Most daily fantasy players have a rough idea of how they are doing, and the rough idea is usually wrong. It is built from the nights you remember, and you remember the wins.
The fix is boring and it works: download your contest history, look at the whole thing, and separate the two games you are actually playing.
Cash and tournaments are different sports
A double-up pays roughly the same to everyone who finishes in the top half. A large tournament pays almost nothing to most of the field and a great deal to a handful of entries. Lumping them together produces a number that describes neither.
Split them and two useful things happen:
- Your cash games tell you whether you can play. A steady small edge there is a real skill result, and it shows up within a few dozen contests.
- Your tournaments tell you almost nothing for a long time. A single win reshapes a whole season, which is exactly why your overall number swings so violently.
If your cash record is negative over a meaningful sample, no tournament score fixes that. It postpones the conversation.
What return on investment actually says
Return on investment is winnings divided by entry fees, and it is the only figure that compares a $5 night to a $50 one. Net profit tells you what happened; ROI tells you whether the thing you did is worth repeating.
Two numbers worth knowing about yourself:
- ROI by contest type. A player at +5% in cash and -40% in tournaments is not a losing player. They are a winning player with an expensive habit.
- ROI by entry fee. Almost everyone has a level at which their edge disappears. It is usually one step above where they are comfortable.
Sample size, honestly
Fifty contests tells you very little. Several hundred cash games starts to mean something. Tournaments need more entries than most people play in a year before the number settles down.
This is not a reason to avoid looking. It is a reason to be careful about what you conclude. "I am up this month" is not a finding. "My cash ROI has been positive across four hundred contests at this stake" is.
Weeks and slates
Two breakdowns earn their place beyond the headline figure:
- By week. Losing weeks are normal. A pattern of large losing weeks after large winning ones is not variance, it is you changing your stakes after a result.
- By slate. Many players do well on the main Sunday slate and poorly on short evening ones, where the field is smaller and sharper. That is worth knowing before the next Thursday.
What our tracker does
Upload your DraftKings contest history and the tracker gives you net, ROI, and a split by contest type, week, season and slate. Add the contest standings export and it will also tell you which players you actually used most, which is often a surprise.
It records what you already did. We never take an entry fee, hold a balance or pay anything out, and your results are yours: they are not shown to other users, and they are not shown to us in any form beyond a count of how many files have been uploaded. You can delete all of it at any time, and that deletion is real.
FanDuel is not supported yet, for a dull reason: the file they offer for download is a lineup template with no fees or winnings in it, so there is nothing to calculate from. If that changes we will add it.
One thing worth deciding before you look
Decide what you will do if the number is bad. Writing that down first is the difference between a tracker that helps and a tracker that becomes another way to feel clever about a losing month.
If it stops being fun, or you find yourself playing to get back to even, the National Council on Problem Gambling helpline is free, confidential and available every hour of every day: 1-800-522-4700.