FanDuel Format Tweaks Causes RT Sync Issues

Easy one-time fix available if you're having issues doing a sync with our browser extension.

FanDuel has just made a slight tweak to their CSV file format, which is causing a problem for some users using our RT Sync browser extension. If you've been having issues the last couple of days, here's the quick fix. Below, we'll explain a bit more.

Quick Fix

If you're finding that RT Sync is trying to download your entire FanDuel account history, which is taking ages or ultimately failing, here's what to do.

  • In RT Sync, click on Sync Settings button in the bottom right.
  • Check the box "override default settings for FanDuel and Yahoo."
  • In the text box below, next to always upload my latest...", enter in a number that will be more than enough to cover all your latest results you want to import (don't worry about putting in a number that's too big — duplicates will not import. Which are just trying to avoid importing your entire database!)
  • Save settings, then do a Sync as normal. This should work fine, and upload the number you chose.
  • You can then go back into Sync Settings, and uncheck this option. You shouldn't need it next time.

Here's what's going on

FanDuel updated their CSV file format over the weekend. The change was small: In the last field, which provides a link to view the entry, they removed the domain from the URL. So instead of https://fanduel.com/entry/AJVBHXFRJ it was changed to just /entry/AJVBHXFRJ

This is generally not a problem — our importer handled this fine (we've just pushed up a quick update to better handle this so links still work and point to FanDuel). However, it caused one substantive issue with how RT Sync works.

RT Sync's default behavior is to first gets the top lines of your latest successful file upload to our system. It then polls FanDuel and gets your latest results, 250 lines at a time. It checks each line, and if it already exists in our database then the process stops, as it knows it has hit a duplicate. That way, RT Sync doesn't have to upload your entire database each time, which would be a slow process.

However, because the line format has just been changed, this check for duplication fails — it never finds a duplicate. So it proceeds to download your entire history from FanDuel and upload that to our servers.

That in itself isn't really a problem. It would take a little longer, but the results get uploaded and our server would skip any duplication. However, for users with really big databases — like tens or hundreds of thousands of results — the process can be very slow and sometimes really big file uploads can fail as well.

So the recommended recourse above changes this behavior and tells RT Sync to ignore the duplication check and just upload a set number of lines. This only needs to be once because after one sync, your lines will include the new-style links, so for future checks the duplication checker should work again.

Support for FanDuel's Olympics and the one-off MLB Derby Contests Added

If you had errors in the last couple of days, do a reimport.

Just a quick note to say that we have just deployed a quick update that supports FanDuel's new "Olympics" sports category, as well as handle the one-off "$25K MLB HR Derby Free Play" contest, which FanDuel categorized as a new "derby" sport.

Olympics events will go into the "TV" category, which is sort of our catch-all for one-off events or niche/novelty contests. The Derby event goes in the existing MLB sport, of course.

If you did a FanDuel import in the last couple of days and got errors, this will be why. If you do a reimport now, these missing contests should import correctly. If you use RotoTracker Sync, the easiest thing to do is delete your last FanDuel uploads which had the errors, then do a fresh Sync.

Update Monday 26th July: Now also added support for OLYW (Women's Olympics events) too.

RotoTracker Adds Support for Euro 2020, Valorant and DOTA2

New sports from FanDuel and DraftKings gets first-class support.

We have updated RotoTracker to support various new sports added by FanDuel and DraftKings.

  • Euro 2020: FanDuel has created a new sport for these contests, which was not understood by RotoTracker. We have updated the importer so that these are now correctly categorized in the existing "Soccer" sport. (DraftKings results were already correctly classified, so no changes necessary there).
  • DOTA2: DraftKings recently added both Classic and Showdown contests for the ultra-popular DOTA2 esport. We have added a new DOTA2 category.
  • Valorant: Both DraftKings and FanDuel recently rolled out contests for the team-based FPS Valorant. We have added this as a new sport.
  • Niche contests: FanDuel recently ran a couple of one-off contests: an MLB contest tied in with Amazon Prime which was categorized curiously as "tourney" and a tie-in with Dr Disrespect. We have put both into the existing "TV" sport, which is a catch-all for niche and one-off contests that do not justify their own classification.

If you have already tried to import FanDuel contests with these new sports and had errors

You just need to reimport your files and RotoTracker will "fill in the blanks" and import those previously skipped. The only catch here is that if you use RotoTracker Sync, it will by default "skip" over these old records. To get around this, you can either:

  • Change a setting to override this behavior in RotoTracker Sync and specify exactly how many results to upload. See this FAQ for more details. This will be a one-time change — you can switch it back afterwards.
  • Do a one time manual upload of your latest file to fill in recent blanks.
  • Or, alternatively, you can follow the "delete and reupload" strategy like you would DraftKings — see below.

