LineStar NFL Takeaway - Week 2: 3-Max Contest and Lineup Strategy

📝 @zeroinDenver 🎯

Welcome back, everyone. Again, it's your dude, ZeroInDenver, here to try and bring some insight into NFL DFS contests. I'm going to take a deeper look at the NFL $50K Triple Option [3 Entry Max] contest on DraftKings.

About the Contest

To me, this is a fairly solid contest if you're playing 1-3 lineups. You can max-enter for $9 with the opportunity to win $5000 for placing first. It's a large field with 19,817 total entries and it pays out the top 5028 positions (top 25%).

In week 2, the top score was 231.04 points and the score needed to min-cash was 132.70. (Comparatively, the top score in the Milly Maker was 233.34 and the score needed to min-cash was 139.12)

Strategy

Every week, there are a number of questions in LineStar chat. While we're lucky to have some really sharp people helping in the chat and not wasting everyone's time trolling and preaching how easy DFS is, I'd like to answer some of these questions with data from the contest.

Salary Usage

How much salary should I use is a common question. As you see below, 48% of all entries used the full salary allowed in their lineups, and 95% of all entries used $49,500 or more in salary.

Keep in mind, these numbers were for a 13-game main slate. Smaller slates and single game slates will probably deviate from this.

Should I stack?

Stacking is a common strategy in NFL DFS. If you're playing 20-150 entries, it certainly makes sense. But what about 3-max contests?

As you see, the overwhelming majority of lineups have a team stack. In other words, 2 or more players (I excluded DST from this calculation) from the same team are in a lineup together.

Ok - So stacking is clearly important, but how many players should you have in your stack?

If you're new to NFL DFS, it's a common strategy to stack your QB with at least one RB, WR, or TE from the same team. There's often positive correlation between the QB and a WR from the same team. In other words, if the QB passes for a touchdown, the QB receives points for passing yards and the passing TD, and the WR receives points for receiving yards and the receiving TD.

As you can see below, the majority of stacked lineups had the QB with 1 or 2 players from the same team (I excluded DST from this calculation). There were some that did 3 players stacked with the QB, but to me, that's excessive. Once your stack grows beyond the QB and 2 RB/WR/TE, you run into negative correlation. This means that if one RB/WR/TE is doing really well, other RB/WR/TE aren't doing as well because they simply aren't getting the carries or targets.

In addition to stacking a RB/WR/TE with your QB, a common strategy is to stack a player or two from the team opposing your QB. The theory behind this is if the QB is doing well, the opposing team is battling to score points as well. This is often referred to as "running it back". Here's a look at how many lineups used a "run back" strategy:

43% of QB-stacked lineups didn't have a player from the team facing the QB, but the majority did.

As you can see, stacking is a popular strategy, but as I've said in chat before, don't force it. Don't force a stack or "run back" simply because you think you need to, especially if you like an option from another team.

Ownership

Let's start by looking at who the top 30 owned players were in this contest:

If we're going to look at winning lineups, let's look at ownership a little bit differently. Instead of looking at it through individual players, let's look at this across our lineups. I'll show you what I mean.

Here are the top 10 entries from the contest. I summed the actual ownership of these players and put their ranked percentile alongside that. The lineup ownership doesn't mean much (and it shouldn't, because it will vary from slate to slate), but the ownership percentile will show you how "chalky" your lineup is overall.

Looking at these lineups, you can see that with one exception, these lineups fell below the 50th percentile in summed ownership. However,

Curious to what the "chalkiest" lineups looked like? Look below.

Remember, 132.70 was the score needed to cash. They all cashed, but 8 were duplicates. I think this is expected. The "chalkier" your lineups get, the more likely you are to see someone else running the same lineup as you.

What can we learn from this?

• Stacks are important and a path to the top of the leaderboard.

• Pairing a QB with at least 1 WR/TE seems to be ideal. Pairing a QB with 2 RB/WR/TE can work, but I wouldn't force it.

• "Running it back" by stacking a WR facing your QB can work. It's risky, but has upside.

• 1-3 "chalk" players in your lineup isn't a terrible move. All "chalk" plays don't seem to be a great tournament move, but might be a decent strategy in cash games.

Thanks for reading and if there's something you'd like me to investigate or look into, let me know!