Help & How-To

Everything you need to know about playing Donvelope — from joining your first league to reading the standings.

Overview

Donvelope is a fantasy-style sports betting game. There is no real money involved anywhere in the game — every player wagers a fictional currency called "Don Dollars."

Players are grouped into private leagues, each tied to one real sports league (currently NFL, MLB, World Cup). Everyone in a league starts with the same bankroll and places bets throughout the season on real games using odds pulled from a live sportsbook feed. At the end of the season (or the league's set end date), whoever has the most Don Dollars wins the game and bragging rights.

Think of it as a fantasy sports league crossed with a sportsbook: the standings page shows a live leaderboard, but instead of drafting players, you're picking winners, covering spreads, and building parlays.

Getting Started

1. Sign up and verify your email

  • Create an account with an email and password.
  • Verify your email before you can create or join a league — both the "Create League" and "Join League" buttons check this and show "Please verify your email before creating/joining a league." if you haven't yet.

2. Create or join a league

  • Create your own league as its commissioner, choosing the sport, starting balance, and weekly minimum, or
  • Join an existing league using its 12-character invite code, given to you by that league's commissioner.

3. Set your user options

  • Visit User Options to set the timezone game times and week boundaries are displayed in for you and your default sportsbook views. This is a personal display preference — it does not change when a league's week actually rolls over to the next week (that's set by the league itself).

The Sportsbook

The sportsbook is the game-list window for your league's sport. Each game shows as SCHEDULED (open for betting), IN PROGRESS (no more betting allowed), or FINAL (bets are settled), along with its current moneyline, spread, and total lines.

A game can show "OFF" instead of a price on any given market — that means the sportsbook doesn't have any live price for that market yet. Typically one will be available later, although from time to time the sportsbook will not offer odds on a specific market for one reason or another. These games will become bettable when a price appears.

Three optional filters let you hide completed games, in-progress games, and games with no bettable odds from the list. You can set the default state of each filter in your User Options so the sportsbook opens the way you like every time. Make sure to set the options to hide completed and in-progress games if you don't want to see live scores!

Betting closes the moment a game's scheduled kickoff time passes — there is no in-game betting. Once a game has started, none of its markets accept new bets even if the game's status hasn't updated yet.

Sportsbook game list showing scheduled, in-progress, and final games with moneyline, spread, and total odds
The sportsbook game list, with live odds for each market.

Placing Bets

Markets

  • Moneyline — pick the straight-up winner. World Cup (soccer) games add a third option, DRAW, for a tied result.
  • Spread — pick a team to cover a point/goal handicap.
  • Total (over/under) — pick whether the combined score goes over or under a set number.

Single bets vs. parlays

  • A single bet has one leg. A parlay combines 2 or more legs (up to 12 total) into one bet — every leg must win for the parlay to pay out, at a combined multiplier of all the individual odds.

Teasers

  • Teasers are NFL-only and limited to SPREAD and TOTAL legs (no moneylines) — you move each leg's line by a fixed number of points (6, 6.5, 7) in your favor, in exchange for a reduced flat payout.
  • A teaser needs between 2 and 10 legs. If a leg pushes, it's dropped from the count; if too few legs remain to be graded, the whole teaser voids (stake refunded) rather than paying out.

Locked odds and "odds changed"

  • The odds and line you see when you build your bet are locked in only once the bet is actually placed. If the sportsbook's price moves between when you built the slip and when you submit it, the server rejects the bet with an "odds changed, please review and resubmit" message rather than silently placing it at a different price — just refresh your slip and try again.

Same-game leg conflicts

  • A single parlay or teaser can include at most one moneyline-or-spread selection per game (picking both teams to win or cover -- or a moneyline and a spread on the same game -- is not allowed). You may also only include at most one over/under selection per game in a given parlay. A moneyline/spread leg and an over/under leg from the same game ARE allowed together.
Bet slip with a two-leg parlay assembled, showing locked odds and potential payout
A parlay assembled in the bet slip, ready to submit.

Settlement & the Ledger

When a game finishes, every bet leg tied to it is graded and each bet's single ledger entry updates to WON (profit credited), LOST (stake already debited, nothing further happens), PUSH (stake refunded, net zero), or VOID (a commissioner voided the game or bet — stake refunded).

Your ledger has a private view (everything you've ever bet) and a public view other league members can see. The public view enforces an anti-spy rule: a PENDING bet is hidden from other players entirely — and its stake is added back into your publicly-shown "Adjusted Balance" — for as long as every one of its legs is on a game that hasn't started yet. The moment any leg's game starts, the bet becomes visible to everyone and drops out of the adjusted-balance calculation. Publicly visible parlays and teasers will obfuscate (blur) any legs where that game has not started so others can only see the portion of your parlay that is currently in-play.

Private ledger view showing settled bets and the Weekly Minimum Progress card
The private ledger view, including the Weekly Minimum Progress card.

Weekly Minimum

Each league tracks wagers over a one-week period. The start/end day and time of this week is defined by the commissioner and visible to all league members on the league's main page.

Every league week, you're expected to risk at least the league's weekly minimum in bets. The effective minimum for a given week is capped at whatever your balance was at the start of that week — if your balance is lower than the configured minimum, you're only on the hook for what you actually have.

If you don't reach the effective minimum you'll forfeit the difference between the weekly minimum and the amount you actually wagered. Make sure to place your wagers: don't let those Don Dollars be automatically deducted from your balance for nothing!

Elimination

You're eliminated from a league once your balance drops to $0 AND you have zero pending bets outstanding — an open bet that could still swing your balance back up keeps you in the game even at a zero balance.

Once you've been eliminated you're out. The only way an eliminated player can rejoin the game is if the commissioner decides to adjust the eliminated players balance (adding more money) or if the commissioner overrides a bet result. Why would a commissioner do this?... you'll have to ask yours.

While eliminated, you can't place any new bets, but your existing standings history and past bets remain visible.

Standings

The standings table is a live ranking. All active (non-eliminated) members rank above every eliminated member, ordered by adjusted balance from highest to lowest.

Among eliminated members, the LATER you were eliminated, the better you rank compared to other eliminated members — outlasting someone is itself worth something, regardless of either player's balance at the moment of elimination. Members eliminated in the same league week are tiebroken by their balance at the start of that week (higher wins the tiebreak).

League standings table showing live rank, adjusted balance, and elimination status for each member
The live standings table for a league.

Commissioner Tools

A league's commissioner manages that league's settings (starting balance, weekly minimum, week-rollover timing, league start/end dates, and whether new members can join), and can view/share the invite code.

Commissioners can void a game (refunding every bet that touched it), override an individual bet's result, payout, or locked odds, and make manual balance adjustments (credits or debits) to any member.

Commissioners can also promote other league members to commissioner (or remove that role from one).

While commissioners CAN edit the results and odds of a single bet for a user in their league Commissioners can NOT change the score of a completed game or the global odds for a game in the sportsbook. Any necessary corrections to the global sportsbook data must be performed by a site administrator.

FAQ

Quick answers to the questions new players ask most often.