If you have already tried to import DraftKings contests with these new sports and had errors

For DraftKings, if you wish to fill in the blanks you will need to delete your uploads back to a point prior to any errors, then do a fresh Sync and re-import. Deleting uploads is easy — just click on them in the Uploads section here and choose "delete." Then just do a fresh import manually or with RotoTracker Sync.

For more info on deleting uploads, see this FAQ.

RotoTracker Adds Support for FanDuel's Beat The Score Contests

New category opens up possibility for special BTS reports in the future!

FanDuel Beat the Score logo

On Sunday, we pushed out an updated that fully supports FanDuel's Beat the Score (BTS) contests. Now, when you import results with BTS, these will now be categorized correctly in their own category (instead of being grouped into GPP like before). That means you will see BTS in your category cohort and it'll be a filter in the category filter dropdown.

Perhaps even more importantly, BTS will now not be included when you filter to GPP. This is especially useful when looking at the new rad finish distribution charts (which we have yet to blog about — more on that soon!)

As always, these changes do not work retroactively — so if you have have historic BTS results you want properly categorized, you will need to delete previous FanDuel uploads then do a reimport or Sync again. When they are imported, they will be properly categorized.

However, what's most exciting about this update is that we are also storing the target score of the contest. This opens up some exciting opportunities for special BTS-special reports — like seeing how far above/below the target you finish. There are also some contests you can "beat" (going over the score) but still make a loss when the threshold is so low that too many people beat it to make money — RotoTracker should be able to help you identify these situations and choose the most profitable thresholds.

We are still working on these special reports, but because we are storing the target score from now, these future reports will work retroactively (assuming you do a delete/re-import now, as described above).

Actually, we'd like you to help us add these new BTS reports. Are you a BTS player? Got ideas on how we can best show reports, filters and charts for these contests using the new "target score" column? We want to put together a small focus group of RotoTracker+ customers to try out new features and give us feedback.

If you'd be interesting help us shape this exciting new feature, please get in touch with the form on the right-hand side or by shooting us an email directly. Just put "BTS focus group" in the title or first line of the message!

For everyone else, stay tuned — as soon as we're happy with the new feature we'll be rolling it out to all RT+ customers.

DraftKings Best Ball Support, and What To Do if it is Causing Skips

RotoTracker adds full support for the new game type from DraftKings, but a change in their format may require some manual changes if you are getting skipped results.

Here's the TLDR:

  • RotoTracker now supports Best Ball contests.
  • If you have already imported some and want them recategorized, delete recent uploads and re-import, as normal
  • This also surfaced another problem: Unfortunately, if you played these in the last three months, then incomplete Best Ball contests may be in your database.
  • If you are getting weird skips right now when doing DK imports, this is why.
  • If this describes you, then again the solution is the same: delete your DK uploads back to a date prior to the first Best Ball contest. We think this first contests were 10th September, 2020. Then do a reimport.

On December 11, RotoTracker added support for the new Best Ball contests. This means that, for RotoTracker+ customers, new contests you import will be correctly categorized in your Style cohort. You will also see the style in the filter dropdown, to restrict all reports to just Best Ball contests.

If you are not a RT+ customers, then the results will still import fine, you just won't get the filtering unless you upgrade.

As normal, if you have already imported some Best Ball contest and want them recategorized under the new style you will need to delete the recent upload to roll back your database to a point prior, then do a re-import.

Getting DraftKings import skips?

However, unfortunately DraftKings has done something a bit strange with these new contest entries. If you are finding that your imports in the last 24 hours have not imported some of your contest entries, then please read ahead!

For some reason, when DraftKings started spreading Best Ball contests in September at the start of the NFL season, even though these contests were not complete, they were added to your entry history files, and RotoTracker dutifully (and unwittingly) imported them. Of course, they had no results, so all were chalked up as losses. The prize pools were all set to $0.

If you did DraftKings imports between September and now, then you will probably find these erroneous Best Ball contests polluting your database, all chalked up as losses.

The problem is that now the Best Ball contests have completed, they have reappeared at the top of CSV files, now with the correct results in! RotoTracker sees these results, notes that you already have that entry result in your database, and skips it and all other records in the file!

We have just rolled out a fix so that pending Best Ball contests in entry history files — ones that do not have a prize pool — are not now imported into your database. Instead, we just skip over them. So moving forward, if/when this happens again, RotoTracker will handle the situation better.

However, this does not fix the problem retroactively, unfortunately, and we don't want to go in and delete entries in personal databases. So if you have issues with old, incomplete Best Ball contests then you need to delete your recent DraftKings uploads back to a point prior to when these were imported. We think if you roll back to early September that should be fine.

Then do a fresh import like you normally would, either a manual upload or with RotoTracker Sync. You should then have correctly categorized, correctly recorded Best Ball contests along with everything else.

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