The best ball action is already flying on Underdog Fantasy, which means we are going to have a never-ending string of contests to draft in between now and the start of the season.
And unless you have an unlimited budget for drafting fantasy teams, it can be hard to know exactly how to manage your bankroll in best ball and which contests to prioritize.
Do you want to take shots at the $1.5 million top prize in Best Ball Mania V? Maybe you want to save all your ammunition for the $5 Puppy contests? Or maybe you are interested in exploring a different format type, like The Eliminator?
Luckily, Underdog Fantasy is making things easier for players this summer by announcing their contest roadmap in advance. New contests will drop regularly on Wednesdays throughout the offseason with advance notice coming via the Underdog Drafts X account.
On Wednesday, Underdog Fantasy dropped three new contests, all of them with low-dollar price points:
- The Puppy ($5 150 max)
- The Chihuahua ($4 25 max)
- The Golden ($10 single entry)
Bankroll management and contest selection are both hugely important elements of being a successful fantasy player and are also completely unique to each individual drafter.
Below, I'm going to share my advice on how to think through these decisions so you can get the most enjoyment (and bang for your buck) out of best ball summer as possible.
Determine what your goals are (and your bankroll)
The first thing you need to determine is what your goals are. I would bucket the typical drafter into one of four categories:
- Low-stakes edge grinder
- Low-stakes best ball enjoyer
- Mid- to high-stakes edge grinder
- Mid- to high-stakes best ball enjoyer
When I say "edge grinder," I mean a drafter who cares about building the best possible team, is consuming best ball strategy content, staying up to date on news and drafting only in contests that have solid payout structures where their skill can be rewarded.
When I say "best ball enjoyer" I'm speaking more about a casual drafter who just loves drafting and gets entertainment value out of hopping in drafts. They are less concerned with every single strategic angle and micro edge when drafting.
The low-stakes vs. high-stakes element is more straightforward. I consider most contests with an entry fee under $10 as low stakes. I consider contests between $25-$75 as mid-stakes. And then anything over $100 buy-in as a high-stakes contest.
If your goal is simply to have fun and do a couple of practice mock drafts before the start of the season, you can hop in any of the low-stakes contests.
If your goal is to realize the best possible return on your investment (which does entail locking your money up for months because these contests won't pay out until January 2025), then you need to hunt for smaller contests with smoother payouts.
Once you determine what kind of drafter you are and what your bankroll is, you can start shopping around for the right contests.
Shop around for the right contest
Even though most of these contests on Underdog outside of The Eliminator and Weekly Winners have a similar format (14-week regular season and three playoff rounds in Weeks 15, 16 and 17), they all feature different price points, prize pools and advancement structures.
To put things in perspective, BBMV — Underdog's flagship contest — has room for 672,672 entries and an advancement structure where two out of 12 teams advance out of the regular season, one out of 13 teams advance out of a Week 15 pod, one out of 16 teams advance out of a Week 16 pod and 539 teams compete in the Week 17 final.
By the way, you can quickly see the advancement structure for any tournament you click on in the lobby directly underneath the "Enter" button:
Needless to say, BBMV is a massive tournament.
Only .08% of all the teams in the contest will make it to the finals where $10 million of the $15 million prize pool will be paid out.
To hammer home how difficult it will be to make the finals in this contest, understand that a drafter with average skill who max enters the contest (150 entries at $25/pop) would be expected to get a single team to the finals once every 8.3 years.
I realize that sounds demoralizing, but it's really important to have realistic expectations when entering these large-field contests. It's something I wrote about last year when many BBMIV drafters were upset they didn't get a team to the finals.
On the flip side, Underdog released a $3 20-max contest (that has unfortunately since filled) called The Mini Schnauzer with only 37,200 entries and a final with 310 entries. In that contest, .83% of teams will make the finals — over 10x more percentage-wise compared to BBMV. And an average drafter who maxed the contest with 20 entries would be expected to get a team to the finals once every 6 years (which is obviously better than every 8-plus years).
The macro point is that to win big money you often need to compete in contests with lots of entries. The smaller the contests you play, the better chance you will have to realize your edge.
I recommend following JonBoyBeats on X. He posts great breakdowns of the various best ball contests that include an overall score for the tournament along with a ton of valuable information to help you determine which contests most directly align with your specific goals.
Here are his breakdowns for the three low-stakes contests that recently dropped.
Understand the pros & cons of drafting early
Because contests are taking place nonstop from now until the start of the season, it's really important to understand the pros and cons of drafting early vs. in the middle of the summer vs. late in the summer.
Contests like Best Ball Mania V will span the duration of the entire summer (4-plus months), and I made a video on how we should be changing our strategies when we draft in May compared to when we draft in August.
The biggest thing to understand is that we will accumulate more information as the summer progresses — the NFL schedule, training camp, preseason, official depth charts, etc. — and this information often allows us to draft better teams with less risk.
The best example of this: Last year, drafters in May had no idea that Kyren Williams was a thing, but August drafters were able to load up after a steady drum beat indicated that he was the back to draft in Los Angeles.
On the flip side, drafting early allows us to get values that other drafters don't have access to. Last year I drafted Sam Laporta in the second-to-last round on the opening night of BBMIV, which launched in April. Laporta became a much trendier pick as the summer progressed and cost significantly more in later drafts.
One nice thing about the steady stream of smaller contests throughout the summer is that these are "time-boxed" contests, which is a fancy way to say they will only span a short amount of time. Because of this, the entire pool of drafters are working within the same environment with no gigantic information disparities.
Outline a budget and forecast your contest selection for the summer
Now that you've determined your goals, shopped around for the right contests and grasped the pros and cons of drafting early vs. late, you can outline a budget.
If I were a low-stakes player with $500 to spend on drafts this summer, I would likely allocate my budget along these lines:
If you have any specific questions, feel free to hit me up on X and I'll do my best to help.
