Why Fanduel Is Better Than Snapdraft

I realize that you probably came here looking for information on Snapdraft. While we'll continue to provide that here, you should be aware of something...there are much better daily fantasy sites out there than Snapdraft. The best of these is Fanduel. Here's why...

1. Lower commissions. Fanduel's commissions are generally 10%, compared to the 20% that Snapdraft charges for most contests. That makes a huge difference how far your money will go, and whether you'll be able to be a long term winner in these games.

2. Active user community. While Snapdraft contest chat rooms rarely have any discussion, Fanduel's public chat room provides a great social atmosphere, with strategy discussions, trash talking, and easy access to ask other players and Fanduel staff questions.

3. Accurate player pricing. While Snapdraft only updates player prices a few times per season (at best), Fanduel prices are updated on a daily basis.

4. Superior support. Not only will Fanduel staff respond to your issues promptly, but when there are problems, Fanduel has a long history of resolving any issues in a way that is favorable to players...even when that costs the site substantial amounts of money in refunds or payouts.

5. Prompt withdrawals by Paypal. No more 3-4 week wait for your money. Fanduel processes withdrawals via Paypal within 24 hours.

6. Large field, large prize pool tournaments. Fanduel runs the $3,000 guaranteed NBA Slam every Wednesday, the $2,500 guaranteed NBA Dunk every Friday, and the $1,000 guaranteed NHL Shootout every Saturday. The Slam and Shootout are only $10 per entry and the Dunk is $25. You can enter any of these multiple times, and the number of total entrants is capped to ensure no worse than 10% commission. Better yet, these are guaranteed contests...they will be run with full prize pools no matter how few people enter!

Is Snapdraft Shutting Down?

At this point, nobody really knows. Fanball (the operator of Snapdraft) has announced that it is shutting down as of June 30th, and has announced the end of many of its games. However, Snapdraft was among the games that was not specifically mentioned in the original announcement. Another of the games not mentioned was the NFBC high stakes contests, and news has now leaked out that those will run in 2011 and beyond. It hasn't yet been announced who will be taking them over, but it seems very unlikely that Snapdraft will be going along with them. With Snapdraft also partially owned by NBC Sports, one thing that seems unlikely is that money in Snapdraft accounts would be at risk...although with the site apparently running more or less on autopilot their already slow withdrawal process is likely to become even worse.

If you don't want to deal with the uncertainty, now is a great time to try one of the competing sites...many of which provide a superior overall experience to Snapdraft. The current market leader in terms of overall traffic and tournaments with large prize pools is Fanduel.

Snapdraft NBA Basketball Scoring and Strategy

For the record, $28 of hockey contests yesterday with no wins. I picked up a few more 2nd place finishes, but with both of my lineups scoring in the high 30s didn't really do well enough to be able to expect any wins.

Although I haven't been playing in te NBA basketball contests at Snapdraft, I do have some thoughts on how to approach them. First, here is the scoring system:

2 points - 2 Pt. Field Goal
3 points - 3 Pt. Field Goal
1 point - Free Throw
1 point - Assist
1 point - Rebound
2 points - Steal
2 points - Blocked Shot

Compared to traditional fantasy basketball, this scoring system places a lot of emphasis on points scored. While the scarcity of other categories makes each individual event worth more in traditional (rotisserie) scoring, here each event is worth the same amount. Your opponents may not fully appreciate how valuable the one-dimensional scorers can be in this format.

Close But No Cigar

Close by no cigar yesterday. I entered $21.60 of contests and didn't win any. I was really close though. I used the same lineup in all contests and scored 41.10 points, which was good for 2nd place in 5 contests. If either of my goalies had held their opponent to three goals or less, I would have won all of those.

Because my basic strategy is kind of feast or famine (looking for high variance combinations of players), I'm going to try to start hedging by using more than one lineup when I can find additional combinations of players that I'm comfortable with. For today's games I've found two lineups that I like, so I'll probably split my contests about half and half between the two.

It's also worth mentioning that I'm playing in the multiplayer contests on Fantasy Sports Live. I won't be updating my results from that site quite as frequently, since they don't fill as many multiplayer contests.

Perfect Record at Snapdraft Hockey

Yesterday I had an almost unbelievable perfect record at Snapdraft hockey. I entered $12.40 of contests (all between 10-25 players) and finished DEAD LAST in every single one. That's not easy to do. Note to self: it's REALLY important to figure out which goaltenders are playing each day. I managed to get both of them wrong yesterday, which went a long way toward explaining my results.

Snapdraft Hockey

I hadn't expected to be playing much on Snapdraft until baseball season, but I'm confident enough in the strategy I've got for multiplayer hockey contests, that I'm giving that a shot. I entered about $10 of contests yesterday, and it looks like I won most of them. While that's not going to happen every day (or even most days), it's always nice to get off to a good start. I'll be posting various thoughts on Snapdraft hockey strategy an my results over the next few months, and hope to have a new post up every few days.

Snapdraft Football Results

So the strategy I used for Snapdraft football yielded terrific results. Total entry fees: $68. Total prizes: $300. While things did work out almost perfectly for me with New Orleans and Indianapolis meeting in the Super Bowl, I was 'hedged' so that I would have had a good chance of coming out at least slightly ahead in at least 80% of the potential matchups.