DFS Contest Selection: Small & Large Field Tournaments to Attack

On the most recent Fantasy Footballers DFS & Betting Podcast, Betz and myself discussed some of the contests we personally play in every week on DraftKings.

We discussed these DFS tournaments including how to allocate your budget and which contests to select each week. Below you will also find a simple chart that shows the small and large field GPPs that you can enter as you progress as a player.

Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out the 2025 DFS Pass, which includes premium resources like DFS Rankings, DraftKings picks, FanDuel picks, our Optimizer and our Roster Percentage Report.

State Your Goals for DFS

If you’ve heard this refrain before, guess what… it’s time to update those goals!

We have to have some goal or idea in mind unless you enjoy lighting money on fire. This should help guide you when you log in and determine what contests to play. No matter where you are or what your bankroll is, we want to set the end in mind.

• If you’re just here for a good time, want to throw a few darts, and enter the Milly, go for it!
• If you want to grind an edge for 18+ weeks and pad a bankroll, consider some smaller field GPPs & cash style contests. Developing a process and setting goals for DFS is essential for anyone who wants to be a long-term profitable player.
• If you want to win a big tourney, quit your job, and live off the grid from the winnings, so be it! Just don’t quit your job just yet.

The best part is that you don’t have to pick and choose. This isn’t an either-or situation. Both cash and GPP can be rewarding but you get to tailor your DFS experience to what you want. Regardless, if you can’t state your goals, you likely will quickly run out of money. We think our cash process and picks in the DFS Pass (especially Saturday’s Best Plays article) can help you learn the game the right way

I wrote an article entitled The DFS Process: Weekly Strategy & Schedule if you need a template to follow. A lot of DFS content can work alongside your life instead of forcing you to abandon your responsibilities and family as you do endless research in the basement. For example, listening to an hour-long DFS Podcast can happen in the car or while mowing the lawn. The two weekly podcasts we put out for DFS & Betting condense so much of the preparatory work. Let us do the heavy lifting and sift through all the things you don’t need!

What is Your Budget?

Everyone works with a different sized budget based on personal preferences, your season in life, or your risk tolerance. For the sake of this article and easy math, let’s say we are working with $100 each week.

How much of your budget are you playing each week?

• Getting Your Feet Wet– 80% Cash / 20% GPPs
• Our Recommendation– 60-70% Cash / 30-40% GPPs
• Advanced– 50-60% Cash / 40-50% GPPs
• Professionals– <40% Cash

That may sound elementary to start with but it’s better to go in with some structure. If you have $100, you could construct your weekly bankroll this way if you are using our starting recommendation or getting your feet wet:

Aimlessly throwing money and ending up on Sunday entering a bunch of contests you didn’t need to usually does not work out well.

The main idea: if you hit the cash line in Double-Ups, you cover all your bases for the week. In other words, cash can be the great equalizer and H2Hs will insulate your losses and maximize your good weeks. Obviously, you need to be better than 50% of the field but we’ve found over the years that you can be successful and let the field make mistakes.

For GPPs, 20-30% might not sound that enticing but you can find an easy blend to work with in single and 3-entry style tournaments if you are a beginner

• $3 3-Max Contest
• $10 Single Entry Contest
• $1 Single Entry Contest
• Extra $10… throw in our DFS contests for our DraftKings leagues

Obviously, you can scale these amounts in whatever fashion you want but constructing a ladder can help you when the tournament winds don’t flow in your favor.

GPP Contests We Like

The levels listed below are arbitrary and based upon your level of confidence, expertise, and more importantly, your bankroll. We cannot legislate what is valuable for you, your bankroll, and your financial situation.

It is valuable to consider both the rake and payout structures for this contests before blindly reserving your entries.

When we are discussing “rake“, we are computing the percentage of entry fees that the DFS sites keep as a fee for creating the contest. They ain’t doing this for free! The higher the rake, the less money is in the prize pool for us, the players. In general, we want to stay away from contests where the rake is above 14%. Many of the contests that are front and center for DraftKings users are traps from the start when 20% of the money is already gone. At the higher price points, you will find that the rake sits closer to 10%. It makes sense: casuals won’t want to play and this rewards users who foot the bill at $150 an entry. We should be trying to find contests with as little rake as possible but be mindful that the lower dollar entry fees generally have a higher rake.

