Breaking Down the DK 400K Micro Millions Main Event
It was a dominant performance.
Maxdalury captured the DraftKings 400K Micro Millions Main Event like a true boss. He finished in first place…and third…and fourth…and seventh…and 291 other cashes. Yes. 295 cashes in a single tournament by my count, out of 400 lineups. Now that is having a night.
The huge volume (400 lineups) and prize money captured my attention, and raised several questions. How profitable is this long term? Did anyone else try this and fail? How many lineups does the average player enter? Is mass entry alone enough to give you an edge, or is success truly based on the skill of the player regardless of how many entries?
I felt the need to examine how others chose to participate in this contest, and attempt to make sense of any advantage to be gained purely by playing so many rosters.
(Being just one tournament – I caution that this is for illustration purposes, and that more data is needed to truly examine “few entries” vs. “multi-multi entries” in a large field GPP.)
Let’s first take a look at how players entered this contest:
Total Entries: 22,900
Unique Participants: 8564
Largest # of Lineups: 400
Number of Entries | Number of Entrants | % of Entrants |
---|---|---|
1 Entry | 5166 | 60.3% |
2 Entries | 1410 | 16.46% |
3 Entries | 631 | 7.37% |
4 Entries | 339 | 3.96% |
5 Entries | 334 | 3.90% |
6-10 Entries | 425 | 4.96% |
11-25 Entries | 209 | 2.44% |
25-50 Entries | 33 | 0.39% |
50-100 Entries | 12 | 0.14% |
> 100 Entries | 5 | 0.06% |
What we can assume by looking at this information is that there aren’t many DFS players deploying a strategy of entering more than 10 lineups. Roughly 76.5% of people who decided to play this event fired 1 or 2 bullets. Only 5 people entered more than 100 lineups. The pool of players entering with huge volume is small.
Return on Investment
Next, we look at profitability. If entering a boat load of lineups only works when you hit the big score… then surely there will be winners and losers among the pool of players who chose to mass enter the contest. Here are some interesting notes on the outcomes:
- Maxdalury wasn’t the only person who entered 400 lineups. Another user entered 400 lineups, but lost about $5,500 on the investment.
- One player entered 271 Lineups at cost of $5,420, and only returned $30 back to his bankroll.
- Of the 10 players who played the most lineups, only 3 returned a profit.
- The total revenue of those who entered 100 or more lineups was over $260,000. Two of these players had multiple top finishes and constitute the majority of the winnings. 4 of these players showed a negative return. (note: two players entered exactly 100 lineups)
- Only 1 player who entered between 25 and 100 lineups profited more than $1,000. By contrast, 3 players within that same group lost more than $1000
- If you profited more than $100 – congratulations. You’re one of roughly 100 players that managed to accomplish this feat.
Key Assumptions
Looking at a single tournament isn’t the best way to evaluate the broader strategy of multi-entering. However, I am prepared to make a few assumptions we can evaluate in the future.
1. With a top heavy pay structure (very top heavy in this case: 25% to 1st) – you must be confident in your DFS skills when deciding to pay up for big volume. A big score is required just to recoup your investment, and there is no guarantee you can make that happen regardless of how many bullets you fire.
Translation: Individual skill is perhaps MORE important when investing heavily. If you don’t find the baseline premise for a few days in a row (for Maxdalury – it was a combo of SAC vs.ORL game – Oladipo/Gay/Frye/Cousins/Payton) then you could find yourself in the middle of a hefty downswing.
2. When this strategy works – it can work REALLY well. It is worth entertaining the idea if you have the bankroll to support variance.
3. Turning a profit in a large field GPP is difficult. The illustration of how relatively few players return serious profit was a reminder to play for the top prize. Nobody sets a lineup with intention to lose… but it should go without saying that construction needs to center around maximizing upside, and finishing in first place.
Editor’s Note: Check out this forum thread for more discussion on multi-entering GPPs.
Comments
RG Blog Program Manager, 2014 RG Party Beer Pong Champion
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This is an excellent post
Awesome work
Well done, I love this perspective.
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Great research.
Lead Moderator
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Nailed it! Awesome blog!
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Hopefully this blog will shut the conspiracy theorist up
exactly the blog post that was needed, good stuff Chris
he came in 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, 9th etc last night in the 100 k second chance. Be it less of a payout but damn what a friggin 2 days
Well done. Great write up
quality read
2014 DraftKings FFWC Finalist
Like Max. If I could be like Max. I wanna be, I wanna be like Ma-ax.
problem with this many lineups is a significant amount of them must be losers longterm…..looks like it worked out for him here but seems like a poor strategy over the long run
8% of the entrants have 43.6% of the entries. What a joke.
for over the two months, I play between 15-25 entries a night ($2) and find that’s the most successful way to win…most nights I either break even or win a little more than I put in…there are some nights I lose 20-30 but I have also won big numerous times and winning big will offset the losing nights by far !
Excellent article. And, yeah, we didn’t hear about the 400-entry player who lost. That does illustrate the risk a big play can have.
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Excellent article one that needed to be done
Great post. Do you know how much ‘maxdalury’ profited from this gpp?
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One of the best articles I’ve read here. Well done!
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2018 DraftKings FBWC Finalist
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This is a very small sample size and one very skewed because of the utter dominance by MaxDaLury.
2016 DraftKings FGWC Finalist
Nice Write up. Good stats to revisit for other big events.
good stuff! glad to see someone tackle this without just saying “multi-entrying” takes no skill blah blah blah
this is awesome.
i tried multi-entering a GPP tonight. Not working.
Thanks for doing this review!
Max isnt the first person and he wont be the last, McJester is still the King of Giant GPPs with hundreds of Entries. But too the guy who entered 237 times and only won 1 cash of $30. Id quit DFS for good. I won 10 entries Via $5 satellites that were going on everyday. 3/10 cashed .Im a 1 too 2 Lineup guy, I play for fun. Hope to win some cash. i think 400 entries is Absurd. A limit should be put in place. Max at 100 and maybe more on bigger tourn. Great Writeup Chris.