The dramatic rise of Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) in both America and Australia in the last couple of years has seen it been compared with the Poker boom of the early 2000s.

Poker became a popular sport due to the tournament structure having a low risk, high reward, as you could buy-in for a small amount and receive upwards of 100x that amount in return.

DFS has a similar type of return on investment and it doesn’t matter how much research you do, or whether you pick a ‘perfect team’, there is also an element of luck involved.

Benefits of DFS & Poker

The two are both skill-based games that are played against other players rather than against the house. This gives you an immediate advantage because as we all know – the house always wins. The house will take a rake from the buy-in amount and therefore it doesn’t matter to them who are the winners of the tournament.

As opposed to a normal bet on a racing or sporting event, you are able to receive a much larger return on your investment without backing an outside chance to do so.

Poker and DFS tournaments often have guaranteed prize pools available, therefore there can be overlay if the amount of entries aren’t met to increase the prize pool, which maximises your expected return on investment. 

It takes skill and strategy to be successful at both games, however as there is an element of luck involved, you need to take into consideration variance.

Differences

The biggest difference between these two games is that all of the information is provided for DFS as you can see player's past scores, their salary, their projected score etc. Once a DFS tournament has started, your outcome becomes out of your control, as you can’t make any changes live.

Whereas when it comes to Poker a lot of the information is limited and as the tournament continues you can pick up on certain aspects and attempt to take advantage of them.

Knowledge of sport, players and different sporting teams gives you a huge advantage in DFS, so make sure you check out our strategy articles before selecting your DFS team.

As you can see, creating an understanding of both Poker and DFS can result in a lot of positives. There is a lot of profit that can be made when gambling on these sites due to the high return on investment.