Fantasy Football for Smart People: Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets

By Jonathan Bales

Fantasy Football for Smart People: Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets is the first book to truly dig deep inside the minds of daily fantasy football's most lucrative players--the ones raking in full-time salaries playing the game you love. With interviews from headchopper, Al_Smizzle, PrimeTime420, dinkpiece, naapstermaan, MrTuttle05, and others, you'll learn exactly how the experts go about researching, projecting players, and creating their daily fantasy sports lineups each week.

In addition, Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets contains chapter-by-chapter commentary and analysis from author Jonathan Bales and Top-10-ranked daily fantasy pro Peter Jennings, a.k.a. CSURAM88. With unprecedented access to the strategies used by the world's top players, you'll learn how professional daily fantasy footballers are really cashing in...and how you can too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Bales
• Release date: Jul 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310571992

Jonathan Bales

Jonathan Bales is the author of the Fantasy Football for Smart People series and founder of RotoAcademy. He's a regular contributor to the New York Times, where he posts both "real" and fantasy football content, as well as NBC, Dallas Morning News, RotoWorld, 4for4, and rotoViz. He was a finalist for the FSWA's Fantasy Football Series of the Year award.

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Fantasy Football for Smart People: Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets

Jonathan Bales

Copyright Jonathan Bales 2014

Published at Smashwords

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All Rights Reserved ©2014

Jonathan Bales. First Printing: 2014. The editorial arrangement, analysis, and professional commentary are subject to this copyright notice. No portion of this book may be copied, retransmitted, reposted, duplicated, or otherwise used without the express written approval of the author, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

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Table of Contents

Fantasy Football for Smart People: Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets

Chapter 1: Research with Headchopper

Which sites are best for NFL research

How to predict touchdown receptions

Which stats matter most when projecting players

Chapter 2: Understanding Variance with C.D. Carter

How daily fantasy football is like poker

How to utilize variance

How to take advantage of season-long dogma

Chapter 3: The Vegas Lines with Mirage88

Why studying the Vegas lines can help make you a better player

How to incorporate Vegas into your projections/lineups

Fantasy points broken down by Vegas totals

Chapter 4: Projecting Players with MrTuttle05 and Dinkpiece

How to take advantage of the crowd when projecting players

Incorporating the weather into your decisions

What to look for at each position

Chapter 5: Winning Cash Games with PrimeTime420

How to pick players specifically to win cash games

How to handle defense/kicker

Stats on which positions work best in the flex

Chapter 6: Advanced Tournament Play with Al_Smizzle

How to improve your chances of winning a GPP

Understanding when to be contrarian

How and when to stack

Chapter 7: Lineup Creation with naapstermaan

How to alter your lineup based on your league

Scoring in Thursday-night games

Pairing players in the optimal way

Chapter 8: Building a Bankroll with KillaB2482

How to easily manage your bankroll

Why there’s no one-size-fits-all plan

Understanding player exposure and risk

**Bonus Material: How to Win Heads-Up Leagues and 50/50s

The typical scores needed to win on DraftKings

How to properly allocate cap space

Understanding player types and why they matter

Preface

Abraham Lincoln once said, It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white; as long as it can catch mice, it’s a good cat. Actually, he didn’t say that. It was a random quote that I found on the internet. But it sounds so much better when I envision A.L. saying it.

When I wrote my last book on daily fantasy sports—Fantasy Football for Smart People: How to Turn Your Hobby into a Fortune—the goal was to throw as much awesome data at you as possible. Like many books in my Fantasy Football for Smart People series, that one was highly analytical and meant to take subjectivity out of equation as much as possible. I worked with DraftKings, and they provided me with all of the information on what’s actually winning leagues on the site. In effect, I wanted to know if the cat was black or white. And if her name was Billie Jean.

This book is going to take an approach different from my past work. I’ve interviewed some of the top players in daily fantasy sports on all of the foundational daily fantasy concepts—league selection, projections, bankroll management, and so on. The goal—to slowly uncover the most effective way to go about winning money playing daily fantasy football—is still the same as always.

This time, though, I’m trying to figure out how the cats catch their mice. If there’s absolute Truth with a capital ‘T’ and truth in practicality, this book will try to combine the two forms—an attempt to blend the objective and subjective in daily fantasy football.

The daily fantasy pros who have helped me along the way were each assigned to a specific chapter, which comes in the form of an interview, plus additional analysis. That analysis is broken up into two parts—the latter from me and the former from daily fantasy pro CSURAM88, aka Peter Jennings.

