard about Daily Fantasy Sports and you want to play.
Well this guide to FanDuel, walks you you through every aspect of the rules, the games and the prizes and how to play.
First Step – Signing Up & Creating Your FanDuel Account
When you first visit FanDuel you’ll simply hit the “join now” button and sign up giving your email address, choosing a screen name, and choosing a password. (Make sure to use the promocode FREAK when you sign up to lock in the maximum bonus of 100% deposit match.)
Funding Your Account
Before you play for real money, you’ll have to fund your account.
Clicking “add funds” (top right hand side of the screen) will take you immediately to a bonus page where you can choose one of four bonuses, or even customize your own. I’ve already deposited and taken my bonus so I don’t have a screen shot of that.
You’ll then be asked for either your credit card details (VISA, Mastercard or Discover) or you can also deposit via PayPal – enter the amount you want to deposit and you’re ready to go. You can also deposit with online banking if supported by your bank, and the list of accepted banks is incredibly long.
Game Selection – Choose Your Contest to Join
In the lobby there are a great many tournaments on show at any one time. Fortunately you’ll be able to filter for separate events. There are four main filters and here is an explanation for each:
Recommended for you – Contests that the folks over at FanDuel think you’ll be interested in.
Beginner tips – Exactly what it sounds like. Check out these helpful hints for getting started on FanDuel.
Experienced players excluded – Compete against beginner and intermediate players.
Biggest prizes – Ready to just right in with the big dogs? You can do so right here.
In the Spotlight – Special promo contests going on at the time.
Single game – I would use this to test the waters. Just get one good game in and check it out.
Single entry – Only one entry per player, so put your best lineup forward!
And many more depending on the “Sport of Choice” you picked while signing up. I chose NBA. As this is being typed March Madness is fast upon us.
Game Information
Fantasy Basketball For Dummies 2019
Having filtered (or not) you’re now in a position to enter one of the events. The details of each event are clearly listed in each contest box.
Contest – The name of the event.
Prizes – What you stand to win, or a portion of.
Time – The time the contest starts. I see these listed as EST where I live. This may or may not change for you.
Entries – How many people have entered this contest.
Price – The price you’ll pay to enter.
You’ll notice that on some events there are either one or two different symbols to the right of the contest name.
You’ll also find that some contests are called “satellites”. These are not events in their own right, but offer tickets to other bigger contests. The satellite will tell you how many seats are up for grabs in the name – “2 seats” meaning you’ll have to finish in the first two to be successful in the satellite event.
Clicking on any of these boxes obviously means you’d like to take part in the contest.
Roster Selection – Building A Lineup
This is what it looks like when drafting your team. Again, it’s March Madness time, so I’m looking at NBA games.
When you enter a contest you have to pick the players who will be representing you that day. The way FanDuel works is by giving players a total amount of salary to spend on your roster – each player in the league having a different salary. The better the player is expected to perform on a given day, the higher salary they will command. Depending on the sport, you’ll have different positions to fill on your roster, and you’ll not be allowed to go over your salary – if you do, you won’t be able to submit your entry.
Your roster will then score points based upon what happens in the real life action that day. Players will score points depending on various achievements. As an example, here is how your players will score points in basketball –
You’ll be able to monitor how your roster is faring throughout the day, and FanDuel will update the leaderboard of every contest after any points are scored. The contest will finish when the final game of the day is over, and the leaderboard at this point will be the final one. If you have finished high enough to finish in the money, your account will be credited automatically.
More Awesome Content
- Beginner’s guide to Fanduel Baseball.
Welcome to my big list of DFS tools. These tools include lineup optimizers, projections, rankings and any sort of thing that a DFS player may want to utilize to draft their team. In short, this page is a top list of tools for daily fantasy sports players. I add to this list as I come across new and unique offerings. Some of them are free but most are paid. Take your time and check through the following list to find what you are looking for. I’m constantly adding links as I come across them in my daily travels around the web so bookmark this page and check back on the regular.
