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Founded in 2015, Daily Fantasy Nerd is a daily fantasy sports analytic platform that provides DFS players with the tools and data to construct profitable DFS lineups in less time. It also features a one-of-a-kind Bankroll tracker that can accelerate your DFS monetary gains.
Wondering if DFNerd is the right DFS research tool for you? This Daily Fantasy Nerd review takes a deep dive into the product and illuminates its strengths, weaknesses, and what you need to think about before investing your hard-earned money.
An Overview of Daily Fantasy Nerd
Key specifications:
- Price plan: $24.99/month, $44.99/month, and $79.99/month with a free 7-day trial.
- Game coverage: in-depth tools for NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB.
- Tools Suite: Player performance projections, Lineup Optimizer, and Bankroll tracker.
- DFS sites supported: DraftKings, FanDuel, Yahoo!, FantasyDraft.
To ease the substantial time investments required for profitable DFS enjoyment, multiple companies have created DFS research tools and lineup optimizers that generate viable lineups in ten minutes as opposed to 3 hours.
Daily Fantasy Nerd is an example of such a research tool. Sprinkle in a well-respected lineup optimizer, a unique Bankroll tracker, and Daily Fantasy Nerd might just be onto something.
PROS
CONS
Who Should be Using Daily Fantasy Nerd?
All DFS players, particularly those with significant experience who want to become more profitable in less time, should consider Daily Fantasy Nerd. The ultimate reason for using a DFS research suite is to create more profitable lineups and win more money.
Many times you haphazardly enter DFS contests with little regard to the competitions and sports at which you are far more likely to succeed.
Over time, entering contests at which you have historically performed poorly might cost you tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. Daily Fantasy Nerd’s Bankroll tracker quickly identifies which contests you should play and which you should avoid; these decisions are based on analysis of your historic results across many different games.
All players would be well-served to use this unique feature of DFN.
Features and Benefits
#1 Membership plans / 7-day Free Trial
All three membership plans are available monthly, as there are no annual subscriptions. In addition, all three membership tiers provide access to all sports: NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB.
The All-Star and MVP plans offer some features unavailable with the Veteran Plan: Community likes, the ability to save and manage entries, the export of lineups to a .CSV file and easy upload to a DFS platform, the upload of custom projections, and the creation of weighted predictions.
Lastly, only the MVP membership tier allows for projection correlation analysis, enabling you to vary the input weights of your projections and determining which weighted predictions most accurately forecast fantasy production.
#2 Lineup Creation Tool/Lineup Optimizer
Daily Fantasy Nerd’s lineup optimizer provides you a superior lineup in less time. Here’s how it works:
Step 1 – Select the Site and Sport
Select the site by clicking inside the red oval and select the sport by clicking to the left of the green arrow.[1]
Step 2 – Research the slate of Games
Peruse the spread and over/under totals to select ideal game environments. In a perfect world, you should look for a contest featuring a high over/under and a low spread. Such a battle would likely indicate many opportunities for fantasy points and secure minutes for the starting players.
If you were looking at an NFL or MLB slate, indications of the weather conditions would be present, although they should be of secondary importance to the over/under and spread.
Step 3 – Research The Players
Once you have selected the preferred game environment, it’s time to choose our players. Take a look at the color-coded stats to identify strong picks for the day. Tweak your lineup by excluding players you dislike and locking players you like
Orange-shaded stats indicate “hot” (think fire), while blue-shaded stats indicate “cold” (think ice). The brighter the orange, the better the play. The darker the blue, the worse the play.
The players can be filtered by position with many useful statistics provided (see below).[2]
The most important stat is the players’ projected fantasy outputs. The lineup optimizer uses sophisticated algorithms to produce optimal lineups based on Daily Fantasy Nerd’s proprietary projections. They update these projections throughout the day as news of starting lineups, injuries, Vegas odds, weather, and more come in.
You can also click on any player to bring up his season’s game log. If the player has faced the team before, those game logs are highlighted in green. Let’s take a look at Lance Stephenson’s game log.[3]
Step 4 – Manually Adjust or Upload Your Own Projections
Notice that the Fantasy Point Projections in the red oval are alterable. The All-Star and MVP plans enable you to customize the player projections and override those created by the site.
