Losing Money in Dream11? You need a Strategy!

• Are you losing money in fantasy cricket apps like Dream11, MPL or Vision11
• Not confident how to make your own team?
• Think that winning in fantasy is just luck?

If your answer to any of the above questions is yes, you need to stop and first create a strategy!

What is Strategy?

In simple words, strategy is how you plan to achieve a goal.

Businesses, governments and all type of organizations create strategies to achieve their goal. They take time to think, plan and decide a strategy that could help them achieve their goal. For this reason, big companies pay huge salaries to highly educated people from the best universities to create strategies for their business with the goal of making more profit.

Why do they need a strategy? Because to  achieve the goal of making more profits, they need to understand what they should do and what they should not do.

Without any plan or strategy, the company could lose their time and money doing things that will not help them reach their goals.

Same thing for almost every important task in the world.

• Businesses create strategy to increase profits.
• Governments create strategy to complete huge projects.
• Political parties create strategy to win elections.
• Armies create strategy to win wars.
• Stock investors create strategy to increase return.

Why you need a Strategy in Fantasy?

Strategy is not just for companies or organisations. Every important task involves clear planning and thought process. As a matter of fact, people also make strategies for important tasks:

• Students create strategy to prepare for exams.
• Working professionals create strategy to get better jobs.
• Smart people use strategy to make money in fantasy apps. 😀

If you are a student or don’t have a source of income, you should not be playing in real money fantasy apps. If your income is limited and you need that money for day to day expense, think very hard before you put your money randomly.

If you are new to this, only play with money that you are comfortable to lose.

This is very important to understand because your strategy in fantasy should depend on how much risk you can take and how much money you can lose without it affecting your finances.

This is because fantasy is a game of probability. This means you will never win in 100% of the matches you play. In other words, you will always lose some matches in fantasy, but if your winnings are more than your losses, you will make a profit.

What is Strategy for Winning in Dream11?

Your strategy in fantasy apps like Dream11 should be based on how much risk you can take and how much reward you are looking for. Understand the risk vs reward first.

Let’s see what this means for you.

Dream11 or any other fantasy app has broadly 2 type of contests:

1. Small League

These are contests with less number of participants as the name suggests, typically up to 10. Most contests have between 3 to 7 teams. 

The winning probability is high in small leagues and depends on the number of  competing teams. It could be as high as 50% for head to head contests where only 2 teams compete or 10% for contests with 10 teams. 

You can see the winning probability in different small leagues in the image below.

As you can see, the winning amount for small league contests depends on the entry fee and number of players. 

Higher the entry fee and more the number of competing teams, higher the winnings. But the probability of winning goes down in contests with more teams 

2. Grand League or Mega League

Grand leagues are contests which you hear about in ads promoting winning in crores by playing with only a small amount. 

These contests have an entry fee usually starting from as low as Rs. 33. You can play with multiple teams to increase your chances of winning, as high as 20 teams, depending on the fantasy app. The winning prize is a big amount but the probability to win the grand prize is very low due to a large number of teams in a contest.

Anywhere between a few thousand to lakhs of players play in a grand league. For the most popular matches like India vs Pakistan, this number goes up to 1 crore teams! 

Here are some grand league contests from an IPL match below.

As you can see, there are lakhs of players fighting for one top prize. Therefore the competition is tough and it’s hard to win a grand league. 

These are high risk, high reward contests where the probability to lose money is very high. Only 58-65% teams win and most people only get their money back.

To have any chance of winning big, you need to create a unique team with risky players. This also means your chances of losing money is also high.

 Notice the winning prize and entry fee. You will still need to create a risky team but your chances of winning are slightly higher here.

How to make a Strategy for Winning in Dream11?

We are making it very simplified but generally every strategy comes down to two main options:

1. Do what everyone else is doing but do it in a better way.

2. Do what no one else is doing.

Point 1 applies to small leagues. You can play small leagues with safer teams and not being greedy. If you win over 60% of your matches, you will keep making small profits consistently.

Point 2 applies to grand leagues. You need to choose risky players and create a unique team combination to improve your chances of winning against thousands of other players. Your chances of losses are high, but if you win, you will win a huge amount.

For consistent winning, one should focus on small leagues as the chances of winning are high and you can go for higher amounts with more experience.

If you are okay to lose some amount on a frequent basis, and prefer a high risk approach, you should try grand league.

Also Read: How to Win Grand League in Dream11

Conclusion

To conclude, risk and rewards are always related in fantasy. If you want to minimize loss and increase probability of winning, playing small league will be a better option.

But if you are focused only on winning the mega grand league prize of 1 crore or more, be prepared to lose some money frequently and take more risk due to less chance of winning.

Check out the next article on using selection percentage to create a winning fantasy yeam.