That was a lot of work for $2.50. I set 20 lineups last night, two of which were free rolls, two of which cost $25, one of which cost $10 and the rest (15) were $5. That's $135 invested, and I took back $137.50. I had $1,007.60, now I have $1,010.10. I was hoping for something more dramatic ahead of my two-week vacation, but once David Robertson blew Chris Sale's win, I was lucky to break even.

Mostly I'm happy with how the first half season of my DFS experiment has gone. I've learned some lessons at a cost of $0, in stark contrast to the expensive "introductory course" I took investing in the stock market 10 years ago,  and it's mostly been fun - except for all the time I've wasted tracking my entries. I understand the thrill of hoping to see your guys go off in the first hour of play, but where I need to cut my losses is at the bitter end when for some reason it's seems so important I get $20 instead of $15, or $12.50 instead of $0. The best way to play is never to look at all, but as much as I aspire to that ideal, I've lived up to it only rarely.

If there's one thing by which I'm a little disappointed it's how pedestrian this blog has become at times. Between setting a ton of lineups and wanting to post if not before, then not too long after lineup lock (so there's transparency, and you know I'm not retroactively adding players who hit two home runs to make myself look good), I haven't had a ton of time for strategy discussion or commentary. I meant this to be part instructional series (both for me and readers who are new to DFS) and part documentary about the process, but it's mostly been a list of lineups that took 60-90 minutes to figure out, 30-40 minutes to format, edit and post and a dull accounting of how much money is moving in and out of my bankroll.

My hope is to hit a big score soon (it doesn't have to be $10,000 - even $1500 or so would do the trick), so I can start playing with bigger amounts ($50-$100 50/50s and head to heads and $25 multi-entry tournaments) without risking too much damage to my bankroll. If I'm still treading water in August, I might do it anyway just to liven things up, but I'd like to prove to myself I'm a positive-EV player first. Not that it wouldn't make for better copy if I squandered the $1,000 over 2-3 weeks straight-up gambling, but anyone can do that. My aim is to walk the line between responsible playing and interesting copy, and if I've veered too far toward the former, I don't want to over-correct, tempting as it might be.

In any event, I'll be back in a couple weeks. Try to figure out how to survive without these posts in the meantime.