5 Data-Driven Insights to Help You Build a Million Dollar DraftKings Lineup

Ownership percentages are at the heart of daily fantasy sports. Naturally, the “safe” players in DFS will be highly owned. They are either 1) the studs who produce consistently or 2) the players who hold high value due to their site pricing.

Traditional thinking dictates that our cash game (50/50’s, Double Ups, H2H’s) lineups should consist primarily of these safe plays. Set a high floor lineup when you only need to beat roughly half your competition. It’s logical.

Traditional thinking also has it that the inverse is true for large tournaments. In these formats, we often hear that we need to pick players who are not highly owned. Properly identifying players that are low owned, who subsequently go off, is the only way to vault to the top of a GPP (Guaranteed Prize Pool).

Or so we’re told.

But are we taking this too far? And is it true for the Milly Maker on DraftKings — the King of the GPP’s?

We analyzed the last 18 winning lineups in the Milly Maker to put this theory to the test.

What we found was surprising.

The players who are winning the Milly Maker aren’t following traditional thinking for tournament play.

What does this mean for you?

You’re over-thinking it — and it’s costing you.

We’ve surfaced 5 data-driven insights to explain why traditional tournament thinking may be hurting your Milly Maker lineups — and to explain how the winners are taking down the biggest contest in DFS.

First, a few quick notes on our approach.

• We looked back at the last 18 regular season winning lineups in the DraftKings Milly Maker.
• Our primary focus was ownership percentages, though we also explored things like stacking and home/away matchups.
• We were looking for any roster construction trends amongst million dollar winning lineups
• To best highlight trends, we segmented the data, specific to position, to categorize plays from “chalk” all the way through to “unique.” Here is how we defined the four tiers of plays.

We understand that this is still a small sample size. This is an early take on the data. There is a lot of work still to be done, and we plan to do it as we move forward.

Insight #1 — Stop Trying to be So Unique

When you’re making your Milly Maker lineup, stop trying to be the smartest guy in the room.

Only 9% of the total plays in recent Milly Maker winning lineups were “Unique” plays (defined as players under 3% owned if WR/RB or under 2.5% owned if QB/TE/DEF). Further, 56% of winners didn’t use a Unique play at all. In other words, Unique plays weren’t anywhere to be found in more than half of the winning lineups. Only twice did the winning lineup have more than one Unique play in it (2, in both cases).

Unique play attempts are hurting your Milly Maker lineups. You don’t need to find that diamond in the rough to win the Milly Maker!

On the opposite end, 24% of recent winning Milly Maker plays were Chalk plays (over 25% owned RB/WR, or over 17.5% owned if QB/TE/DEF). Chalk plays were found in the winning lineup every single week. The winning lineup had multiple chalk plays in it 9 times (53%), including 4 weeks that the winning lineup had 3 or more Chalk plays in it.

Across all weeks analyzed, Chalk plays were 2.54x more common than Unique plays.

To better summarize, we grouped Chalk and Common plays together to define “Mainstream” plays (over 10% owned at RB/WR, and over 7.5% owned at QB/TE/DEF). Similarly, we combined Uncommon and Unique plays to define “Contrarian” plays.

The trend held — Mainstream plays have much higher representation in millionaire lineups than Contrarian plays.

65% of lineup plays in the winning Milly Maker lineups are Mainstream.

Mainstream players need to be the core of a winning Milly Maker lineup.

Insight #2 — Mainstream Thinking is Most Important at RB, WR and TE

Don’t get cute at RB and WR! These positions make up 56% of your lineup, and an even higher percentage of your overall points scored. You need to score at these critical positions.

We’re not suggesting you play straight chalk in the Milly. You can see below that Chalk plays are often similar to “Uncommon” plays. But, the data does suggest that you stop wasting time on those high risk — diamond in the rough — plays, and that you stick to mainstream thinking at the critical positions of RB and WR.

Insight #3 — The Place for Contrarian Thinking is QB

If you were paying attention to the graphs above, you noticed that the only position where Contrarian thinking exhibited higher representation was at Quarterback.

More often than not, million dollar lineups on DraftKings are contrarian at Quarterback. This is the position to be different.

However, the last 6 regular season millionaire lineups used mainstream QB’s. This led us to a deeper look at QB plays in winning lineups, and to our next insight.

Insight #4 — Modify Your Stacking Based on Your QB’s Expected Ownership

The strategy of stacking players at correlated positions is not a new phenomenon. Credit Chris Raybon, Senior DFS Editor at 4for4.com, for that. His “Definitive Guides to Stacking” are exceptional! Among many findings, Chris shared that the highest correlated stack was QB and his #1 WR.

But we noticed something interesting when looking simultaneously at QB ownership and lineup stacking.

Previously noted, the last 6 regular season Milly Maker winners played mainstream QB’s. 5 of those 6 (83%) lineups stacked a WR from the same team as the QB. Only once (17%) in that 6 week span did the winning lineup play a mainstream QB without a WR stack. When playing a mainstream QB, WR stacking from the same team is critically important.

However, between weeks 1 and 12 in 2015, 10 of the 12 winning Milly Maker lineups went contrarian at QB. Two things stood out during this time period.

First, stacking was less prevalent overall. 40% of the lineups during this time period did not utilize QB stacking at all. If you think about that, it’s logical as lower-owned QB’s are less likely to play in high-powered offenses and less likely to have reliable DFS options.

Second, for winning lineups that played contrarian QB’s, Tight Ends became increasingly important, nearly as important as WR’s. TE’s went from 0% stacking usage with mainstream QB’s to 50% usage in lineups using a contrarian QB. WR’s feel from 100% stacking usage with mainstream QB’s to 66% usage.

If you’re playing a contrarian QB, which the data suggests is a strong choice, you should have your eye on ones with attractive Tight End options.

Insight #5 — Your RB’s, TE’s and DEF Should be Playing at Home

62% of all plays from last years winning lineups were playing at home.

Digging deeper to be position specific, we find that millionaire lineups target Running Backs, Tight Ends and Defenses playing at home.

Simple enough, target options at these three positions that are playing at home.

Finally, here is the average ownership by position of the last 18 regular season winning lineups in the Milly Maker.

Starting this week, don’t over-think your Milly Maker lineups. Stop searching for that unique play that will prove how smart you are. It’s more likely to tilt your Sunday and to kill any chance you may have had.

Stick to these five data-driven Milly Maker Insights and we’ll see you in the Green come Sunday!