The payout structure for contests can be a bit misleading. You (like me) probably scroll to the top to see what 1st place gets. You say to yourself, “Oh sweet, I can turn $3 into $10K… let’s do it!” However, a better way to look at this is asking the question, “how ‘top heavy’ is the payout structure”? This refers to % of the field that gets paid but also an understanding of how the prizes are distributed. There are no real advantages versus. disadvantages but it does changes the volatility of the contest.

As you progress as a DFS player, you want to be more selective of the contests you play in, not less. This is counterintuitive for a lot of new users who dream of being able to spend their bankroll on whatever contest they desire.

Small Field Contests We Like

Here are some of the small field contests listed above and the stakes based on the rake and payout structure. We’d prefer our small field to be <1,000 entrants but if you can find <3,000 that can certainly work.

NFL $25K Fair Catch (Single Entry) – $12

• Single entry tournament costs just $12 to enter
• Very winnable with ‘only’ 2,450 entrants.
• Some tournaments push for an 18+% rake which is high. This one comes in around 17%.
• With $5,000 up top to first, this contest has a solid payout structure and almost 23% of the field get paid.

NFL $25K Red Zone (Single Entry) – $50

• Single entry tournament costs at elevated price point
• Very winnable with ‘only’ 2,272 entrants.
• 12% rake is doable.

NFL $40K Goal Line (3 Entry Max) – $75 

• This contest costs much more to enter with an entry costing $75, but the rake here is great with the rake coming in at under 14%.
• In addition, unlike the large field tournaments above, over 25% of the field gets paid.
• If you’ve got the bankroll, this check the boxes we’re looking for – lower rake and a high payout structure. It’s got $4,000 up top to first with about 600 entrants.

NFL $50K Spy (Single Entry) – $100

• Another contest for those who have the bankroll to afford it.
• This one costs $100, but given that there are only 555 entrants and an 11% rake, it’s much more user-friendly.
• Over 21% of the field gets paid, and there’s $5,000 to first place.
• There is also an even smaller field version of 334 entrants at the same price point if you’d prefer.

Large Field Contests We Like

For this article, we will define large field as anything over 5,000 entrants.

NFL $250K First Down (20 Entry Max) –  $1

• $1 per entry for a $20 max
• Over 297,000 entrants with $20,000 to 1st, and 24% of the field gets paid.
• This low-stakes contest is great if you want to test out your MME skills using an optimizer.
• We generally recommend folks only enter these multi-entry contests if you can afford to max enter, and given that this only costs, it fits the bill.

NFL $30K Triple Option (3 Entry Max) – $3 

• Just under 12,000 entrants and over 21% of the field gets paid.
• At $9 total to max enter, this can fit with even the smallest of budgets
• The rake is only 8.5% with $30K paid out in prizes and almost 26% of the field.

NFL $100K Engage Eight (3 Entry Max) – $8

• You can bet you will find Betz and I in this contest every single week.
• Compared to the other contests in this section, only 20% of the field gets paid but the pay structure is much more friendly.
• There’s $10K to first, $5K to second, $4K to third, $3K to fourth and $1.5K to fifth. Other tournaments are extremely top heavy with most of if not all the money to first place.
• Here we’re rewarded handsomely with a top 10 finish as each user who finishes inside the top 10 gets at least $1,000. It’s only $8 per entry for a max of $24.

NFL $100K Screen Pass (3 Entry Max) – $15 

• Just under 8,000 entrants and over 21% of the field gets paid.
• At $15 per entry, it’s a nice step up for those looking to increase their entry fees as they have success.
• There’s $10K up top to first and like the Engage Eight, all users in the top 10 are taking home at least $1K.

NFL $50K Blind Side (Single Entry) – $27

• Another single entry contest with decent rake at around 16%.
• About 23% of the field gets paid, and there’s a really nice $5,000 to first place.
• Given that the field is just over 2,000 entrants, this is one for those who are overwhelmed by trying to beat almost thousands and thousands of opponents.

Some of our Discord members have also shared spreadsheets they’ve made with a greater library of tournament contests: