Markness Takes 1st and 2nd For $4,500 in Mid-Summer Classic
A couple of huge events highlighted this past Friday night in the daily fantasy world. The King’s Crown pushed on as their 6th qualifier earned their shot at the King’s riches. Over on FantasyFeud, the first Grand Slam Qualifier took place and generated an impressive amount of interest. The other major event was the DraftKings Mid-Summer Classic Part II which saw an owner of another site take not only 1st but 2nd as well on his way to reeling in $4500 in prizes! Last, there was the Grinder Goes to Vegas promotion on Friday with DraftKings where one RG Member won a flight to Vegas to party it up with us at our NFL Week 1 Kickoff Party!
Friday night was riddled with brilliant sleeper picks, including Manny Machado breakout two home run performance for the Orioles. John Jaso went big for the Mariners off a terrible Ervin Santana, Matt Joyce put one yard and pushed home 4 runners, and Prince Fielder continued his hot hitting streak, although he’s not much of a sleeper. So let’s get to the big events from Friday, starting with our headline story and a few quotes from the DK Mid-Summer Classic 1st and 2nd place finisher, Markness.
DK Mid-Summer Classic II: Markness Steals The Show
RG-member and owner of popular daily fantasy site DraftStreet, Markness was able to take not only first place in the Mid-Summer Classic II on DraftKings but he was also able to bring in 2nd as well! The key to his success was the breakout game from Orioles top prospect Manny Machado, who he had on both winning squads. Both squads also had hot-hitting Mariners catcher John Jaso, who chipped in 26 points on DK. The winning lineup showcased Tim Lincecum as his starting pitcher(who only managed 5 points) as well as Mike Trout, Nick Swisher, Andrew McCutchen and another 2 HR performance from Chase Headley. Combined, Markness’s winning lineup put up 183 points on DraftKings thanks to a whopping 6 HOME RUNS. His second place lineup scored 172 points thanks to good games from Prince Fielder, Clayton Kershaw and Matt Joyce. At the end of the night, he left with $4500 in winnings from those top-2 finishes and put the daily fantasy world in awe with his ridiculous performance! Big congrats to Markness on the win and thanks to DraftKings for running such an awesome promotion.
We got a chance to ask Mark some questions about his daily fantasy play and his win on Friday, check out what he had to say!
RG:How often do you get time to actually play Daily Fantasy as opposed to creating games for others to play?
Mark: Aside from playing against some of my partners in private leagues on DraftStreet, I haven’t played regularly at all. My play on other DFS sites has been pretty much limited to big promotional events or some big overlay GPPs.
RG:What was your strategy for this particular event? How many lineups did you enter? Do you adjust your strategy for contests with large-fields like the won you just got 1st and 2nd in.
Mark: I entered about 30-35 teams. I had a list of guys I liked and I just tried to fit some combinations together. I had some guys I liked more than others, so I put them on more teams. I usually try to get some hitters on the same teams in the same lineups to maximize upside. I don’t like fully stacking because you’re likely to have 7, 8 or even 9 players in common with some other entries when you do that.
RG:How much does your job in Daily Fantasy help you with building Daily Fantasy Lineups?
Mark: It definitely helps in terms of saving me research time. I have to stay up on recent news/injuries, player performance, matchups, etc. for quality control. Our player salaries are auto-generated, but I usually look over the player pool every day (for the following day, before leagues are offered). I also need to be on top of values to make sure our Pick ‘em tiers create tough decisions.
RG:Is MLB your best sport?
Mark: I like MLB the best and I think it’s the best DFS game. I guess it is probably my best sport, but I see some of the rosters of the top guys in this industry and I don’t know how they came up with some of their picks. There is definitely another level and I’m not there.
RG:What are you going to do with the money you won?
Mark: Well, living in Manhattan, I definitely could use extra money. I suppose I’ll have to spend some on my girlfriend who has been watching way more baseball than she would prefer.
RG:The DSBC finals start tonight…are you excited? What are your expectations?
Mark: I’m very excited. I’m expecting quality lineups tonight, obviously. I’m more excited to see what type of strategy guys use on Day 2 if they’re way out in front or way behind.
RG:Lastly, can you give us a quick background of what you do for Draftstreet?
Mark: I am one of 4 founders and I have been in charge of our product since we formed our team at the beginning of 2010. I manage the development team; I create and assign tasks (new features/enhancements, fixing bugs, etc.), prioritize tasks, oversee progress and test everything.
It is also worth noting that our very own RotoGrindersCal (Cal Spears) took 9th in the Mid-Summer Classic II and finished just 23 points out of first. A Tampa Bay Rays heavy lineup accompanied by Machado and Stephen Strasburg pushed him past most of the other 1,250 contestants!
DK Grinder Goes To Vegas Contest
We had 16 players enter the $20, winner-take-all Grinder Goes to Vegas Competition. The winner of this contest was Emac who will be joining us in beautiful Las Vegas for the RG NFL Kickoff Party Week 1, courtesy of DraftKings. Big congrats to Emac and we look forward to having you in Vegas!!! He barely edged out fellow competitor Thundernuts by a tiny 2-point margin. Again the theme was Manny Machado, who was on the top-2 lineups for this event!
DailyJoust King’s Crown Qualifier #6
The King’s Crown event keeps rolling on and the sixth qualifier was stolen away by Jouster Brent. Brent owes many thanks to, who else but Manny Machado. But he also rolled the dice on Ricky Romero versus a potent Yankees offense and was rewarded with a solid effort. Matt Joyce, Dustin Pedroia and Prince Fielder rounded out the rest of the double-digit scorers for Brent who put up a 110 point total to beat out 2nd place Cha-Cha by a huge margin of 17 points. Cha-Cha tied for second with DP47 who is not to be confused with our own db730 Dan Back! Cha-Cha was pushed forward thanks to Machado and a great output from Clayton Kershaw, Kelly Johnson and Carlos Corporan. Unfortunately, the 3 K’s from Chris Davis(who had a great looking match up) really sunk Cha-Cha as Davis put up a -3. DP47 was pushed to a tie for second on the back of risky pick Mark Rogers as well as a pretty consistent 8-12 points across all of his hitters. Congrats to Brent on the victory and good luck in the King’s Crown Finals!
FantasyFeud Grand Slam Event #1
The first FantasyFeud Grand Slam event went to a25smith who put up 102.08 points and got an impressive 36 points from his starting pitchers. He was able to take advantage of a dirt cheap Mark Rogers and Tyler Chatwood who both put up solid efforts. Saving money there allowed a25smith to exploit huge games from Cody Ross, Prince Fielder, John Jaso and Dustin Pedroia. When the dust settled, a25smith edged out our very own Brad, bowens1984 by 2.5 points. Brad was actually able to take 3 of the top 10 spots and earned three invites to the final Grand Slam Invitational tournament. All top-10 players earn invites each and every week so this is definitely a great event to pay attention to and hop in next week. 98 of the 100 available slots filled last week and it will definitely fill this coming Friday so get in early. To find out all of the top-10 and more details about the FantasyFeud Grand Slam Tournament, check out our forum post here.
That does it for the big events breakdown this week. Check back in next week for more of the biggest news around the industry! Good luck and keep on grinding.