Peter has helped me on previous books, and he’s one of the top all-around daily fantasy players in the world. RotoGrinders—a daily fantasy content site that has a bunch of awesome tools and imports site data to rank players—has Peter as a top 10 player in NFL, MLB, and NBA, as well as the fifth-ranked player in the world.

Peter won the 2012 FFFC—and a $150,000 grand prize—to become the first six-figure prize-winner in daily fantasy history. Fast-forward just a couple years and the prize pools have become ridiculous; we’ll see DraftKings make numerous users instant millionaires this year.

To complement the interviews and Peter’s analysis, I’ll offer some of the data I’ve collected recently that fits with the topic of each chapter. As much as I think there’s value in learning from experience (especially in daily fantasy sports), I’m still data-driven at heart, so hopefully those numbers can shed some light on the discussions.

In addition to my Fantasy Football for Smart People books, I also sell a variety of other fantasy-related packages. If you’re playing daily fantasy football this season (or just season-long), the most useful to you might be my Weekly In-Season Package. With that, you’ll receive:

UNLIMITED advice all year

Customizable projections for every relevant player, all 17 weeks of the season

Optimized daily fantasy football values with player salaries

Weekly newsletter with analysis

Those who purchased the package last year saw big results. Actually, one user cashed $25,000 in two tournaments! I also sell a season-long fantasy football draft package, along with all of my books, at FantasyFootballDrafting.com.

And finally, consider enrolling in RotoAcademy—my fantasy football training school. For just a few bucks per month, RotoAcademy will deliver you year-round, book-length (yes, book-length) fantasy football analysis. I write the majority of the content—provided via monthly newsletters sent right to your email—but there are a few other really talented instructors as well. I personally promise that it will make you a significantly better fantasy owner, or I’ll give you your money back.

Not sure if you want to enroll? Test it first. You can download free RotoAcademy lessons right here. Thanks for your support, and best of luck this season!

Some Free Fantasy Football Stuff for You

I like giving things away, so here’s some stuff for you. The first is 10 percent off anything you purchase on my site—all books, all rankings, my draft package, the Weekly In-Season Package with DFS Values, and even past issues of RotoAcademy. Just go to FantasyFootballDrafting.com and use the code Smart10 at checkout to get the savings.

The second freebie is an entire issue of RotoAcademy. Why an entire issue for free? Because I’m really excited about this product and I think if you start reading, you’ll be hooked and become a full-time student. Remember, this is a year-long training course that’s absolutely guaranteed to turn you into a dominant fantasy owner.

Go to FantasyFootballDrafting.com for your free issue (RotoAcademy Issue II), add the item to your cart, and enter RA100 at checkout to get it free of charge.

Finally, I’ve partnered with DraftKings to give you a 100 percent deposit bonus when you sign up there. Deposit $500 and then bam! you got $1,000. DraftKings is the main site where I play daily fantasy football. Deposit there through one of my links (or use https://www.draftkings.com/r/Bales) to get the bonus, use the Smart10 code to buy my in-season package at FantasyFootballDrafting.com (complete with DraftKings values all year long), and start cashing in on your hobby.

Like I said, a whole lot of readers profited last year with my in-season package; who couldn’t use an extra $50k? There’s an outstanding investment opportunity in daily fantasy sports right now, and there’s really no reason for you not to get involved.

Before getting to the first interview, feel free to look over the following daily fantasy glossary.

A Daily Fantasy Glossary

There are a whole bunch of terms specific to the daily fantasy realm that aren’t used among season-long fantasy owners. I use a lot of these terms throughout the book, so I’ve created a glossary to which you can refer if you’re unsure what the hell I’m talking about.

+EV

Positive Expected Value; a situation in which you expect a positive return on your investment. Daily fantasy players are constantly searching for +EV situations.

$/Point

Dollars per point; the number of dollars you must spend (in cap space) for every point a player is projected to score. A lower $/point is preferable.

50/50

A league type in which the top half of all entrants get paid and the bottom half lose their entry fee. 50/50 leagues are generally considered safe, but they can become dangerous if you enter the same lineup into multiple leagues.

Bankroll

The amount of money you’re willing to invest in daily fantasy sports

Bearish

A pessimistic outlook on a particular player, team, or

Reviews for Fantasy Football for Smart People

[cthomas1134 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Very similar to the other book "A guide to winning at fantasy sports" with just a few more interview additions.