What's your fantasy sports / gambling sweet spot?

[Dave Gray]

I used to be in three fantasy leagues.  I'm messed around with parlay sheets.  I've gambled a little bit.  I have done survivor pools, office pools, etc.

Sometimes, it's just too much and you're rooting for this one player here, but another player here -- needing a team to win, but not cover, etc.

Right now, I do:
1 fantasy league
1 parlay pool with friends, with a side-bet
1 free ESPN pick'em
1 free ESPN eliminator

I am not sure this is the sweet spot or not.  I definitely like only having one fantasy league.  I'm glad I do zero daily fantasy, too.  ...that's not my bag.  I'd like to swap out the eliminator for a paid survivor pool, maybe.  And the pick'em is good.  I enjoy that, just as a way to track my knowledge.

[fyo]

I'm doing absolutely nothing this year, for the first time in nearly two decades. This year, that's definitely my sweet spot. I used to do at least a fantasy league and an eliminator (most years) and some gambling. It all took too much time, though. In what feels like a previous life, I was paid (poorly) to write about football and I was watching maybe 8 full games a week. Through 7 years of that, I never had a losing season with my betting (I never bet more than I could easily afford) and I did really well with both my fantasy league and other stuff. After ditching the football writing gig and scaling back the number I games I watched to 3 or 4, I had 3 seasons where I (just barely) lost money on the betting.

These past couple of years, I pretty much only watch the Dolphins, plus maybe the Monday Night game. I haven't placed a bet on a game since my three losing seasons and after doing quite badly in my fantasy league last season (both bad luck and poor skill), I decided I didn't want to spend the time it would take me to improve my performance.

Seems like I'm saying it's only fun if I win... not sure if that's entirely the case. One of the reasons I used to place bets on games was that it increased my enjoyment when watching them. Now I don't watch them, so that reason no longer applies.

[DaLittle B]

Zero...I've not done a lot fantasy yards for quite awhile,Idwindled down to 1 league,or game here and there to ZERO. It allows me to Focus on Only the Dolphins,and the Cubs (though in Baseball,I follow general movement/names/trade rumors,etc) It is great to watch the little nuances of the Dolphins,and Cubs games without focusing on the scroll of other games,and scores,and stats on the bottom of the screen. (Changing the channel bouncing game to game,or Game mix channel during commercial breaks,because the Pop ups with stats aren't fast enough on my T.V.)

The Other players were my biggest gripe,that drove me away.

[Thundergod]

1 fantasy league. No money involved,  just fun and trash talking with buddies.

I tried doing multiple but I didn’t like having to cheer and root against players I had.

[Dave Gray]

Kinda interesting: I'm in the two ESPN fantasy things.

In Pick'em -- you pick the winner of all games, with point-spread.  I'm doing incredibly well.  I'm in the 99th percentile, ranked as high as 11th of all Dolphins fans.  It's insane how good my picks have been.

In Eliminator -- you only pick one game each week, no spread.  I'm doing beyond horrible.  There have been so many times where the biggest favorite of the week is upset outright.  I'm 5-4 after 9 games.  That's hilariously bad for just picking one game.

[masterfins]

I've never done fantasy football, a couple friends have wanted me to get into their group, but I think they just want my easy money.  I didn't do the ESPN games this year, I was real busy with work when they started up, plus Miami took a bye the first week so I wasn't into it too much.  But I did resurrect an elimination pool I run, first time in about ten years, so I was also caught up in getting that going.  Of course I was eliminated the first week for stupidly taking the Patriots.  Last week I started up my second round of the elimination pool, with this one you have to pick a team to lose, instead of win.  Of course I was eliminated in that one too because the Seahawks couldn't beat the Skins at home.  My elimination pools just cost $20, so not a big expense.  My only other gambling item is a weekly pickem sheet for $5/week, which we do through my bowling league every week.