Contest Rules

Fantasy Joes cash contests are peer-to-peer skill contests. Entrants compete against each other on the accuracy of fantasy football rankings they build themselves. Entry fees fund the prizes; Fantasy Joes collects a 10% service fee (rake) and never competes against entrants or banks the outcome.

Every contest displays its payout multipliers before you enter, and they never change after a contest opens. The number of winners can vary with field size (by the published rounding rules); the multipliers cannot.

• Cash Duels (head-to-head): better weekly score wins 1.8× the entry fee. An exact tie is a push — both entries refunded in full.
• Double-Up (50/50): up to 10 entrants; the top half (rounded down) win 1.8×. Runs with 6 or more entrants at lock.
• Tables (sit-and-go): exactly 10 entrants; 1st wins 5×, 2nd 2.5×, 3rd 1.5×.
• The 12x (weekly tournament): minimum 30 entrants. Top 1% win 12×, top 2–5% win 6×, top 6–15% win 3×, and a residual tier wins 1.2× until the 90% prize budget is used. Leftover rounding remainder stays with the house — multipliers never stretch.
• The Sunday Slate (second weekly window): head-to-head, Double-Up, and a slate tournament that open at Thursday kickoff and close Sunday 1:00pm ET, scored only on players whose games kick off Sunday 1:00pm ET or later, with the perfect-score floor computed on that same player set. Standard stakes, payouts, and Tuesday settlement.
• The Draft Board Open (season-long): same tier structure as The 12x, scored on your locked draft board.
• Last Joe Standing (survivor): each week the bottom third of remaining entrants (rounded down) is eliminated. Survivors when the field reaches the published stop size win 12×; entrants eliminated in the final cut win 3×.

• Weekly contests are scored by your weekly ranking-accuracy score (lower is better), the same score shown on the free leaderboard.
• If you don't customize rankings for a period, your entry is scored on the consensus board you started from. Every entrant always receives a real score.
• Ties across a payout boundary split the combined payouts of the spanned positions equally. Survivor instead breaks ties deterministically: better weekly score, then better cumulative score, then earlier entry time.
• All of your entries in a week are backed by the same rankings. One entry per contest; you may enter any number of contests.
• Each NFL player's ranking slot freezes at his game's kickoff: he can't be moved or dueled after that, and he's graded at the rank he held when his game started. Everyone else on your board stays editable until their own kickoffs — there is no early-week board freeze.
• Draft Board Open entrants keep the standard one-swap add/drop feature, identical to free users, until boards snapshot five days before Week 1 kickoff (when season-contest entries also close).
• Late head-to-head seats: full-week head-to-head seats may be posted or taken after the Thursday close, until the week's last kickoff. Posting pays the entry fee like any entry; open seats persist (no mid-week expiry) and anything unmatched at the last kickoff refunds in full. If any game has kicked off or been in progress between a seat's posting and its acceptance, the match forms only after the poster confirms within 10 minutes, with both entrants' current locked subtotals displayed to both sides; an unanswered or declined confirm dissolves the table and refunds both entries in full. Private challenge links follow the same rule.

If a player is officially ruled out, he is removed from that week's player pool on every board that has him — even if his game has started, so long as he never played — and replaced by the highest-projected player not already on that board. The replacement enters at the lower of his projection slot or the removed player's slot on your board. Players already on your board never move automatically — re-ranking them is up to you (big movers will show up in your duels more often so you can act fast). Any player who never plays in his game is excluded from scoring on every board that still holds him. Players who play but underperform (including in-game injuries) count normally. Every change is logged in This Week's Changes.

You can withdraw any entry until the contest locks (first NFL kickoff of the week for full-week weekly contests; Sunday 1:00pm ET for Sunday Slate contests; five days before Week 1 kickoff for season contests) for a full refund. Contests that don't meet their minimum at lock are cancelled and every entry is refunded in full, automatically.

You must be 18 or older (19+ in Alabama and Nebraska) and physically located in an eligible state when you enter. Location is verified server-side; using a VPN or other means to misrepresent your location voids eligibility and forfeits entries. Free play (duels, rankings, leaderboard) is available everywhere.

You can self-exclude from cash contests at any time from your profile, effective immediately. Re-enabling takes 7 days. Cashing out your balance is always available, including while self-excluded.

If your net winnings reach $600 in a calendar year, U.S. tax rules require us to collect a Form W-9 before paying out further winnings. Your winnings are held safely until provided, and you can keep playing in the meantime. Fantasy Joes files Form 1099-MISC as required.

Questions or disputes: contact support at the email on your receipt within 30 days of a contest settling. Contest results are final at settlement. Scoring corrections published by our data providers within 72 hours of settlement (automatic sweeps Wednesday and Friday) update the free leaderboard, season standings, and draft-board standings — they do not change contest outcomes, and payouts are never clawed back.