Drafters Best Ball Championship Main Event Strategy And Tips

Drafters is the most customizable best ball platform out there right now. I know that because I’ve played pretty much all of them. Some best ball platforms out there aren’t even available on desktop or they don’t have an app. Most of them don’t let you tinker with roster settings, scoring, league size, or payouts. For many of them you can’t even set when the draft starts - they only start then they fill. On Drafters you can do all of that and more.

And, just like many other platforms, they also offer BIG contests with BIG prizes. Today we’re going to take a look at the $20 NFL Best Ball Championship MAIN EVENT. This is a $20 buy-in draft with a half a million dollar prize to the winner. That’s a guaranteed prize and the contest isn’t even half full yet as of mid-August so the odds might not be that crazy. Right now there are ~65,000 of a max ~140K in there whereas on some other sites you are competing against over 600K players for the top prize.

This contest is set up a little differently than some others out there so let’s get into the basic set-up and strategy. Then with our next article we’ll take a look at some of the specific players we are targeting for this format! The entire contest rules can be found here but I’ll summarize what I believe is most important for us to compete. And, if you have not signed up yet, make sure to use this link here and promo code ALARM where they will match 100% of your deposit up to $100! 

Drafters Rosters and Draft Strategy

The roster settings are pretty standard for this one. You will have the following starting spots as part of a 20 round draft with 12 teams. Since it's best ball, you don’t need to ever set a lineup manually - it automatically slots in your highest scoring players each week. 

• QB: 1
• RB: 2
• WR: 3
• TE: 1
• FLEX: 1
• BENCH: 12

The options for the draft itself are to do “fast drafts” with a 30 second clock or “slow drafts” with an 8 hour clock. The fast drafts can be completed in under an hour. If you choose the slow draft option and we get close to the season without the draft finishing, the clock will adjust on the following schedule to make sure it finishes in time.

• Aug 28th - 2 hour pick clocks, 12am-10am EST overnight pause
• Aug 29th - Slow draft registrations will close
• Sept 4th - 15 minute pick clocks starting at 10am EST
• Sept 4th - 90 second pick clocks starting at 7pm EST

In terms of strategy, the 20 round draft is a bit different than some sites that have 18 or as little as 15. With a 20 round draft I’m much more likely to lean into roster compositions that include three quarterbacks or three tight ends. Quarterbacks and tight ends routinely provide value in the later rounds, especially quarterbacks who play virtually every snap if they earn the starting job.

One thing to keep in mind is that this contest also has max limits on positions to ensure there are plenty to go around. Here are the MAX position limits for each starting spot.

• QB: 3
• RB: 6
• WR: 8
• TE: 3

Drafters Scoring Strategy

Here is the scoring as detailed on the Drafters contest rules page.

Passing

• Passing Yard = 0.04
• Passing Touchdown = 4
• Interception Thrown = -2

Rushing

• Rushing Yard = 0.1
• Rushing Touchdown = 6

Receiving

• Reception = 1
• Receiving Yard = 0.1
• Receiving Touchdown = 6

Misc

• Own Fumble Recovered Touchdown = 6
• Kickoff Return Touchdown = 6
• Punt Return Touchdown = 6
• Fumble Lost = -2
• Two-Point Conversion = 2

The scoring is pretty standard here so there’s not anything to crazy to take advantage of. It’s worth noting that it’s full PPR for sure as we can lean into targets, especially for running backs if the backfield is split. It’s also worth noting that turnovers like interceptions and fumbles are -2 rather than -1 though that doesn’t move the needle much for us. 

Drafters Contest Format and Length Strategy 

This is where there is some interesting deviation from some of the other contests. Like many other platforms, the season goes from Week 1 through Week 17. But, unlike the other sites, there are no playoffs at all. You draft in a 12 team league but everyone goes directly into one big pool. Each week, your highest scoring players are slotted into your lineup and the total points you score over the season is all that matters.

This is interesting because, on some of the other platforms, there is a lot of emphasis placed on the playoff weeks at the end. Folks will dig deep into matchups in Week 16 and Week 17 especially trying to figure out where the shootouts are. For us, that does not matter at all. Week 17 isn’t any more valuable than a random week like Week 8. So you still might want to lean into some correlations, like stacking wide receivers or tight ends with a quarterback or focusing on teams with weak schedules. But you really don’t need to place extra value on the end of the season. 

For other platforms with playoffs, it’s a popular play to try to get a discount on suspended players, injured players, or rookies (who often break out late). The idea is that the last weeks are much more important and those players could come on strong to give you an extra boost. Obviously having guys that play well at the end of the season is still nice here but there’s less emphasis on that portion of the season so it’s not entirely necessary. 

Drafters Bonuses and Prizes Strategy

There are a couple bonuses that you can take advantage of on Drafters. The first thing you’ll want to do if you’ve never signed up is use this link here and make sure that promo code ALARM is populating. That will get you a deposit match of 100% of what you put in up to $100.

There are also other bonuses you can obtain while entering the $20 NFL Best Ball Championship Main Event called Milestones. The more you enter, the more bonus entries you get. The max number of entries you can have is $150 and here is the schedule of rewards. 

So, if my math is correct, if you max this contest out then you get six of those drafts for free and you also get $150 in bonus credits to use on other drafts. Coupled with the $100 deposit match, that’s $370 in value on a contest that costs $3,000 to max enter.

Let’s take a look at the prizes. Here is the prize schedule from their rules. 

• 1st: $500,000
• 2nd: $200,000
• 3rd: $100,000
• 4th: $75,000
• 5th: $50,000
• 6th: $40,000
• 7th: $32,500
• 8th: $30,000
• 9th: $27,500
• 10th: $25,000
• 11th: $22,500
• 12th: $20,000
• 13th: $17,500
• 14th: $15,000
• 15th: $12,500
• 16th-20th: $10,000
• 21st-25th: $7,500
• 26th-30th: $5,000
• 31st-40th: $2,500
• 41st-50th: $2,000
• 51st-65th: $1,500
• 66th-80th: $1,223
• 81st-100th: $1,000
• 101st-150th: $750
• 151st-200th: $500
• 201st-300th: $250
• 301st-500th: $175
• 501st-1000th: $100
• 1001st-2500th: $75
• 2501st-5000th: $55
• 5001st-10000th: $45
• 10001st-23333rd: $35

Even though it’s only around halfway full as of the writing of this article, let’s assume that the contest does fill. This payout schedule means that the top ~16.7 of teams will make at least $15 profit. If that were distributed evenly among the leagues, that would mean roughly the top two teams from each league would get paid. It likely won’t distribute quite like that but that’s the general mentality I have going in - if I’m one of the best couple teams in my draft, I will hopefully be in the money. In order to hit the big prizes where you are winning over $1,000, you do need to finish in the top 100 teams. So you still want to be focusing on the serious upside in these drafts. 

Drafters Best Ball General Strategy

For these big tournaments you need to change your mindset from beating 12 people to beating 100,000. It might be tempting to reach for certain players but you’d better be sure if you are doing that because each player will be drafted over 10,000 times in this tournament, many times at a value. If you reach too far you are losing value vs. other teams.

My plan for these is to do multiple entries and to play the board as it lies. I’ll even take players that I don’t particularly like if they fall over a round or more past where their ADP should be. I won’t necessarily reach for stacks of teammates because you can always stack other teammates at value later. If you play it right and get a little lucky along the way, you can walk away from this contest with life-changing money!