RG Interview - Week 3 DraftKings Fantasy Football Millonaire Winner: LordMattyIce
In Week 3, RotoGrinders Premium subscriber Matthew “LordMattyIce” Hakim shipped the $555 DraftKings Fantasy Football Millionaire, along with a number of other tournaments. After the dust settled, he walked away with over $1,300,000 off a single lineup.
We caught up with Matthew to find out more about his story and his remarkable Week 3 performance!
Congrats on the life-changing win! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who you are, where you’re from, what you do?
Thank you! I am 26 years old from Detroit MI. I have been in the mortgage industry for 5 years now including 3 years at Rocket Mortgage and the last 2 years as co-founder and VP of Loan X in Birmingham MI. I have 2 brothers, 1 sister, 2 nieces and 2 of the best parents in the world. The night before I won big, we had a big party for my brother who turned 21 and my dad who turned 60! We spent the next morning cleaning up and moving things around so we could watch football. We are a football family through and through… Go Blue! Tom Brady is our family’s favorite player and we have traveled on multiple occasions to see him play. Stafford is our guy too (especially after he helped me take home 1st place.)
How long have you been playing DFS? What got you into it and how successful have you been so far?
I have been playing DFS for 5 years now. I have always loved everything about fantasy sports. I play football, basketball, and baseball DFS. I have had some decent wins but nothing like September 26, 2021, when I took home 1.3 million! I have done so many contests and have come so close to 6 figures on multiple occasions. I have been most successful in football even before the big win.
What does your typical DFS weekend look like (i.e., what contests do you play, how much volume do you play, what your process is)?
Every week differs on which contests I play and how much I put in. Most weeks I am playing somewhere around $1,000, sometimes more if I’m feeling good. I used to do tons of different lineups to try and increase my odds of winning the “jackpot”. 2 years ago, I switched everything up and have been picking one team every single week since. I start my research on Monday, looking for key stats, injuries, over/under and spreads. Throughout the week I start zoning in on which stacks and matchups I want action in. I never lock in my lineup until about noon on Sunday when I see all the injury updates and key notes for certain players or teams.
You’re a RotoGrinders member and Premium subscriber – can you tell us how you use RG to help you with DFS?
I always read the Core Plays, Grind Down and other articles on RotoGrinders. I do not use the optimizer because I only submit one lineup every week. I look at projected ownership — although it’s not going to be 100% accurate it gives me a rough idea of who people are looking at the most.
Talk about your overall lineup-building strategy for Week 3 and go into detail about the thought process behind crafting your winning lineup.
I started my lineup by stacking the Rams Vs the Bucs. I went with a Stafford-Kupp-Higbee combo. I came back with Godwin because AB was out last week, and I wanted a shootout with my Rams guys. When I woke up on Sunday and found out Dalvin cook was out, I immediately threw in Mattison against the Seahawks. Saquon Barkley was a guy I was going with no matter what – 10-day rest against ATL at $6,500 price was a no brainer to me. I noticed a significant price drop with Clyde Edwards Helaire and at that point I had just enough money to put either Mike Williams or Keenan Allen. I went with my gut and Big Mike did me right! I always throw my defense in last, and I had exactly $3,000 leftover for Arizona against Trevor Lawrence.
When did you realize you had a real shot at winning?
Well, funny part of my story is when Saquon got dinged up at about 2 PM EST I immediately deposited more money into my account for the afternoon games and said, “another unlucky week”. I realized I had a chance at winning around 5 o’clock when I texted my business partner saying, “Just FYI I might not come to work tomorrow because I could win life changing money”. The first half of the Rams game was amazing. Higbee had a TD, Kupp was playing great, and Stafford was slinging it. When I started to climb, I saw I was winning like $48,000 at one point and I was scrolling through to see everyone’s PMR and I had so much more time left than everybody because I had the Rams game and then I had Mattison in the afternoon as well. When Mattison got over 100 yards rushing and hit the bonus that was what put me in 1st place in almost every single contest. In the $20 dollar Milly Maker I came 3 points away from winning another $1 Million!!
When you realized you had won, what were your initial thoughts? Where were you and who did you celebrate with?
When I realized I took home 1st place and my account said “winning $1,335,000” I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t believe it, and it still hasn’t real sunk in. I was with my 2 friends and 2 brothers at my house while my parents were upstairs getting ready for a party. When we realized we were moments away from capping it off we immediately called them down to surprise them with the big news. They couldn’t believe it, and neither could I. After all the heartbreaks in DFS I have been through… I felt like this was bound to happen sooner rather than later but at the same time always seemed unrealistic until it wasn’t. I was shaking, even maybe shed a tear from how happy I was for my parents and everyone around me. I went to my friend’s house after and was given an amazing champagne shower. (There is a video out there of this)
So, you’re a millionaire now. Any purchases in the near future? Any plans?
The first thing I will be buying is 2 first class tickets for my parents to travel to Europe, which they have never had the opportunity to do. My family will get some good gifts for Christmas this year, especially my nieces! (sorry, everybody else)… other than that I will wait for the perfect investment opportunity to help grow this money 100X.
Any final shoutouts and/or words of advice for fellow Grinders striving to win big?
Shout out to all my bros back home, we made it! Don’t stop believing you can win big. I never thought it would be possible, but it happened, and it’s the absolute best feeling in the world. You can reach out to me for advice @LordMattyIceDFS on twitter! Thank you to everyone who showed love and support from day 1. You will see me again soon!
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Thanks to Matthew for taking the time to answer some questions, and congratulations again on the monster Week 3!