“Kenneth Le just won $1 million playing Daily Fantasy Baseball! You can too!”
No, I have not won $1 million playing Daily Fantasy Baseball, but I’ve been fortunate enough to win a nice tournament or two since I’ve started playing DFS MLB. But let’s be honest, I’ve entered more than just a tournament or two in my lifetime that has promised a boatload of money, and I am sure you all have as well.
We all have aspirations of making a ton of money from playing just one daily fantasy tournament and the only way you can do so is by entering a GPP tournament. GPP stands for Guaranteed Prize Pool and it’s very common to see tournaments guaranteeing prize pools worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes on a nightly basis.
When it comes to creating DFS MLB Tournament (or GPP) lineups, it’s important to understand the reason why you’re entering a certain tournament. Let’s face it, you’re not looking to turn $4 into $6 or $8. If that’s really the goal, you should be strictly focused on making money through cash games. In fact, if you aren’t okay with potentially losing the amount of your buy-in, it’s probably a sign that you shouldn’t be playing GPP tournaments.
Ultimately, if you’re entering a $4 tournament with 8000+ entrants, the only way you’re going to be making anything that could be considered life-changing money is by finishing around top 1% of all entries. In order to finish around the top 1% of all entries, you’re going to need to take some risks in order to do so. Even if you’re looking to simply CASH, a lot of times you’ll need to finish well above the top 20% of all entries.
But if we’re talking about taking risks, what type of risks are we talking about? Well, the risks can definitely vary, but there are four main risks that I will focus on:
Risk #1: Entering multiple lineups – It’s not a coincidence that some of the frequent winners throughout the DFS industry frequently enter a ton of lineups. You’re going to see them succeed when they get to brag about the big score, but you generally don’t see them fail. That’s because you probably won’t be seeing any brag posts on Twitter when 94 of 100 lineups fail. Still, when you’re able to turn $4 into something like $25000 for a first place finish, you’re able to deal with those nights when you’re losing $400 in a $4 tournament. You certainly do not have to enter multiple lineups in a multi-entry tournament; however, if you have more lineups in a tournament, it clearly gives you a higher chance of scoring a winner than someone who only has a single entry. The best analogy I can make is someone who wins the lottery. Yes, sometimes you’ll see someone win the lottery who buys just one single ticket, but someone who buys 1000 tickets obviously going to have a better chance of winning.
Risk #2: Stacking players – Check out the winners of mega-multi entry tournaments throughout the season. You’re going to see a lot of stacking, meaning inserting players who play on the same team throughout your lineup. FanDuel currently allows stacking as many as four players per team while DraftKings allows stacking as many as five players per team. You can also consider mini-stacks of only two, which generally reduces the overall risk in a way that mirrors a stock trader who diversifies their portfolio with four or five different stocks compared to another trader who might only have a portfolio with two stocks. If one stock in the two-stock portfolio tanks, it’ll be pretty tough for the other stock to make up the losses from that stock. On the other hand, if that one stock tanks in the diverse five-stock portfolio, not all lost because the investor has four other stocks in the portfolio that can give them an opportunity to stay afloat (or in our case, CASH). Just keep in mind that while you may understand that a bigger stack brings bigger risk, but you should also know that the bigger the stack brings the bigger upside. Conversely, the smaller the stack, the lesser the risk, but the smaller the stack also brings the lesser upside.
Risk #3: Leaving money on the table – On a full slate of games, I would be very against leaving $500 or more on the table in cash games. There’s usually some type of option that you can find that will benefit your lineup with the extra salary. Then again, if we’re talking tournaments, I have no issues WHATSOEVER leaving money on the table. In a recent mega-multi entry DFS NHL tournament, I left $6400 on the table while stacking the third best lines for Arizona and New York, who were both underdogs on a short slate. That stack helped me turn $4 to $1500 on a short slate. Stacking 3rd or even 4th options is something you probably shouldn’t do all the time, but when you do, there’s a good chance that a) these options are going to be super inexpensive and b) there’s a good chance that you’re going to be “on an island” with certain players or in other words, have lineups that feature players who have extremely low ownership. My less than 1% owned Christian Dvorak scoring two goals is going to be more important to my lineup because I’m not sharing those two goals with other players.
Risk #4: Playing players who are in less than optimal situations – Again, this is piggybacking on the concept of low-ownership that I mentioned in risk #3. Yes, anyone can stack Coors Field or start a Cy Young Award Candidate and feel pretty good about it. When you go away from anyone who is considered the “chalk” or consensus best play of the night at any position, you’re inserting a little bit more risk to your lineup. In my cash game article, I mentioned how Tom Murphy was a virtual must play as a dirt-cheap salary playing his games in Coors Field while being eligible as a catcher towards the end of the 2016 season. Given his situation, if you played anyone else at catcher who wasn’t named Tom Murphy, you were taking some type of additional risk. The amount of risk you take under Risk #4 totally depends on how risky the situation is. If you’re playing five guys who face Clayton Kershaw at Dodger Stadium, it’s probably going to be the riskiest thing you can do. If you’re stacking Blue Jays on the road against a pitcher with a 4.50 ERA, the risk is probably not going to be as bad.
While I do mention four very important risks you should consider taking when playing GPP tournaments, please DON’T take it as four rules you MUST follow in order to succeed. There will certainly be times when someone stacks a chalky play like Coors Field and still nail a big score. Maybe instead if doing all of the above, you can stack the Coors Field underdog, start a pitcher who isn’t a favorite to win the game, and leave $400 on the table. That lineup can still be a good candidate to be contrarian. But then again, it’s all about the situation. The odds of that lineup being very contrarian in a 8000 lineup GPP is going to be less than the odds of it being very contrarian in a 100 player GPP. This takes me to my last point. Please keep in mind that you definitely do not need to be as aggressive if you’re entering tournaments that have a lesser amount of players. If you enter a $300 tournament with only 100 players, you won’t have to insert as much risk with your lineup construction considering you don’t have as many other players to beat. This means you can restrain yourself from inserting too much risk if you don’t feel as comfortable doing so. Many successful high-stakes GPP players are still able to find success in GPPs by playing their cash game lineups simply because they only enter tournaments with smaller fields.
Again, every single DFS player dreams of taking home the big prize. With some good strategy and a little big of luck, I wish the entire Fantasy Alarm Nation all the best throughout the 2017 MLB season. Let’s take down some tournaments!