Are you looking to get involved in the Daily Fantasy Sports world? We are here to help you with a complete DFS guide on how to play fantasy sports so you can learn everything you need to know to have the most enjoyable experience possible. The first step is to choose the best DFS platform you would like to play on. Once you make that decision, you are ready to go through the process of how to play DFS!
Playing DFS
Before we get into the particulars of setting yourself up on a Daily Fantasy Sports platform, let’s break down what differs DFS from regular fantasy sports. In regular fantasy sports, you can join a season-long league. Before the season, you will have a draft where you pick players to form your fantasy team. Once the season starts, you will play against other fantasy teams in your league until the end of the season typically for a prize.
In DFS, you will register for a website/app that offers Daily Fantasy Sports contests that last as short as a day or as long as a week. In these contests, you will draft a team from a pool of players and stack your team up against other players’ teams to compete for cash prizes. There are more DFS elements to learn but for now, let’s get into the steps you will take to play Daily Fantasy Sports.
Setting up your account
When registering your account on a DFS site, you will simply have to input your valid email address, choose your username and password, and enter your date of birth. From there your account will be created. The next step is verifying your identity.
For all Daily Fantasy Sports platforms, you will be prompted to verify yourself when attempting to deposit or enter a paid contest. The information you will need to input to verify yourself is your full name and address. Once you get verified, you will be ready to deposit and enter contests!
On SuperDraft, you will have to deposit via credit/debit card and deposit a minimum amount of $10.
Once you enter in your card information and finalize the transaction, there will be cash in your SuperDraft account! This process is standard across all DFS sites.
Choosing your contest
You will then be ready to choose a contest to enter! On most Daily Fantasy Sports platforms, there will be contests marked as featured and then they will also be separated by sport. You will find dozens of contests you can enter. They will all have different cash prize payouts, entry fees, number of players allowed to enter, etc. There are even free contests you can enter to get your feet wet.
The most notable contest types are Tournaments and 50/50’s. Tournaments are games with big cash prizes with large amounts of people eligible to join. Tournaments will often allow thousands of entries which are often why the prizes are bigger. 50/50 games are smaller DFS competitions that payout the same prize to half the lineups entered. These will have smaller cash prizes and will typically allow below 100 entries. There is more to learn about contests but let’s now discuss the fun part.
Drafting your lineup
Once you decide on the contest that is best for you to enter, you are ready to build your team! Depending on the DFS site you are on, you will either be playing the salary cap game mode or the multiplier game mode. Let’s first break down the multiplier game mode which is featured on SuperDraft.
Multiplier game mode
When you get to the draft screen, there will be players listed with their multiplier values. The multiplier figure stands for the value a player’s point total will be multiplied by. For example, let’s say Lebron James scores 60 fantasy points and has a multiplier value of 1.1X. Because his multiplier is 1.1X, his final total will be 66 fantasy points.
You will then build your team of players based on which players you think will score the most fantasy points while taking each player’s multiplier into account.
Salary Cap game mode
The salary cap game mode is what will be played on sites like DraftKings and FanDuel. On the draft screen, you will see each player is given a salary cap value and there is a given salary cap ranging from $50,000 to $80,000. The goal is to build the best fantasy team with the players given while staying under the salary cap.
Regardless of the game mode, there will be a position template that you need to follow for each sport. For example, when playing fantasy basketball, you will choose three guards, three forwards, and one center to build out your best fantasy team.
Once you are satisfied with the team you built, you will submit your lineup into the contest you choose and compete against all of the other lineups that were submitted.
From here, you will wait for the games to start and you will have the ability to see your team score points in real-time and see where you stack up against the competition!
When you have a lineup going on a DFS site, it will make watching live sporting events 10x more fun!
Rules and Regulations
There are some rules to consider when it comes to entering a lineup. As far as each individual sport is concerned, there are different rules and scoring for each DFS sport. However, there are some big overarching rules that come into play regardless of what paid contest you enter:
- You will not be able to change players out of your lineup after that player’s game has started. However, if the player’s game has not started yet, you will be able to exchange that player out for someone else who also is in a game that has not started yet.
- When it comes to entering a contest, each contest has a start time. So if you want to enter the contest, you must submit a lineup before that start time expires.
- Also, there are legality concerns with Daily Fantasy Sports. In most states, you have to be at least 18 years old to enter a paid contest and you must be physically present in a state that allows SuperDraft or another DFS platform to operate there.
Summary
While Daily Fantasy Sports may seem a bit intimidating from the outside, in reality, it is a fun and easy product to learn! All the way from registering your account to entering contests, playing DFS is a fun and seamless experience that will enhance your enjoyment of watching sports. Come and play Daily Fantasy Sports with us!
