The GPP Scene - Attacking a Large Field Tournament
Hello Grinders, and welcome back to the GPP Scene! In this article series, I usually break down my exploits as I attempt to tame the $10 Line Drive GPP on FanDuel. However, I decided to put that on hold for a week here. On my end, sometimes that article gets a little stale. I know it is an entertaining read, but writing that article becomes a bit tedious when I do the same thing every week. As a result, I decided to change it up this week. Hopefully this piece will be just as informative as the others. If not, we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming next week.
Writer’s Note: Before I begin, I feel like it’s important to mention that I spent a significant amount of time on this piece in an attempt to find the “right” balance. At first, I felt like it was much too abrasive, and it certainly was. After some editing, I felt like I lost the main messages that I wanted to convey. Then I was about ready to scrap the idea all together as I despise confrontation and I couldn’t get comfortable with the content of the piece. But, I really didn’t want to do that. I feel like there is some valuable information in here. There are also parts that will likely strike a nerve with some. It is also difficult to write about your own gameplay without some type of bias, but I have attempted to remove that as much as possible, and of course our wonderful team of editors will make sure that I’m not being an idiot here.
As you may or may not know, there was a JUMBO Perfect Game tournament on DraftKings on Friday night. This tournament is one of my favorites, because it boasts a very large prize pool but doesn’t have 20,000 to 100,000+ entries like some of the very large tournaments. It’s a perfect tournament structure for me, especially since I think the roughly 4,000 entry size is the perfect size to make stacking and non-stacking viable winning strategies.
I ended up with 41 entries in this contest. This was just over 1% of the total entries in the tournament, which paid out $100,000 to the first place winner. As I like to stack on DraftKings, I opted for the following break down with my 41 entries:
15 Yankees stacks vs. Colby Lewis
5 White Sox stacks vs. Phil Hughes
5 Cubs stacks vs. Josh Collmenter
4 Nationals stacks vs. Sean O’Sullivan
4 Angels stacks vs. Rick Porcello
3 Rays stacks vs. Scott Kazmir
3 Cardinals stacks vs. Chris Young
2 Dodgers stacks vs. Andrew Cashner
As you can see from the above roster construction, I was a fan of the Yankees. Colby Lewis struggles against left-handed bats, and the Yankees threw 8 of them into their lineup on this day. This was a popular topic of discussion on the Sirius XM RotoGrinders show on this night, where I called the Yankees my clear top stack of the evening. That meshed with my actual roster construction in this tournament. From there, I didn’t really have a favorite second stack. I tried to pick on middling pitchers (Phil Hughes, Rick Porcello, Chris Young), good pitchers who have been struggling (Scott Kazmir, Andrew Cashner), or pitchers that are just plain bad (Sean O’Sullivan, Josh Collmenter).
I mixed and matched most of my entries with a core of five pitchers: Max Scherzer, Gerrit Cole, Chris Archer, Jon Lester, and Ubaldo Jimenez. I sprinkled in a few Noah Syndergaard’s and Michael Pineda’s where it worked salary-wise, but most of my entries were concentrated around those five hurlers. There was my plan of attack for the night, and I felt comfortable with it on roster lock.
It was time to watch the games play out, and oh did they play out…. forever.
The Yankees popped nine runs on the board, but three of them were courtesy of a pinch-hit home run by Chris Young. The Bronx Bomber stacks were generally still good enough to cash where the pitchers were solid, but the Yankees didn’t do enough to place a team near the top. In fact, I really only had one team with a legitimate chance. It was an Angels stack that included both Max Scherzer and Gerrit Cole as pitchers. In order to fit those two hurlers onto an Angels stack, I had to forgo using Mike Trout on this team. This was the only one of my four Angels stacks that did not have the young superstar. Everything went well in the middle of the game, as the Angels got home runs from Chris Iannetta, Erick Aybar, and Albert Pujols. All three were on the aforementioned squad. Throw in the fact that Scherzer and Cole had the two top pitching scores on the night, and I had a legitimate sweat on my hands.
