Jesse Martin Discusses $2 Million DraftKings World Championship Victory

Jesse Martin is no stranger to winning large sums of money, but he’s been known to do it at the poker table. On Sunday, the high-stakes pro with two World Series of Poker gold bracelets and more than $3.2 million in poker tournament winnings earned the biggest score of his gambling career when he took down the DraftKings $10 million Fantasy Football World Championship (FFWC) for $2 million.

Under the DraftKings screen name ‘180DegreesMiami,’ Martin was one of 180 finalists to qualify for the fifth FFWC. The value of the ticket was $55,555, but just winning his way to the big dance earned Martin at least a $15,000 min-cash. When Sunday was all said and done, he had earned much more than just that, taking home $2 million with a DraftKings lineup led by Christian McCaffrey and Saquon Barkley.

“It still feels amazing,” Martin said when asked if the huge win has sunk in a few days removed from the event. “I’ve had some poker wins where I didn’t totally understand the concept of having it not sink in. I feel like the poker stuff kind of sunk in right away. This one, I don’t know if it was because it was online, or just more money than ever, but It took some time to sink in. Both the money and also just the fact that it’s the World Championship of DFS. Not that it’s like super mainstream or anything, but it was just kind of weird to think about just playing fantasy football since I was seven years old or whatever. All of a sudden I won. It was pretty exciting. The whole thing is pretty wild. I’m feeling pretty good about it.”

Martin admitted to having an early bias against DFS for a bit of time, stemming from an investment opportunity he passed on when DFS was getting started. After learning more about it and seeing it in operation, Martin still avoided playing because he didn’t want to get sucked in.

“I was doing really well at poker, and it just didn’t feel like something that I could transition to and spend my time on and do better than at poker,” Martin said. “Which, I think in retrospect, wasn’t really true. I think I missed kind of the golden age of DFS, but it is what it is.”

Martin cited 2014 was the first year he started playing on DraftKings, and he hit a score right out of the gate. On one of the first weekends he played, he won $30,000, recalling an excellent Monday Night Football performance by Le’Veon Bell that helped him cash big.

“At that point, that was it,” Martin said. “DFS is super fun, I’ve always loved it. I’m a huge sports fan and just kind of been into fantasy sports forever. Just like a lot of poker players, it was a pretty easy transition for me, as far as picking up a new hobby. The first two years I played, I did well. I had some decent years, a couple of big scores.”

His screen name, ‘180DegreesMiami,’ is a show of solidarity to his cousin, Ryan, who Martin says is one of his best friends. Martin’s cousin started a restaurant in Miami called ‘180 Degrees Miami’ before later moving to Tampa. Although the restaurant in Miami is no longer there, Martin won the FFWC for $2 million within walking distance of where it used to be.

In 2016, Martin and his wife welcomed their son into the world, and it left Martin not wanting to leave the house to play poker as much. Rather, he’d stay home and spend time with the family, which also allowed him to start playing a lot more DFS.

Martin says that NFL DFS is where he feels he can best apply his craft, focusing more on cash games than tournaments on a regular basis. Although he’s done well to have some tournament success, Martin mentioned that this year he’s been winning in cash games and then losing that money back in tournaments.

“I feel like I’m doing great in cash games and then have been giving the money back, more or less, in the tournaments,” he said. “But I guess luckily I learned some lessons leading up to this and obviously got lucky.”

We’re not sure if we’d give as much credit to it being luck as Martin might humbly concede. Talking to him, it’s easily apparent that he works hard at DFS. For the FFWC, he started his lineup-building process almost as soon as Week 14 of the NFL came to a close.

“Tuesday morning, I’m in there,” Martin said. “We actually had a poker game Tuesday. It was a really good game. I knew the game was going to be good. I got invited to it, as it was kind of a semi-private game, but honestly I was kind of bummed about the game even though it was a good opportunity because I wanted to start my process Tuesday morning. I was listening to podcasts on the way in, listening on the way home, and then once I woke up on Wednesday morning I was all in on the research.”

Throughout the week leading up to the FFWC, Martin was studying a lot. He spent time watching past games to see how players performed, dug into articles and podcasts from various beat reporters around the league, and openly discussed some of his plans with close friends, although he said that his friends were more just there to listen to him speak his thoughts.

