My first take on one-day fantasy leagues at FanDuel.

I used FanDuel for the first time the other day after growing increasingly more irritated at losing in fantasy from the random players getting hurt or getting caught doing stupid things. I'm not thrilled at my standard fantasy football teams this year, so I'm taking my research and heading to FanDuel while hoping for waiver wire magic.

Depositing cash is easy, and done with Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, or Amex. I'm pretty sure they have a money-back guarantee if something crazy happens, and I've seen nothing but good reviews on payouts. Turns out, daily fantasy isn't the same as organized sports betting in the eyes of Uncle Sam.

Come try to kick my ass on FanDuel!

After signing up with a modest amount of dough, I'm let loose into this website and felt my head start spinning:

The business end of FanDuel.

Nice, clean website with quality coding. Each page loads quickly, and the current number of entrants tends to update very quickly.

So, once you get here, it's time to join a game. There are a few different varieties of games:

50/50 - The best type in my opinion. Pick a team and take on other players to see who can pick an above-average team. If the league has 20 players, the top ten double their money (minus the rake). Simple, yet effective.

Head-to-Head - You can either pick a match-up or offer a match-up based on the sport, time and prize money. The site will then fill out most open match-ups, or you can just choose who you want to play against. User names are seen on these, so for those who want to play against 1ucror or Condia, this is the best way to get it done. Also, playing friends head to head for cash sounds freaking awesome.

Tournaments - These are the best "buy-in-to-winnings" ratio games available on FanDuel. Unfortunately, since you're playing against large amounts of players, the top 10% or so make money while the rest lose out. If you feel like you know some true sleepers, a tournament lineup with a few home run hitters could land you a lot of cash for a little bit of capital. Obviously, more losses will occur in tournaments, so mediocre teams have no chance of winning. Go big or go home in tournaments.

Winner-take-alls - Simply put, the winner takes all the money. Some winner-take-all games have five players, some ten, some a random number, but the pay-out is sweet for the winner. A winner of a $5, 10-team winner-take-all nets $45! I'd be willing to put five dollars each week on my fantasy team being the best of ten people, and it seems like a great way to have weekly fantasy with your friends instead of a year-long league. 

Double-up, Triple-up, Quadruple-ups - These are tourneys set up to allow the winners to double, triple, or quadruple their entry fees. There are more players than in 50/50 or winner-take-alls, but the payout is truly double, triple or quadruple AFTER the rake. 

All games at the low buy-in level have a 10% rake. For example, winning a $1 Head-to-Head would net you 80 cents ($1 buy-in plus $1 for victory equals $2, but with a 10% rake you get $1.80). This is obviously pretty standard in betting of all types. I find it pretty acceptable to spend a small amount to keep the website up and running in quality fashion. I've also heard the big games have a smaller rake, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.)

Some games take place over specific time periods, like Sunday-only NFL or late-night NBA. Most leagues are just one day, so you can do research on one day's worth of games as opposed to a full season. Forget trying to guess 16 weeks of NFL, just get one week right and you're in the money.

I started with some late-night NBA, and you're given a list of games to choose players from. Each game is salary-cap based, so you start with, say, $65k, and each player costs an amount relative to their scoring potential. High point scorers are given the highest salary, and bargains can be found when those big names are hurt. 

Obviously, you can't just play the best players in the NBA each night. Players like Kevin Durant cost around $10k, so you'll end up needing to fill out the roster with sleepers and bench players.

A line-up selection screen on FanDuel for Thanksgiving NFL games. Note the price difference between Peyton and Philip Rivers, or Jamaal Charles and Matt Forte.

After setting your lineup, you can change the lineup any time before the tournament starts. This helps you make sure that if you make a mistake, you can change it quickly and not get burned.

When you fill out a lineup, you can choose to play your lineup in other games if you think it's an ultimate team. Some users choose to play many different lineups, but I'm cool with one good one. Choosing different opponents will probably lead to a better range of results.

Sign up for FanDuel and challenge me!

Rules and scoring are very similar to a "standard league" in fantasy terms. Bonuses for yardage are not included as far as I know, so the scoring is pure. The NFL scoring includes half a point per reception, so make sure to think in PPR terms. The rules and scoring page is a pretty good read, and can be seen here. 

So, since I've won a few and lost a few, I'm sitting on a similar bankroll to where I started. Here's hoping that with time, effort, and experience, I can turn my small victories into larger wins and begin my run to become the next Condia. Who is Condia? Just sit in the chat room for a few seconds, or click that link. Basically, Condia is the guy playing tons of games and moving a bunch of money in these sites every day. Some think he's a robot, others think he's the man, but he sure does win a lot.

If you feel like giving FanDuel a try, here's a link to sign up. Come find me (username: siderealdaze) and see if you can take my money!

No, I didn't die, but my fantasy teams sure did.

In the last few years, I've murdered fantasy football in the same way that...well, a murderer murders things. I've also had very little going on in my professional and personal life outside of the normal doings of a late 20's slacker, so taking time to set a perfect line-up seemed pretty easy.

