DraftKings Releases Pick 'Em Contests
It was over three years ago when DraftKings acquired DraftStreet in a move that created waves through the entire DFS industry.
One of the most popular offerings DraftStreet that hasn’t seen much traction in the industry since the DraftKings acquisition was their no salary cap Pick ‘Em games. Earlier this week, DraftKings announced and released their version of Pick ‘Em games and ran some MLB Pick ‘Em contests that night including a three-dollar entry fee $150K guaranteed prize pool 20-max GPP.
The way the Pick ‘Ems work is their are separate tiers (for MLB there are 8, the first two are groups of pitchers with the remaining six being differing groups of hitters) with no salaries attached to the players. You pick one player from each tier to draft your team. The scoring is the same as for the “classic” DraftKings contests so unlike Arcade mode there are no scoring adjustments that need to be factored into your roster construction.
The first few nights of the DraftKings Pick ‘Em contests revealed some subtleties with how the tiers are set up. The first tier of pitchers contained the “elite” pitchers of the night (today for example it contains pitchers like Scherzer and Kluber) while the second tier is more your mid-range type of pitcher (today it has the likes of Godley, Dickey, and Stratton). The first tier of hitters is comprised of elite hitters like Mike Trout, Aaron Judge, and Charlie Blackmon and the tiers tend to work downwards in terms of fantasy production.
Their are several strategies available. You can still stack teams in certain situations as there will be several players from the same team in different tiers (this is what yours truly did last night in his 51st place lineup with a Pittsburgh stack of McCutchen-Marte-Harrison-Freese). Or you can just go with a more pick the best player approach. This is what the winner of last night’s contest did as he only had one team with two players (the White Sox) and the rest were “one offs” – for what it’s worth all of his hitters except one homered and scored 20 fpts.
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