What it Really Takes to Win an NBA GPP
“What target score should I be aiming for?”
This is a question that you hear all the time from daily fantasy players trying to wrap their brains around what kind of value they should be looking for in the players they roster. In NBA daily fantasy, a lot of people refer to benchmarks like “5x Salary” when looking for value (in fact, we use that number in our Daily Matchup Charts tool), but is that really the number we should be targeting?
Obviously the answer to this question varies from slate to slate, but there are a number of other questions that can also be answered by looking at what scores have been needed historically to cash and/or win NBA tournaments. Luckily for me, we have a pretty large sample of NBA contests that we’ve gathered for the RotoGrinders rankings leaderboard to help answer some of these questions.
With that said, let’s get right into it! Here are a few examples of common questions that I hope this article will answer:
• What is a good target score for cashing or winning GPPs?
• When is it safe for me to move up in stakes?
• How does buy in amount or size of the tournament effect typical cash/win rates?
Most of these questions have pretty universally accepted answers. A good target score is 5x salary on FanDuel. It’s safe to move up in stakes when your daily play would be <10% of your bankroll. The lower the buy in or larger the contest, the harder it is to cash and win. While at first glance a lot of these seem obvious, there are a few instances where the numbers might surprise you.
Note: We only collect tournaments that have both a $10k+ prize pool and 100+ entrants, so keep that in mind when looking at the data presented in this article.
Cashing a GPP
The payout structure of GPPs can vary wildly from one contest to another, but for the purposes of this article, we are going to consider finishing in the top 20% as cashing.
Let’s start off by looking at the scores you’ve needed to finish in the top 20% of a GPP on DraftKings this year.
You might notice that we don’t have results for every buy in/GPP size combo. This is because there obviously aren’t any $2 tournaments with less than 200 people and a $10k prize pool. That said, if you find one, please send me the link!
With that out of the way, let’s dig right into some of the more interesting trends we can discern from this chart.
The first thing I noticed was the rather large dip at the 500-999 entry bucket for the $27 price point. As you probably know, the Crossover is one of DraftKings’s flagship tournaments, often featuring massive prize pools and 10,000 or more entries. What you may not realize, is that when that tournament gets close to filling, they often post another, smaller Crossover. Most gamers overlook this tournament because they’re enamored with chasing the massive first place prize of the main event, but if you’re looking to maximize your ROI, these smaller versions might just be what you’re looking for.
Another thing that stood out to me was the fact that the cashing score at the $3 level actually drops when you make the jump to 5,000 or more entrants. It’s generally accepted that more entrants means higher scores, but maybe there is more to it than that (That, folks, is called foreshadowing!).
The last thing that caught my eye was how similar the scores were between the $12 and $300 buy in levels when the contest was between 1,000 and 5,000 entries. With such a huge gap in entry fee, I would have expected to see much better players, and therefore higher scores.
Now let’s take a look at the same chart using FanDuel tournaments:
One of the questions we asked earlier was when we should feel comfortable moving up in stakes. This is a question that a lot of low to mid-level Grinders struggle with quite often, and perhaps this table can help you make that call.
The most interesting data point in that regard is the fact that the average cashing score for tournaments between 1,000 and 5,000 entrants is exactly the same at the $5 level as it is at the $25 level. There are many many factors that go into when you should move up in stakes, but if you’re having success at the $5 level, it would be a reasonable assumption that you would do well in the $25 games as well. Of course, always be sure to play within your bankroll.
And here is what I find to be the most interesting chart in this section:
First off, if you don’t pay close attention, you might be surprised to see the FanDuel scores are higher than DraftKings, given the differences in the scoring systems. DK gives out bonuses for double/triple doubles, three pointers, etc. so you might expect the scores to be higher. But on FD you actually need to roster 9 players, while you’re only required to select 8 on DraftKings. Obviously that’s a pretty big difference.
The craziest thing about this chart is that (generally) the more people in a tournament, the EASIER it is to cash. This goes against everything we ever learned as a daily fantasy player. We know that as the size increases the score you need to win increases, but that doesn’t seem to be the case if you’re just hoping to cash.
My theory here would be that as the contest gets larger, people tend to become super contrarian, which leads to a lot of dead lineups. While one of those contrarian teams is certain to go off, there are plenty more that become duds, and therefore drop the overall average score.
Cashing is great and all, but how do I WIN?