Jump to A Sport Specific Tool
Growing List of DFS Tools – 2021 Update
Yahoo Fantasy Basketball For Dummies
- FantasyCruncher.com – Probably the best rated lineup optimizer used by the vast majority of professional players in the industry. Easy enough for weekend gamblers like me to use and highly customizable so the professionals can create optimized multi-entry lineups. Paid monthly. Try it free for the 1st week. If you max enter contests this is a must have. See my FantasyCruncher review now published.
- FantasyData – An entire host of tools for DFS including projections, lineup optimizers, rankings, premium content, average draft position, mock drafts, idp rankings, stats red zone stats, snap counts, advanced qb metrics and seriously dozens of more features available for a monthly fee of around $10 with a three day free trial.
- Fantasy 5×5 – **Avoid until update – This site now appears as if it is no longer being updated. We have reached out to the owner to get information. NBA and now MLB specific tools for Fanduel/DK. Injury boosts, assist boosts and a lot more specialized tools (learn more here)
- DailyFantasyNerd.com – Optimizer, Projections and upgraded / premium products. Free basic subscription and $15 / mo w/ 7 day free trial
- FantasyNational – PGA specific stats engine, simulator and lineup generator. $30/mo or $250/year.
- FantasyPros.com NFL– Update now requires payment, no longer free.
- Awesemo – expensive but arguably worth it if you are a serious professional DFS player (or want to be one). Many use this site for their ownership projections.
- One Week Season – premium DFS content from some of the brightest in the game (JMtoWin)
- DailyFantasyFuel.com – free tools, optimizers and matchup-analysis – NHL
- FanSpeak.com – quick and easy lineup builder where you can prioritize a position and build for tourney or cash game.
- Numberfire / usatoday – requires credit card (even with free trial). 7 days free then $19 / mo for DFS players (football)
- LineStar App (fanduel android and apple / fantasyduel) http://fscapp.co (mobile strongsuit) – these are from fantasysportsco.com
- FantasyLabs.com – Tools have gone down hill since newer ownership sometime in 2018. I used to subscribe subscribe to FantasyLabs during football season but no more. My full review of FantasyLabs is now published.
- lineuplab – NFL-Pro is $19.95 / mo, advanced is $29.95 / mo. Other sports cost additional.
- rotoviz.com – looks like you have to pay just to get in the door, but it’s cheap. Only $9 for the season. give them your email address for a free article every day.
- rotowire.com – free NFL optimizer for the main DFS sites.
- sportsline.com for nhl – free optimizer recommended for NHL players.
This guy greets you at FantasyGeek.
Just showing that ’cause I thought he was pretty cool.
- http://fantasy.geekewl.com/ (this guy runs a default lineup from the major lineup generators and ranks them weekly to see who’s default optimizer does best. Interesting concept.
- Borischen.co – Data visualized for each position from FantasyPros expert picks
- FantasyPros.com – combined rankings from professionals in the industry
- Vegas Odds and Lines – find the high scoring games and pick the right players from those teams
- Rotogrinders optimizer – free if you register through them for a dfs site. Used by many so be wary of lineups generated.
- 4for4 – $99/year for the DFS package w/ projections, rankings, optimizers, analyzers and a ton of tools
- ProFootballFocus – Paid subscription model for projections and player grades.
- Fantasy 5×5 – NBA tools for Draftkings and Fanduel. Find out who benefits when someone is injured. See who’s playing, visuals of relevant data and more basketball specific DFS tools. See my Fantasy 5×5 review here.
NBA DFS Tools and Lineup Builders
- FantasyCruncher.com – If you multi-enter NBA GPP’s then you need FantasyCruncher. It makes building multiple optimized lineups slick. It’s simple enough for weekend players like me to use and highly workable for you pro’s who build lineups. Paid monthly. Try it free for the 1st week. If you max enter contests this is a must have. See my FantasyCruncher review now published.
