Everyone wants to play and everyone wants a lil action, so we’ll play. Every week we preview and review the Milli Maker, and we’ll also be reviewing the Play Action, Slant, and much smaller contests such as 3 max and single entry tournaments. Why? To show you what the sharp players are doing to win these tournaments and thus piecing together the formula to Bink one of these babies. Let’s take a look.
Play Action.
Stacking
Chukkie scored 235.12 points - which if you’re keeping count - would’ve been enough to take down the Milli Maker by about 12 points, but this lineup wasn’t entered into the milli maker. He/She can wipe his/her tears of not winning a Milli with $100,000 bills. You don’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need? This was a really good lineup that took stacks from 3 different games. Let’s take a look at it:
Stafford/Kupp/Higbee - This stack combined for 81 points. In a game that projected for 55.5 points, wanting to stack it was the obvious play here, but fading the Bucs side entirely was not so obvious. With a chalky Kupp play, Chukkie decided to get more contrarian and not bring it back with a chalkier Godwin on the other side. Instead, a double stack with Kupp and Higbee was the call to stack with Stafford.
Ekeler/Williams - The Chiefs/Kc game was the other highest projected game on the slate and again Chukkie chose the right side of game to stack. Instead of focusing on game stacks, he correctly projected team stacks consisting of the winning team. Doing a CEH/Hill stack wouldn’t have gone as favorable. This stack scored 58.90 points.
Harris/Chase - What’s wild about this stack was it was a low scoring game and Najee Harris was on the losing side with a team total of only 10 points. Normally this would be a disaster scenario for your RB, but Ben has looked washed and targeted his RB Najee so many times with dumpoffs that he got 14 receptions. Chase had another great game with 2 Touchdowns and this stack combined for 53.70 points.
Roster %
Stafford - 6.98%
Ekeler - 18.89%
Harris - 8.12%
Kupp - 32.25%
Williams - 9.6%
Chase - 10.5%
Higbee - 5.74%
Sanders - 4.46%
Cardinals - 18.1%
Total - 114.64%
Overall roster % was low considering having chalky plays such as Kupp at 32%, Ekeler at 18%, and the Cardinals D at 18%. Having Stafford at under 7%, Harris at 8%, Williams at 9%, Higbee at 5%, and Sanders at 4%, really kept ownership low. This lineup really got different in spots by playing more contrarian plays in stacks like Higbee as opposed to bringing it back with Gronkowski/Godwin on the other side. Also Williams at 9.6% in the Chiefs/Chargers game was great leverage off of some of the more chalkier plays.
Pricing
Ekeler - $7200 - 5.5X
Kupp - $6800 - 4.5X
Harris - $6600 - 4.72X
Stafford- $6400 - 5.5X
WIlliams - $6400 - 5.6X
Chase - $5400 - 4.1X
Sanders - $4200 - 6.2X
Higbee - $4000 - 3.75X
AZ DST- $3000 - 6X
Pricing wise, this lineup was similar to the Milli maker winning lineup in that it had no players in the 8-9k range. The Highest priced player was Ekeler at $7200 which afforded the salary to cram 4 players in the 6K range into the lineup. Those 4 players combined for an average of 5X! There were 4 players under 6K that also averaged 5X. This was an extremely efficient lineup in many ways but also in regards to Fantasy Points Per Dollar. No player produced less than 3.7X and 8 out of 9 players produced 4X or more. Once again, you don’t always need one of the top priced players to take down a large field GPP, and it’s easy to see that you should probably avoid players in the 8-9K range for GPP’s unless really good value can be found on the slate.
Ceiling
In a large field GPP contest of over 693,618 entries, this is actually a decent tournament to win some cash as the top 179,075 people will be paid ( the top 25% of the field gets paid.) A $3 entry will get you $5 if you hit the minimum cash line and it goes up from there to $100,000 for the winner. However, if you’re playing in a contest like this, most people are lured in by the top prize and you’ll need a ton of points to get there. Much like the MIlli Maker, you’re shooting for a lineup that can produce between 240-250 points and hoping less points wins you the contest that week.
Let’s take a look at the Historical ceiling of players in this lineup:
Stafford: 25-30 pts
Ekeler: 25-38 pts (38 Week 1 2019)
Harris: ? (small sample size but trending 25-35 pts.)
Kupp: 25-35 pts
Williams: 25-35 pts
Chase: ? (Small sample size but trending over 25 pts territory)
Higbee: 15-25 pts
Sanders: 25-30 pts
Cardinals: 15-20
Based on the historical ceiling of each player, you can expect a lot of variance in the overall ceiling of this roster and the ceiling, alone, can range anywhere from 200 to 273. It’s also way more likely to not even hit 200 points at all, but in this case the ceiling was there and the outcome was 235 points piecing this roster together with the proper game stacks and one offs.
This play action lineup was one in a million, and it would’ve been good enough for a milli in the maker tourney. Chukkie will have to settle for the $100,000 though.
