Fantasy Sports

In an auction draft every manager has a budget and bids on players, so anyone can acquire any player. It removes the constraint of draft position and is generally considered more skill-intensive than a snake draft.

A DFS cash game pays roughly the top half of entrants a similar amount, rather than concentrating prizes at the top. Strategy prioritises consistency over upside, and the correct lineup differs sharply from a tournament lineup.

DFS contests last a single day or week rather than a season. Players build a lineup under a salary cap and compete for prize pools, with the operator taking a rake of around 10%.

A GPP is a DFS tournament with a prize pool guaranteed regardless of how many enter. Payouts are heavily top-weighted, so most entrants win nothing and the winner takes a large share.

A head-to-head contest pits your lineup against one opponent, with the winner taking both entry fees less rake. It is the lowest-variance DFS format and the most directly comparable to a single bet.

Late swap is changing players in a DFS lineup after the contest has started, for games that have not yet begun. It is a genuine edge that most casual players never use.

A lineup is the set of players you field in a fantasy contest. In DFS it must fit the salary cap and roster requirements; in season-long it is chosen weekly from your squad.

Ownership percentage is the proportion of contest entries that include a given player. It is central to tournament strategy, because beating a large field requires being right about players most entrants avoided.

Pick'em contests ask you to choose whether players will go over or under a projected statistic, with payouts rising as you add more correct picks. They resemble parlays and are regulated as betting in a growing number of jurisdictions.

In DFS, the salary cap is the budget available to build a lineup, with each player carrying a price based on expected performance. Finding players priced below their likely output is the core skill.

Season-long fantasy runs across an entire sporting season, with the same squad managed through drafts, trades and waivers. It rewards long-term management rather than the single-slate optimisation of DFS.

A snake draft reverses the pick order each round, so the manager picking last in round one picks first in round two. It is the standard format for season-long fantasy leagues.

Stacking means selecting multiple players from the same team or game so their performances reinforce each other. It raises the ceiling of a lineup and is standard practice in DFS tournaments.

The waiver wire is the pool of unowned players available to claim during a fantasy season. Working it well is widely regarded as a larger edge than drafting.