This year, I planned on spending the same amount of time on fantasy sports while adding a few hours a week for writing about the subject. Turns out, I've been busy as hell in real life working for a radio station/website in Chapel Hill, shooting photos at UNC Football, and working whatever other hours I have left at Jimmy John's for some money and subs.

I've had a few things each week that I wanted to share with the fantasy sports world, but finding time to research fantasy sports AND write about it has been tough. I'm in five leagues, and I am exactly one game over .500, and no more than one game over .500 in any league.

I AM TRULY MEDIOCRE.

This guy was so tired from fantasy research, he spelled Michael Jordan J-O-R-D-E-N. True story.

Timing is everything in fantasy sports, as well. An article about busts or sleepers really doesn't do much good at 1:01 PM each Sunday, much less a few days later. I've noticed that it is nearly impossible to write for free AND for a deadline...I think human minds are just unable to make it happen. Call it writer's block if you want.

So, after going for about ten weeks since my last post, I'm here to post...something.

In a $50 buy-in league, I had Aaron Rodgers, Julio Jones, Justin Blackmon, and Kyle Rudolph all go down. Add to the silly scoring from that league, and I went from sure-fire money winner to probably not making the playoffs.

Every fantasy team has it's ups and downs, but this is ridiculous. My RBs are Trent Richardson and Stevan Ridley, who I've had to keep because of my weekly waiver-wire scavenging. Each week, I've had to replace another starter that went down for whatever reason, and each bye week seems to just ravage my starting lineup.

So, yeah, had I picked Jimmy Graham in the first, second or third round (and I had the research to back it up) and picked literally anyone but Julio, Stevan or Trent with those picks, I'd be hanging out. Right now, my lineup looks like this:

This lineup sucks.

Turns out that every week, I missed out on the players I needed to fill holes (Julius Thomas, Zac Stacy, etc) because my team was either too good to be low on the waiver priority, or I'd spent my waiver wire priority patching another hole from some mysterious, random blow to my team.

Having done the same research for all my fantasy teams, the Julio Jones injury has hurt the most. I owned him in every league, and in every league have struggled to make a dollar out of fifteen cents with the remaining players weeks into a fantasy season. 

So, now that I'm stuck trying to make fantasy teams competitive that can't score, I'm doing a slightly different form of research for my picks. I'm spending a huge amount of time normally left for making my DTV antenna work or ordering a pizza on finding low-risk, high-reward players that are somehow under the radar.

See my lineup for proof- I've scored Coby Fleener, Kendall Wright, and Nick Foles in order to make my team somewhat respectable. Fleener was an obvious choice after the dude Allen from Clemson went out for the season. Kendall Wright is a true possession receiver and has had multiple receptions each week, never less than 50 yards or so. Nick Foles just happens to play on a REALLY up-tempo passing offense and have prototypical skills.

Where this is different from winning teams' selections, is the uncertainty. I'm always putting Calvin Johnson in if he's alive, period. Same goes with Drew Brees, or Brandon Marshall, or the Seahawks D. Players in the first few rounds of drafts and on top of leader boards tend to have less possibility of performing poorly and tend to have consistent results.

These are proven fantasy performers that barely have bad games. Simple, right?

It isn't so simple, even for the experts. This year was the year of the running back in most leagues, and I don't need to try hard in order to list the disappointments found in first rounds all over America. C.J. Spiller was a one-way ticket to the fantasy outhouse. It seems crazy right now to think that Frank Gore went in later rounds than Trent Richardson, or that Danny Woodhead and Knowshon Moreno are winning fantasy weeks for owners basically by themselves. 

What doesn't seem crazy, is that some examples of 2013 fantasy busts are NOT "proven fantasy performers that barely have bad games".

Trent Richardson had plenty of slow games for the Browns, but I chased the handful of runs shown on ESPN that made him look like the unstoppable bowling ball he was in the NCAA. Same goes for Kyle Rudolph- I knew he was inconsistent, but fantasy football commercials and the "young-QB-safety-blanket" rhetoric made me feel secure. 

Boy, it sucks to be wrong in gambling.

Even though I've had these mis-hits and poor decisions on my teams, I've still managed to do okay. The same logic that brought me to get Julio Jones (receptions in the NFL at the time of his injury) made me feel comfortable rolling the dice on Desean Jackson and Vincent Jackson. I drafted the Seahawks' defense really early in every league, and have reaped the benefits of a team that clearly pushes the limits of competitive advantage. 

Basically, I know what I'm doing. 

I can't help it if a collarbone decides to break, or an ACL decides to tear. Injuries are, at this level of sport, nearly completely random. The coaching staff does not know or care about the one reception I need to beat my opponent. 

The second-guessing that comes with a bad fantasy season isn't worth it. I now understand that I didn't make the wrong decisions, I just guessed incorrectly. 

It's my moment of fantasy Zen.

So, until next week, I'll be eating Thanksgiving leftovers, trying to find that next hit of ZacStacy that will have my opponent sweating.