Slant Review
Stacks on stacks on stacks. If you didn’t have them this week, thanks for playing and better luck next week. Some weeks you might be able to get by on skinny stacks but this week definitely wasn’t the case. We had game totals of 55.5, (Sea/Min + TB/Lar) 55, (Lac/Kc) 52, (Az/Jax) And 50.5. (Bal/Det) Several of these games hit 50 points or more so you knew the winning lineups would feature stacks of several of these games. TopDawg5252 scored 226.44 points which also would’ve been good enough to win the Milli Maker. TopDawg5252 entered this lineup in the slant, though, and was the TopDawg in this tournament for $40,000. It’s $960,000 less than a Milli but it’s a nice Sunday, too.
Stacking
Let’s take a look at the winning lineup of the slant & the stacks used.
Herbert/Williams/CEH (QB + WR + Opposing RB) = 87.94 Pts.
Harris/Chase (RB + Opposing WR) = 53.70 Pts.
Mattison/Metcalf (RB + Opposing WR) = 51.80 Pts
These 3 separate game stacks consisting of 7 players combined for 193.44 of the 226.44 points. What was interesting here is 3 Running Backs were used in 3 game stacks. RB generally isn’t a position that needs to be correlated with other players in a game as Running Backs can get there by themselves. However, this week Harris/Chase was a theme as well as Ekeler or CEH paired with Williams in several tournament winning lineups. Mattison/Metcalf made several winning lineups as well.
Roster %
Herbert - 7.94%
Harris - 10.03%
CEH - 18.86%
Metcalf - 15.58%
Williams - 7.83%
Chase - 6.65%
Higbee - 12.93%
Mattison - 17.6%
Cardinals - 13.78%
Total: 111.20%
Pretty low overall roster % here considering chalkier plays of, CEH, Metcalf, Mattison, and Cardinals D. Herbert had low ownership at 7.94% and Williams at 7.83% was good leverage off of chalkier plays in the KC/LAC game. This QB+WR stack came in at just over 15% combined. The Chase/Harris stack had a low combined total of barely over 16%, too. Overall Chase was a really strong play at 6.65% as a way to get different from the field and so was Higbee in the Chalky LAR/TB game.
Pricing
Metcalf - $7300 - 3.52X
Harris - $6600 - 4.72X
Herbert - $6500 - 4.74X
Williams - $6400 - 5.65X
Mattison - $6000 - 4.35X
Chase - $5400 - 4.16X
CEH - $4800 - 4.35X
Higbee -$4000 - 3.75X
AZ DST - $3000 - 6X
When evaluating Fantasy Points Per Dollar, this lineup really parallels the lineup of the Play Action Winner. You have one player above 7K, (Metcalf $7300) and then 4 roster spots in the 6K range. Then the same 5K player in Ja’Marr Chase, 2 players at 4K, and the Cardinals D at 3K. In fact, the bottom 4 spots are the same except Sanders was swapped with CEH. The Average Fantasy Points Per Dollar was 4.58X, with no player under 3.52X! As with the Play Action winning lineup, we see an extremely efficient lineup from a Points Per Dollar basis, and no studs above $7300 were in this winning lineup. Targeting game stacks with the less chalky, value players was the recipe for winning GPP’s in week 3 of the DFS Main Slate.
Ceiling
Between the Milli Maker recap and the play action above, we’ve established the ceiling of many of the players in this lineup. The players at question here with small sample sizes would be Chase, Harris, Mattison. That said, so far this is what we’ve seen:
Mattison: 20-30 pts (small sample size but 20-30 pts)
Chase: ? (Small sample size but trending over 25 pts territory)
Harris: ? (small sample size but trending 25-35 pts.)
CEH would seem to be the player with the most limited ceiling but at his price tag of $4800, he doesn’t need to do much. 4.35X on his salary for a total of 20.90 points will do with his limited ceiling.
Like with any big tournament such as this one with over 50,000 entries, you’re going to need a roster with a high ceiling. You would think that a contest with 50,000 entries would be easier to win than a contest with 200,000+ entries but we saw this week that when the stakes change, (entry fees) that changes how players approach the contest & also which players enter that contest.
226 points won this contest and 223 won the Milli Maker with over 150,000 more entries.
I think you’ll find several parallels between the Winning lineups of the Milli Maker, Play Action, and Slant this week and yet the contests are very different based on the size of the field and the payout structure. What won the Milli wouldn’t have been good enough to win the Slant or Play Action and yet the Milli Maker is widely considered to be the toughest contest to win.
My suggestion? Play them all, but be smart about how you do so. Max entering a $20 contest is a quick way for most people to go broke and swear off of DFS forever. Also shoot for a lot of points! 25-28 point average per player is what you need in most weeks. This requires the proper mix of High Floor + High ceiling players mixed in with players that have a lot of variance in their floor, but can hit a high ceiling from time to time.There are better ways to get contrarian than rostering a player capable of only 10-15 points. If you’re targeting the right game stacks, looking for leverage, being mindful of ownership, and playing a high ceiling roster, you have a great chance.
You’ll likely have to roll that dice many times to win big, but stay positive that your process will eventually lead you to the right results.
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