To manually edit projections, you simply click in the fantasy point projection boxes and type in your forecasts. You also have the option to upload an entirely new set of projections.[4]
Simply drag and drop your spreadsheet of projections into the dotted box, and your uploaded projections will replace all predictions on the player page.
If you subscribe to the All-Star or MVP membership, you can choose how much weight you want to assign to various parameters and create entirely new weighted projections.
If you are playing cash games, you would want to weight the projections more towards the floors (red oval). For GPPs, you would weight the projections more towards the ceilings (green square).
Step 5 – Generating Optimized Lineups
Once you have selected the games and players to target, it’s time to lock a couple of players in place and generate some tournament winning entries!
Step 6 – Export your Entries to the DFS Site
If you subscribe to the All-Star or MVP membership tier, you can mass export your favorite lineups from Daily Fantasy Nerd and import them to your preferred DFS site. I will be exporting mine to DraftKings.
After downloading your lineups from Nerd, you click “Upload Lineups” on DraftKings and follow the straightforward instructions to upload your lineups.[5] You might find it interesting to read more on other DFS sites like FanDuel and FantasyDraft.
That is the entire process! You are now ready to take down a GPP!
#3 Advanced Projection Analysis Tool
If you subscribe to the MVP membership tier, you can analyze how accurate your projections are. Simply click on the “Analysis” tab at the top of the page.
On this page, you will find a Pearson Correlation between actual results, your uploaded projections, as well as other stats. Any number between 0.5 and 1.0 indicates a high correlation, with the most significant associations generating values closer to 1.0.
Daily Fantasy Nerd does store your past projections so you can go back and analyze your projection accuracy. To find your previous predictions, change the week or date using the selector in the top right of the page (see below).
You can then compare your projections to actual results and test out different lineup construction strategies. This practice allows you to experiment with different weighted prognostications to determine which forecasts generate the most accurate predictions.[6]
#4 Bankroll Tracker
The Bankroll tracker is a genuinely brilliant tool that enables you to analyze your results in a myriad of different ways, and quickly determine which contests or sports are killing your bankroll, and which have netted you a solid Return On Investment (ROI). You can then alter your strategy to only engage in those contests that have proven to be profitable.
This tool analyzes all your contests ever played in mere seconds. Imagine having to figure this stuff out on your own? It might take you months!
To use the Bankroll tracker, you first must download your DFS history from each of the sites on which you play.
To download your entry history from DraftKings, you click on “My Contests(1),” then you click on “history (2),” and lastly, you click on “Download entry history (3).” This procedure will generate a .CSV file that you must upload to the Bankroll tracker.
After one user uploaded his history to Bankroll tracker, it generated the following graph:
No, it does not look pretty! In about two years of DFS play, the user is $3500 in the hole. However, you will soon see that all is not hopeless, and the Bankroll tracker will rapidly identify those types of contests in which the user has turned a profit!
The BT can sort data by DFS site, sport, or date range (above). It can also plot a graph based on factors other than cumulative profit (below)
The information shown to the graph’s left (inside the red circle) is denoted and defined in the next screenshot:
Below is the graph depicting the user’s NBA DFS history:
Again, this is not pretty. The player has lost nearly $2400 with a -21% ROI in NBA DFS contests! Below this graph, there is a litany of information that can be sorted by contest type, contest size, and entry fees:
Below is the same user’s contest history, sorted by entry fee:
Holy Smokes! Remember, this data is from the same user who has lost nearly $2400 with a -21% ROI in DFS NBA contests.
However, the data indicated to the left of the green arrow is auspicious. In contests with entry fees between $0.01 and $1, this player has won nearly $350 with an ROI in excess of 85%! By using the Bankroll tracker, we know that this user should only enter contests for no more than $1.
If said user follows the positive output, the user might become a profitable DFS player! The only way the player would acquire such knowledge is through the Bankroll tracker!
What are People Saying About Daily Fantasy Nerd?
I scoured the internet and found some very positive reviews about the product.[7]
The masses have spoken. I have not used the service; however, a few friends of mine swear by it.
