daily fantasy sports articles

This edition of our DFS strategy series will look at a common dilemma faced by players every day – how many entries should I submit in a Draftstars contest?

Staking matters in all sports betting, especially daily fantasy, so getting your entry numbers right could be the difference between breaking even and banking big profits in the long run.

In this article we take a look at the pros and cons of both single-entry and multi-entry strategies here.

Single Entry Strategy

The biggest benefit of entering a contest with a single entry is that you limit potential losses. One sunken entry is generally easy enough to swallow for a defeated DFS player, but seeing five, ten or more entries go down the drain can be devastating.

Single-entry strategies also have psychological advantages. By heading into a contest with one lineup, you put more value on that lineup and will therefore make selections with more care and consideration. By only entering your ‘best’ or ‘favourite’ lineup, you maximise your ‘per entry return rate’.

Single entries provide positives on the practicality front. It is easier to follow the performance of a single lineup while a contest is live, as there are less players for you to keep track of.

Unfortunately, the flipside of reducing risk with a single entry is that the potential returns are also diminished.

Big DFS tournaments often welcome thousands of entries, so limiting yourself to one submission significantly reduces your chances of accessing the top prizes, and that’s where the professional players make all of their profits.

Single-entry strategies require you to limit your player selections, and ultimately put your eggs in one basket. You’re only covering one game script and one outcome, and if something goes awry then you have no backup plan. Sport can be unpredictable, so it only takes one bad performance or an injury to ruin your lineup.

Multiple Entries Strategy

The possibilities are endless with a multiple entries strategy! By increasing your exposure to a contest through multiple entries that are unique, you improve your chances at claiming the top prizes on Draftstars DFS contests.

While many of your lineups may bomb out, only one needs to succeed for a big payday. So while there is definitely a larger investment risk, the variance of the game script is actually reduced as your lineups can cover more scenarios.

As such, team stacking becomes a viable strategy. This involves selecting lineups with several players from the team you expect to win, based on the game script. Submitting multiple entries allows you to stack both teams in separate lineups, while also providing scope to select mixed lineups.

Single-entry players can rarely take big risks and make unpopular player selections in DFS for the fear of losing their stake, but multi-entry players are better positioned to select players with low ownership.

Of course multiple entries require a larger financial outlay, so this strategy is unlikely to suit DFS players on a tight budget. This is especially the case if those entries fail to produce a return, which is still possible even with diversification.

A psychological disadvantage of this strategy is the false sense of security that it can create. If you know that you have multiple entries in a contest, you may put less care into the construction of each individual entry, which can result in negative outcomes.

As such, there is no magic number of entries for guaranteed profit. A player on a single-entry strategy may have a strong ROI, but may not be as profitable overall as a multi-entry player who invests more into each contest. Each DFS contest requires players to weigh up the risk vs reward of entering multiple line-ups, based on entry numbers, prize pool, skill, knowledge and the range of outcomes.

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