In a moment that still seems surreal, I led the tournament from about 9:15 PM EST to 2:00 AM EST the next morning. Having dodged several at-bats that could have bumped me from first place, the only thing between my Angels stack and $100,000 was the final out of the Cubs/Diamondbacks game in Arizona. A.J. Pollock was at the plate with an 0-2 count. He doubled. Paul Goldschmidt followed with a mammoth home run to tie the game and send it into the 11th inning, as both teams had scored two runs in the 10th. They played on. I was still in the lead, somehow. When both Pollock and Goldschmidt reached base two innings later, I dropped to fourth place, where I finished the tournament.
Let me be clear about this: A $30,000 payday from the tournament is a very solid result. However, there is nothing in DFS that is more stressful than trying to hold a lead in a big tournament. The wait is interminable, let alone when the final game of the night goes into 13 innings. After dodging several at-bats and five hours of play without being passed, the fact that I was one strike away from $100,000 is a tough pill to swallow. I don’t care who you are in DFS, whether you are a big time bankroll player or a small time player — absolutely 100% of the DFS population would take that beat as a punch to the gut. Yes, you get over it after 24-48 hours, and you realize that the final result was a nice boost to your bankroll. That doesn’t make the initial fall from first place any easier to handle. If you want additional accounts of this, just ask Al Zeidenfeld or Andrew Wiggins.
Now, that’s enough about me. In the grand scheme of things, here is what is most important:
1) The first place finisher in this tournament was a single-entry player.
2) The second place finisher in this tournament was a single-entry player.
3) The first place finisher in this tournament was a non-stack.
4) The second place finisher in this tournament was a non-stack.
Here’s what those results say to me:
A) Both stacking and non-stacking can be used to win big tournaments.
B) Both single-entry and multi-entry players can win big tournaments.
There is a lot of hand-wringing in DFS about multi-entry, and I really don’t get it. If you want to have a shot at big prizes, there has to be mass multi-entry allowed. There is also a lot of hand-wringing about stacking, and I really don’t get that either. The sites have done a great job at trying to find a balance here, and we should recognize just how much growth DFS has had over the past few years. The sky is not falling. At the end of the day, everyone that plays this game is concerned about their own pocketbook. Non-stackers will want to get rid of stacking. Stackers will obviously take the opposite stance. Single-entry players will want to eliminate multi-entry. Multi-entry players will want to keep it. Believe it or not, there can be more than one way to skin a cat. There is never going to be a time where everyone agrees on these issues.
I realize that this article may sound somewhat divisive, but what I am really asking for is people to come together. Enjoy the game that we all play. There are many bright days ahead. Frankly, it’s embarrassing to see some of the things that get discussed on Twitter or the forums a lot of the time. As much as you may not want to realize it, the sites have to be doing something right. There is a reason that DFS commercials are all over television and radio, and we are seeing massive growth as a result. If you think multi-entry is ruining daily fantasy sports, the results of this tournament should lend some credence as to why might want to think twice about that stance.
So here’s my challenge to everyone: the next time you feel like jumping on someone for their game selection, strategy, or something trivial, think twice about it. We’re all here for the same reason. This tournament showed that there are many different strategies that can be used. Stackers had a legitimate chance to win, and two non-stacks ended up finishing at the top. The two top finishers were also single entry players. That sounds like a nice balance to me.
A common question that gets asked by players who are on the fence is whether or not to stack in a large field tournament. Obviously, it’s an approach that I take. However, the results of this tournament should make you feel comfortable that you can win without taking that approach. Use whatever method is comfortable for you. If that is making a solid lineup without stacking, as JMToWin likes to do, go for it! If that is making a stack lineup as I like to do, go for it! As I wrote above, there is more than one way to skin a cat!
Best of luck to all of you in your future contests, and thanks for sticking with this article despite the length!