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Looking over Martin’s winning lineup, you’ll find wide receiver Greg Ward and running back Boston Scott on the roster. Both play for the Philadelphia Eagles and were priced at the minimum salary on DraftKings. When it came to rostering these two players, Martin mentioned it came down to a lot of the research he had done throughout the week. He specifically recalled watching the recent Monday Night Football game between the Eagles and New York Giants.

“I just felt like people were missing something, which is somewhat rare,” Martin said of researching Scott and Ward. “Usually these projections and these sites are so good, but I really did feel like people were missing something.”

Another interesting thing to take away from Martin’s winning roster is the use of quarterback Patrick Mahomes and wide receiver Tyreek Hill, with the benefit of having the Kansas City Chiefs stack in play. But that game was played in heavy snow. Leading up to the game, there were reports of snow, but Martin said he was hoping it was moderate. As part of his process, he rewatched the Chiefs games against the Indianapolis Colts from last season’s playoffs. That game was also played in Kansas City with snow.

“It seemed like Mahomes wasn’t too bothered by the snow, and Hill didn’t seem all that bothered by the snow,” Martin said.

He decided to go to bed and further evaluate in the morning before the games. When he woke up, Martin saw that the snow in Kansas City was much heavier than anticipated, and now he had a choice to make leading up to roster lock. He could gamble on the Mahomes-Hill stack or swap to Jameis Winston and Chris Godwin or Deshaun Watson and DeAndre Hopkins. He also had a lineup prepped that utilized a Kyler Murray stack, but ultimately Martin stuck with Mahomes and Hill.

Martin did point out that had he swapped out Mahomes and Hill for Winston and Godwin, he would’ve scored more points. He actually did this for the $1,500 buy-in NFL $250K Game Changer on DraftKings and won that tournament for $50,000. That lineup scored him 227.22 points versus the 220.9 he scored with the Mahomes-Hill lineup.

“As far as the money, it was by far the most money I’ve ever won gambling and I basically didn’t have any pieces out,” Martin said. “A couple very small ones and it’s huge. I’ve done well in poker and I’ve done well in gambling, but this is a huge amount of money, and really, I don’t know if it’s… my friend used the phrase ‘semi-life changing.’ It’s definitely semi-life changing. It just kind of clears up a lot of things that I think I could’ve done or wanted to do. Just kind of the vision of what I want the next bunch of years to look like and it really, really does feel good in that respect.

“I guess going through it, maybe it still hasn’t hit me because two million dollars compared to my poker scores, it is a lot different and really a lot more life changing. It’s pretty crazy.”

Looking ahead, Martin said he’ll be able to feel less pressure for having to grind, especially when it comes to poker.

“I was really playing poker four, five times a week up until a couple weeks ago,” Martin said. “Maybe I turn that into one or two times a week, hopefully, or maybe start studying the solvers and become a great no-limit player and then maybe start doing that a little bit more. I don’t really know, but it came at a really good time for stuff like that, because I was ready for a little bit of a transition. I’m always going to be a poker player, I love poker, but I was grinding really hard. That’s kind of the way to describe it. I was grinding, I was playing a lot of hours in good games, but it’s a grind to get the hours in and get in the games and all that stuff. So it’s nice that I don’t totally have to worry about that for a little bit. It does feel good in that way.

“And I love DFS. DFS is super fun. I just really enjoy it. So if there is a chance that I can make a living and sustain myself playing DFS, I’m certainly going to consider it. But I also don’t want to be delusional, so I need to kind of figure it all out.”

For more on Martin’s victory and insight into his professional poker career, check out the story PocketFives.

(Jesse Martin photo: World Poker Tour)

About the Author

DonniePeters
Donnie Peters (DonniePeters)

Donnie Peters began his career in the gambling industry in 2008, starting in poker before applying his skills to the world of sports betting. He was named Media Person of the Year at the American Poker Awards in 2016 and co-founded the Gridiron Gamble podcast in 2015. Donnie’s passion for poker and sports betting has led him to a role as Operations and Project Manager of SharpSide.com and ScoresAndOdds.com. Donnie previously held roles as the Editor-in-Chief of PokerNews.com, Marketing Manager of the World Poker Tour, and Managing Editor of PocketFives.com. You can find Donnie on Twitter @Donnie_Peters.