It’s always nice to cash in a GPP, but the real money is all the way up at the top of the leaderboard. So let’s take a look at some of the scores you’ve needed to take down the top spot so far this season.
As we expected, the larger a contest is, the higher the winning score is going to be. The huge contests tend to see a lot of unusual lineups, and it becomes more likely that one of them will explode for a massive score.
The interesting thing for me in this chart is the large jump on FanDuel from the 1,000-5,000 entry group to the 5,000+ plus group. The growth is generally pretty steady between every other category, but it jumps up almost 18 points (about 5.1%) between those two groups.
My first guess was that there is probably a wide gap between the contests in those two buckets. There aren’t very many contests around 5,000 entries, as they tend to jump all the way up to 10, 15, or 20k+ entries pretty quickly. That large gap would skew the data a bit.
But if that were the sole reason, then we would expect to see that same pattern occur for DraftKings, wouldn’t we? I’m not 100% sure what the reason is, but perhaps that extra player FD makes you roster is making the difference. One extra player means one more chance to have someone put up a monster score, driving the winning score way up.
Now, let’s dig a little deeper into this data set by looking at the different buy in levels for each site.
For the lower levels, everything seems to go as we’d expect. Higher buy in = lower score needed to win. That is, until we reach that magical $100 level. Generally, casual players can’t afford to play at an entry fee that high, but I imagine there is something psychological about that $100 number that gives pause to the semi-hardcore gamers as well.
Based on the data, once you hit that $100 buy in amount, it seems that the opponents you’re going up against increase in skill, which causes the score needed to win to rise. There is a slight spike at $25, but that’s likely because that bracket includes the Slam, which tends to be one of the largest contests on the site. And, as we’ve already learned, the larger the contest, the higher the score you’ll need to win.
One other thing worth noting here is the dip at $50. It’s by far the lowest amount on the graph, and you combine that with the size/buy in chart from earlier, it seems that a $50 entry fee with less than 1,000 people might be the sweet spot.
Now let’s take a look at DraftKings:
The trend seems to be pretty similar on DraftKings, with a minor difference or two.
The first is the rather large dip (3.3%) between $1 and $3 levels. I would imagine that this is because people just throw all kinds of crazy lineups in a tournament if it only costs a buck. This would result in some wildly varying scores, and likely some outliers that send the top score through the roof. Plus, given the criteria of contests that we’re tracking, a $1 contest has to have a minimum of 10,000 entries, and we already know what kind if effect that has.
The other interesting difference here is that while FanDuel spiked at $25, DraftKings actually dips at that price point. This is extremely interesting to me, because the Crossover is usually a very large contest, so I’d expect the scores to be pretty high. Are there enough “Mini Crossovers” to cause the average to drop this much?
Winning, Cashing, and Everything In-Between
So now we know what it takes to cash, and what we should aim for to take down a big GPP, but what about the steps in between? Let’s take a look at the top 20/10/5% scores for each site:
So there you have it. Now if someone asks you, “What target score should I be aiming for?” you can answer them accurately!
“Well, on DraftKings you want 5.48 points per dollar to cash, while on FanDuel you only need 4.82 points per dollar!”
And when they give you a strange look, just point them to this article. Or don’t, and make them think you’re some kind of super genius. Either way, you’re welcome.
What Have We Learned?
We’ve covered quite a few topics today, but I always find it helpful to summarize everything in one nice, tidy list. It might be because I like to be organized, but it’s more likely because I’m lazy and I want to have a quick reference for when I’m looking for answers later.
• As the buy in for a contest increases, the score needed to win generally decreases.
• As the size of a contest increases, the winning score increases.
• As the size of a contest increases, the score needed to cash actually decreases.
• Our general “target value” for GPPs should be 5.48 pts/$ on DK and 4.82 pts/$ on FD.
• The “Sweet Spot” on FanDuel seems to be $50 contests with less than 1,000 people, while the magic number on DraftKings lies at the $27 level.
If you’ve made it this far into the article, then congratulations, you have a far greater attention span than I do. But hopefully for the time it took to read this, you’ve learned a thing or two that will help you in your game selection (or just general NBA DFS play) moving forward.
Did you notice any other interesting trends in any of these charts? Or maybe you disagree with one of the conclusions that I drew from the data? Let me know in the comments!
Until then, here’s hoping that you keep on Cruzin’ To Victory.