Breaking Down the DK 400K Micro Millions Main Event

Chris Gimino (ChrisGimino)

Created 8 years ago, Last Updated 7 years ago

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

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.