I’ve never needed outside encouragement to gamble.
When I was in 5th grade, my friends and I would play cards and wager cassette tapes. I was destined to love betting after winning Metallica’s Black Album, Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction and Def Leppard’s Adrenalize (hey, they can’t all be winners) during recess at a mere 10 years old.
As an adult, my gambling has manifested itself in ways familiar to lots of men – trips to Vegas as frequently as I can muster, sports betting (where legal, of course), and most commonly, fantasy sports.
People love fantasy sports because they allow players the chance to have a rooting interest in every single game and because we humans are competitive creatures. Since my fantasy football teams have been a mixed bag this season, my curiosity was piqued when Jerod posted a link about Daily Joust, a fantasy sports service that allows users to play solo, head-to-head, and group fantasy games in a variety of sports.
Currently, those sports are NFL football, college football and NHL hockey. You simply create a fantasy team under the designated salary cap (each player is assigned a dollar value by Daily Joust) and the entry with the most points wins. It is 100% legal (except for a few states – it is classified as a “game of skill” and not gambling in most states) and sounded like a cool idea.
I created an account, but didn’t deposit any money at first. You see, they host free contests that can be entered weekly, and if you win (or place highly, depending on the format of the game), you earn “Bonus Bucks” that can be used to play in games on the site.
I sucked miserably during the first week’s freeroll, a Big Ten-specific college football draw. But in my second attempt, the following week’s NFL freeroll, I placed 1st out of 513 entries. I won $50 in Bonus Bucks and then placed in the top ten in a hockey freeroll a couple days later, netting me $15 more in what basically amounts to store credit for the site.
Armed with my $65 (of which I had to come out of pocket $0), I started messing around with challenges and other contests. I found out quickly that THIS IS FUN. I was entering hockey contests, ignorant of half of the players but suddenly caring about who landed a spot on the fourth line of forwards for the Calgary Flames and why Roberto Luongo has been sort of awful this season.
Then, something cool happened (as if everything to this point wasn’t cool already). I won some contests with my Bonus Bucks, and I was able to cash out that money, straight into my PayPal account. So, I deposited no money at all, and then I received money in my bank account. That’s pretty much an ideal scenario, right?
I wanted to write this post to let people know that there is a really fun alternative to gambling and fantasy sports, and it is incredibly easy to play. I have since deposited some real cash (I cashed out all of my winnings and eventually ran out of Bonus Bucks in the process) and I am still having a blast playing games nightly. If the NBA ever comes back I might suffer a heart attack from the overload of daily fantasy goodness.
If your fantasy football team is in the tank, if you prefer college sports but have never been able to join a fantasy league for them, if you like the opportunity to make some cash without really offering any up in the first place or if you simply enjoy sports more with a little bit of personal competition involved, Daily Joust is for you. I wouldn’t go to all this trouble of writing this piece and endorsing it if it were a lousy service. If you make an account, send me a challenge (username keithmullett)! I’ll accept it as long as I have available funds.
Good luck, and Happy Jousting!
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Follow me on Twitter @keithmullett
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[Editor's note: it should be noted that this site does have an affiliate relationship with Daily Joust, which is the reason why you started seeing their banners pop up a few weeks back. We get a certain small percentage of all new depositing accounts as a kind of "finder's fee". However, while that was the impetus to post the banners, I can attest to the fact that Keith wrote this post because he has seriously become obsessed with Daily Joust, and you can trust that we only endorse products or sites that we've fully vetted and feel comfortable sending you to. As you can tell from Keith's post, Daily Joust definitely qualifies.]
About Keith Mullett
