StockDuel — Rules Reference
How to Play
Now the market has a season.
You draft real stocks and crypto like players. You compete head-to-head every week. You win when your portfolio actually beats theirs — not because you predicted anything, not because you knew trivia. Real markets. Real money movement. Real smack talking.
Every format below runs on the same core engine — draft, lock, score, repeat — but each one bends the rules of "fantasy sports meets stock market" in a different direction. Some strip out everything that makes fantasy sports maddening. Some put it all back in, on purpose. Pick your poison.
01 The Pitch
Fantasy sports without the parts that make you want to throw your phone against the wall every Sunday:
- No bye weeks. Every stock plays, every week. The crypto market doesn't take weekends off.
- No injuries — in the base game. You're #1 overall pick isn't landing on the 10-day DL because it "felt tightness." (Sports Sim leagues bring this back on purpose. More on that shortly.)
- No coaching decisions, no contract disputes, no weather. Nothing benches your pick except the market itself.
- No waiver sniping. Free agency is first-click-wins — no queue, no priority order, no setting an alarm for midnight.
02 The Mechanics, Fast
The full breakdown lives in each league's rules doc. Here's what's true almost everywhere:
$1M
salary cap per manager, every league
9:30
daily lineup lock, ET
13
week season, SDPL/SDAI
1st
click wins any free agent claim
Crypto is the wild card — it trades 24/7, and in leagues with a flex pool, it gets more expensive the more managers pile into the same coin. Draft smart. Don't chase the crowd.
And always bear in mind. Is a league based on making the most dollars to win, or is it based on having the highest percentage gain to win. A $5 stock or crypto can out gain a $1000 stock percentage wise with ease. That's what makes StockDuel so fun!
03 Pick Your League
Eight ways to play. Same market, wildly different amounts of chaos.
SDPL · SDAI — Season · Weekly Matchups
Player Leagues & Free Sim
The purest version. 10 starters, a crypto flex pool, 13 weeks to prove you actually know something.
Squad up with real people (SDPL) or throw down against the house bots (SDAI). No injuries, no waiver drama — just your picks against the tape, week after week, all the way to a 2-week playoff. Draft the same crypto as everyone else and pay a surcharge for it, and chase weekly bonus awards like Diamond Hands and the dreaded Bench Curse along the way.
SDFL — Weekly · 18-Week Season
Football League
Here's the puzzle: every stock is secretly wearing a jersey. Get hurt in the real league, and your stock lands on IR — you won't know whose jersey it was until it happens.
Same engine as SDPL, mirrored onto the NFL. 32 franchises, real injury data, real bye weeks, real schedule.
SDHL · SDBA · SDLB — Daily / Series · Sunday Close
Hockey, Basketball & Baseball
SDFL's siblings — same injury-to-IR pipeline, different math entirely. 5 stocks and 5 crypto start every single lineup, fixed, no exceptions, with 3 IR slots waiting for whichever one gets hurt.
Hockey and basketball throw a new opponent at you almost daily; baseball runs series like the real thing, 3–4 days per matchup. And because these leagues cryptos score straight through the weekend, free agency doesn't open until Sunday 4:00 PM ET — the one scheduling quirk that trips up everybody's first week.
Day Trader — Weekly · Free · $500K Flat
Free Weekly Contest
Everyone starts with the exact same $500,000. No draft-day edge, no lucky salary-cap math — just you, the tape, and Friday's bell.
Copy any team you've already drafted, reset flat, and trade freely all week. It's the closest thing here to pure skill with the training wheels off — and it's free to enter.
Your one entry is competing for that week's sponsor prize — two winners every week: Top $ Gainer (most total dollar gain) and Top % Gainer (best percentage gain), both measured against everyone else entered.
SDDFS — Single Day · No Safety Net
Daily Fantasy Sport
Put your money where your mouth is! Daily contests. Add money to your wallet and invest $2-$100 into a pool to see who wins. Your skill wins you real MONEY! No bench. No free agency. No do-overs. Twelve picks, one morning, one closing bell.
One from each of 11 GICS sectors, plus a crypto wildcard — lock it in at the open, and live with it until close. It's the same market skill as the season-long leagues, just with the safety rails removed. Higher variance, same brain required.
SDWFS — Weekly · Same Bet, Longer Fuse
Weekly Fantasy Sport
SDDFS's calmer sibling — same 12-pick format, but you've got all week for the market to prove you right.
Lock your lineup Monday morning, then watch it play out through Friday's close. Still no bench, still no mid-week bailout — you're just given more runway before the scoreboard's final.
04 Who's This For
Anyone. Whether you're 14 or 114, if the market has ever felt like a locked room, this is the door in. Learn how it actually moves — no real money at risk, no permission required.
Day Trader, SDDFS, and SDWFS are 18+ only — entrants must be 18 years or older to enter any of these three contests, void where prohibited by law.
No purchase necessary to enter or win. StockDuel is the sole sponsor of the Day Trader contest and any associated prizes — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or administered by Apple Inc. or Google LLC.
Platform Fee: StockDuel keeps 10% of each contest's prize pool. Roughly 8% of that covers operating costs — servers, market data, and payment processing. Any surplus left after those costs is donated to the American Humane Society. That 10% is the only portion of any contest that is ever forwarded to a StockDuel account.
Your Funds: All other funds deposited by users are held in third-party escrow — safely, and never managed or held directly by StockDuel.