DraftKings Millionaire Maker Trends Through Week 3
Sometimes we need to think about other ways to win in DFS other than simply playing the best plays. Looking at trends of top lineups is one route to take to do just that. One of the easiest tools to become a better tournament player is studying the trends of lineups that win or nearly win.
I’ve been keeping track of some trends for the DraftKings Millionaire Maker for the first three weeks and wanted to share some of those here in a simple format for you to understand. These are all trends from the top 10 lineups each week.
If you want to follow these yourself with a little excel work, you can create your own trends to follow by either downloading the CSV from DraftKings, or just make it easy on yourself by using ResultsDB here on RotoGrinders to gather information.
Flex Usage
Running backs are dominating the Flex Usage through Week 3. Each week at least half of the top 10 has used an RB in Flex. Tight ends were used in zero top 10 lineups Week 1 when pricing was loose, but tallied three flex spots in the next two weeks as pricing tightened.
Average Ownership (AO) by Position
It’s clear that using higher owned running backs is just fine. The guaranteed high touch running backs not only provide the highest floor of the skill positions but also are giving us high ceilings on a week to week basis. When the chalk hit in Week 1 with Conner and Kamara having huge games, the AO of the RB position was extremely high at 25% ownership across the top 10 lineups.
Average Ownership (AO)
When the chalk hits the AO goes up. We see this in Week 1 with a total lineup ownership hitting 127% and then dipping to 88% in Week 2 when the chalk failed to come through for the most part. If you would like to incorporate AO into your teams, you can do that with the RotoGrinders LineupHQ using our projected ownership.
Stacks
Game stacks are king through three weeks with 20 appearances in the top ten lineups compared to just nine appearances for team stacks. I consider a stack to start with a quarterback, so a team stack of two would be a quarterback paired with any skill player on his team. A game stack is a quarterback paired with one of his skill position players paired with at least one skill position player from the opposite team in the same game.
Week 3 saw our first non-stack make the top 10 with a Deshaun Watson lineup ran without any of his pass catchers. I generally don’t make GPP teams that aren’t a stack.
Bust Rates of Highest Owned Players Through Week 3
Outside of Week 1 the field has not been able to nail a single high owned running back that gave us a reasonable chance to finish in the Top 10. Week 2 was by far the fields worst week as all three of the highest owned players at RB/WR/TE fell flat.
Low Owned Players (Sub 5% ownership)
It’s generally a good idea to put at least one low owned player on your large field GPP teams, if not more than one. Through three weeks the top ten lineups are averaging 2.46 low owned plays per lineup.
Here is the winning lineup from Week 3 from TheHodgesFactor. A three-man game stack takes it down for $1,000,000!
Week 3 was also the first time since the start of 2017 that the first-place team in the Millionaire Maker did not have a sub 5% owned player.
Use ResultsDB to research optimal lineups and much more!
Hopefully, this can help you look at the way you make your teams in a different light and help you make lineups more correlated with what the top lineups are actually doing.