Daily Fantasy Nerd Alternatives
Let’s see how three similar alternatives compare to DFN: FantasyPros, Football Fantasy Nerd, and Draft Dashboard.
1. FantasyPros
While FantasyPros does provide some excellent tools, it is more appropriate for season-long fantasy leagues.
They do provide limited DFS support, with a lineup optimizer, and the ability to review your past DFS results. However, these features are only available at the most expensive HOF level of membership.
Yearly membership for FantasyPros HOF package costs around $95 and I would encourage all season-long fantasy players to check it out.
2. Fantasy FOOTBALL Nerd
Fantasy Football Nerd will run you $19.99 for a yearly subscription. At that price point, do NOT expect any miracles. They have a limited choice of seasonal tools and features, and accessing the data you desire can be cumbersome.
It should also be evident that the only sport that they cater to is the NFL. Nonetheless, they do offer some free tools such as player rankings and projections.
While FFN primarily focuses on season-long fantasy leagues, they do provide a functional DFS optimizer that works with DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo. While the in-season features are wholly inadequate, where this product can help you is with its draft-prep features for seasonal leagues.
For those desiring an extremely affordable DFS lineup optimizer, or fairly solid draft preparation for season-long football leagues, Fantasy Football Nerd might be your inexpensive ticket to fantasy greatness.
3. Draft Dashboard
Draft Dashboard is a multi-sport DFS research suite that I recently reviewed. Please check out my review to learn more about this impressive site.
The cost of the first month’s subscription is $1, with each additional month, billed at $39.95.
The data and tools are more than adequate, and the visuals are very pleasing. A significant quantity of information is provided to enable the user to create profitable DFS lineups with minimal time investment.
I would even recommend Draft Dashboard over Nerd if not for the one game-changing feature that Nerd offers: the Bankroll tracker. If the Bankroll tracker is a tool that you could do without, then at half the price of Daily Fantasy Nerd, I will encourage you to visit Draft Dashboard.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Final Words
Daily Fantasy Nerd provides a solution to the arduous, extensive research process involved in creating competitive DFS entries.
In addition, many people lose a lot of money entering the wrong contests, in the wrong sports, at the incorrect entry fees. Knowing which competitions are your forte could alter your DFS fortunes immeasurably.
For this reason, I love the Bankroll tracker. It may be the most excellent DFS tool that I have ever encountered. Every DFS player would find such a tool to be of great utility. The bankroll tracker would locate the entry fees, and contest variations at which you have proven to be most successful.
Due to the Bankroll Tracker, I must give Nerd a 4.75/5 rating.
Furthermore, I encourage all to follow this link over to Daily Fantasy Nerd.
Resources:
[1] “Mlb Daily Lineup Optimizer Advice For Draftkings Fanduel ….” 27 Jun. 2020, http://themegolden.com/mlb-daily-lineup-optimizer-advice-for-draftkings-fanduel/. Accessed 29 Jun. 2020.
[2] “FAQ – Daily Fantasy Nerd – Zendesk.” https://dailyfantasynerd.zendesk.com/hc/en-us?mobile_site=false. Accessed 29 Jun. 2020.
[3] “daily fantasy nba lineup optimizer – 84.” http://165.227.84.246/content.php?id=daily+fantasy+nba+lineup+optimizer. Accessed 29 Jun. 2020.
[4] “daily fantasy nba lineup optimizer – 84.” http://165.227.84.246/content.php?id=daily+fantasy+nba+lineup+optimizer. Accessed 29 Jun. 2020.
[5] “Upload Bulk Lineups to DraftKings from Daily … – YouTube.” 2 May. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6zocjqu72Y. Accessed 29 Jun. 2020.
[6] “Daily Fantasy Nerd.” https://dailyfantasynerd.zendesk.com/hc. Accessed 29 Jun. 2020.
[7] “Is daily fantasy nerd worth it? : dfsports – Reddit.” https://www.reddit.com/r/dfsports/comments/3m2ypu/is_daily_fantasy_nerd_worth_it/. Accessed 29 Jun. 2020.