- Basketball Monster – Somewhere around $90 per season of basketball and it adjusts downward as the length of season shrinks. Players of NBA dfs seem to love this site.
- Next Man Up tools from hashtag basketball – Freeand looks interesting. You can see what other players average when a selected player is out.
- FantasyPro’s NBAis pretty solid and free.
- Vegas NBA Lines – let the books do the heavy lifting for the over/under.
Baseball MLB Optimizers and Lineup Tools
- SaberSim – Baseball simulator – play thousands of events and make projections.
- FanGraphs – Baseball stats. An absolute ton of MLB data at your fingertips. Free or become a member and remove ads for $3 / month.
- Rotoballer – Batter v Pitcher
- Baseball Savant – Stats, daily matchups and tons of data
- Pitcher Analysis and Tracking – Brooksbaseball
- FantasyInsiders – Another paid service with daily research, discussion and projections for fantasy MLB
- The Bat – Rotogrinders / Derek Carty’s Projection System for MLB – Seasonal pass for $175
PGA – Golf
- FantasyNational – currently the most golf centric set of tools
- FantasyCruncher – news and tools for PGA DFS
eSports Stats and Tools
News and Player Info
- r/ff – the fantasy football sub on reddit.
- Rotoworld NFL – latest injury reports and player specific updates.
- RotoWire – last minute news and info.
Types of Tools:
What Is The Best Way To Play Fantasy Basketball
- Lineup optimizers / builders
- Projections
- Matchup Analyzers
- Player rankings / ratings
- Bankroll Trackers
- Excel lineup optimizers
- Algorithm’s for specific metrics (e.g. Red Zone Target Algorithm)
- Lineup importers
- Paid lineup services
About These Tools
A good DFS optimizer is a tool in your handbag that helps you build lineups faster than doing it on your own. An optimizer is like upgrading your car to a race car. If you are a good driver they will get you to the finish faster but you still have to be a good driver.
Fantasy Basketball For Dummies 1st
In short, a line-up optimizer is only as good as the projections used as inputs.
Optimizing the lineups are the easy part, it’s coming up with the best projections and player selection that wins the money.
Fantasy Basketball For Dummies For Dummies
These lineup builders are designed to help you build optimal lineups in less time. But remember, they are only as good as you make them. I highly doubt that over time using the default team generated by any of the tools will be a winner. Instead these are designed to give you the information you need to help build the best possible team you can.
Should you use one of these tools/service?
My opinion is that you should not buy lineups. I’ve been tracking results on some of these sites over time and what I have found is that they don’t have a winning record. Of course do your own research but I would not recommend anyone spend money on a lineup. If the lineup is awesome then the guy you bought it from would have played it himself.
Now, should you use these tools and lineup optimizers? This is a different question because these tools help you build out your lineups. I will say that you can’t just go click the button on any sites optimizer and have it spit out a winning lineup for you. That will not, has not and will probably never work over the long haul. You have to put in the work to build your team. The optimizers can help you do that faster. You can use tools to help you build teams, find value and target players and stacking combinations that you might not have thought of.
My #1 favorite free tool I always is the always up to date NFL Odds and Lines.
Let the bookies do the heavy lifting. They do have skin in the game so you can expect them to give you excellent insight into what the true experts think about the upcoming game.
Don’t just think buying access to any one optimizer, projections service or even the touts selling lineups that you will easily win money. It’s not going to happen. You still have to build your team, find value and put in your own research. These tools will help you speed this process up once you find the ones that suit your playing style.
I am looking to review the more popular and promising tools over the coming weeks. I will give you my honest opinions and ask for yours as well. I want to create a quality list of recommended tools and lineup builders that visitors lucky enough (or smart enough) to land on my site will find truly helpful and worthwhile.
Below are the tools I’ve reviewed and my ratings:
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