When you enter a daily fantasy football contest you will be taken to the team selection screen, where you will be given a salary cap – or budget – to spend on your roster.

The figure the salary cap is set at varies depending on the daily fantasy football site you are using, but it will typically be priced at a level that means you cannot simply pack your squad with big-name star players.

You will usually be able to select two or three expensive picks and then balance your budget by filling out your team with cheap options, but there many different ways to use up your salary cap.

The salary cap is designed to make daily fantasy football as fair as possible, as it would be much less of a challenge to select an unbeatable squad if everyone was given an unlimited amount of money to spend on their squad and many players would have similar line-ups.

As you start to fill out your team the amount of your salary cap you have left to spend will come down and you will be able to see how much you can spend on each player you have left to pick.

A lot of daily fantasy football games will also allow you to restrict the player list on the team selection screen to only show footballers you can still afford within the salary cap remaining.

It can be a good idea to put your bargain picks in your roster first, then you know what you have left to spend on your star players, although many fantasy football players prefer to work the other way round.

As an example, the salary cap you get to spend on your team for daily fantasy football competitions at DraftKings is $50,000. As you have to pick an 11-man team, this means the average amount of cash you can spend on players to stay beneath the cap is around $4,500.