Main Event Millionaire Review: Week 10
The Millionaire review series will provide the reader with a breakdown of the exposures of “top of the leaderboard” players, the top single-entry lineup, and a comparison between all single entry lineups and professionals for the weekly DraftKings Millionaire Maker GPP.
This week, we looked at the $5M Main Event Millionaire [$1M to 1st!] on DraftKings with a buy-in of $444 and maximum entry limit of 150 lineups per person.
Multi-Entry Grinders of the Game
Makisupa’s ownership at a brief glance looks like he probably fell flat on his face, as we see a number of chalk plays relatively bomb on the weekend: Tom Brady, Jay Cutler, Alshon Jeffery, Dontrelle Inman, J.J. Nelson, etc. In some instances, you may be on a lot of great plays on a weekend, but the combinations just don’t like up for a big score. In this instance, it seemed like the opposite (which is why having limited ownership to a number of options can still result in a score). Makisupa landed a 3rd place finish by using a handful of his lowest owned players: Ben Roethlisberger, Doug Baldwin, Tyrell Williams, Delanie Walker, and C.J. Prosise. However, a key to his ability to place so high, was that even though those few players were some of his lower owned plays, they still were above the ownership of the field.
It had been a little since we had seen SaahilSud’s name, but once again he erupts with a 2nd place finish and was narrowly edged out by 0.1 points. A common theme that sticks out immediately is that Saahil favored cheap and mostly contrarian quarterbacks. However they weren’t just contrarian plays to be contrarian as Carson Wentz would need to play catch up against an MVP-caliber season from Matty Ice and Trevor Siemian had the premier matchup with Drew Brees in the Superdome. By flexing running backs 60% of the time, he was able to fit in all RB studs at significant ownership, while still allowing for some value plays (Darren Sproles 28.7%). It would come in handy as the chalk made value (David Johnson, Le’Veon Bell), but the contrarian studs hit it out of the park in what were still competitive matchups (Ezekiel Elliot pulled the week prior in a juicy matchup that ended up blowing out). More than anything, his WR ownership stacked with his QB column, but he did attempt to fill in with contrarian studs & value: Replacing Jeremy Maclin in the lineup (Albert Wilson 18%, Chris Conley 14%), Julio Jones in a tough matchup with the Eagles and low owned, and Stefon Diggs as literally the Vikings’ only option. However, what stole the show was his TE plays with Cameron Brate making circus catchs all Sunday and Delanie Walker playing the primary option. Saahil took six top-25 finishes and ended the day with a 42.7% cash rate.
As I was able to establish a pattern over the previous pro’s strategies in lineup construction, zbb123’s seemed to be all over the place and featured much more individual plays. He didn’t fall victim to the Jay Cutler & (player-popup)Alshon Jeffery”:/players/alshon-jeffery-13584/” hype, but he still had significant amounts of David Johnson and J.J. Nelson. James White and Kapri Bibbs seemed like longshots to produce, yet the Broncos would most likely need to score points and throw to keep up with the Saints, while the Seahawks featured a stout front-7 and the Patriots may have opted to air it out. Just like Makisupa, his winning lineup featured a number of his lowest owned options (Le’Veon Bell 9.5%, C.J. Prosise 4.8%, Tyreek Hill 9.5%, and Delanie Walker 4.8%) and while only playing 21 lineups, he made each of those options count on the same lineup. His other lineups weren’t as successful as he just finished with a 28.6% cash rate, but those fringe plays, which allow for $1M wins, do not usually lead to lend them themselves to consistency.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
CowboyTrucker played the white-hot Marcus Mariota stack with Rishard Matthews and Delanie Walker who had been his primary receiving options. From there, he paid up for two running backs, one of which was David Johnson (who was the weekend chalk), but pivoted off of Le’veon Bell for Ezekiel Elliot who absolutely feasted. He paired DJ with the Cardinals D as a positive correlation play, but they failed to stifle Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers. From there, he made great plays on cheaper plays who were thrust into a greater role. Darren Sproles was anticipating to continue receiving the feature #1 running back carries in the Eagles offense along with his 3rd down receiving duties, while Tyrell Williams moved into the #1 WR role for the San Diego Chargers as Travis Benjamin was out with injury. CowboyTrucker’s great value plays and stud pivots allowed him to take down 7th place for the $30k score on just a $444 buy-in.
Single-Entry vs. Makisupa/SaahilSud/zbb123
Out of 11,211 entries in the Fantasy Football Millionaire, 28.4% of those entries were entered courtesy of players using a single bullet. The table below compares the exposures of those single entries to the exposures of Makisupa, SaahilSud, zbb123, and 80 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ leaderboard:
