Beginner NHL DFS: Bankroll

Daily fantasy hockey is fun, but it’s a lot more fun if you don’t sink more money into it than you are willing to lose. Don’t delude yourself into thinking there isn’t risk involved and take some time to decide how much you are willing to lose and find a method to follow when considering how much to risk on any set of games.

Bankroll

Definition

Your bankroll is how much money you have set aside to play daily fantasy. The actual total is completely up to you and shouldn’t be any higher than what you are willing to lose in full.

Strategy

There are numerous strategies for your bankroll in which we won’t go into detail. This section will be more about general strategy in handling your DFS cash. As you grow as a player, you will refine your bankroll strategy to fit your needs more closely.

Wager size/game type

You want to limit your daily percentage of spending to around 10 to 20 percent of your bankroll. If you want to be aggressive, lean more toward the 20 percent with GPPs making up a bigger percentage and if you want to be more conservative, lean toward 10 percent and a larger percentage of cash games. To start, you should try to stick to around 70-80 percent cash games and 20-30 percent GPPs, but that can change as you get more comfortable.

Diversity

There is no hard and fast rule as to how many different lineups you make for a slate of games, but conventional wisdom is that you will have more opportunities to cash with multiple lineups, which then moves your odds for a big payday down but your likelihood of not taking a loss, higher.

Starting out with a new sport, I prefer to use multiple lineups and multiple game types so I can see where I find the most success. That means keeping good notes or using an app to track every game you play.