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Pretty disappointed with DraftKings payout structure in their tournaments lately. For example I just entered a $222 entry tournament tonight. It is so top-heavy it’s not even funny. If I place in the money I don’t even come close to doubling my $222 investment

That’s DFS for you. It’s never fair and it’s not DraftKings’ fault the way the schedules are made or who is on their roster.

what?

Too much Newport ciggies for Da Baum recently. :) Funny poster in his other threads with some astute observations too.

So dont play. You have every right to not enter a tournament…

And we also have every right to criticize the payout structure.

This is a two player market for very large GPPs. There frankly aren’t many options.

It’s not unreasonable to explain to one of the two sites that its lottery-style payout structures not only aren’t preferred by many of us but also simply hurt the DFS ecosystem.

This is why more people should play cash.
What do people expect GPPs to be exactly? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying what everyone is suggesting is a conspiracy theory or something, but what exactly is a GPP supposed to be?
What it was, wasn’t GPPs. What GPPs used to be (years ago) were dblups with insane potential, making dbl ups almost pointless, like taking a floor player when you could have someone with a floor and a ceiling. You could enter a cash card into a GPP and make the same money, but have potential for more. DK needed to change the direction of their GPPs, not only because GPPs weren’t even GPPs, but because they were killing other formats.

To me (on my poorly constructed soap box), this is simple meta changes in DFS. GPPs should never double your investment from a min-cash standpoint. For a really long time, the pricing was light and things weren’t hard. Then it was rake. Then it was structures. Are GPPs becoming unfeasible, or were they never supposed to be in the first place?

Again, to me, GPPs were never supposed to be designed to be profitable in the long run. For a long time it was, and as it slowly moved away from being too easy to make money from GPPs, people started to complain. GPPs are supposed to be a challenge to make profit, cash is supposed to be comparatively simple. If people want simple, play way more cash.

I strongly believe DK is just moving the structure to a more sensible GPP definition. Instead of fighting the meta, people should be more willing to adapt and change they way they approach DFS, and more importantly, how they deploy their bankroll.

I posted about this point in an earlier thread. Of course we are not going to hit GPP winning ceiling with our line-up’s every week. But most players want to be rightly rewarded for when they hit that nuts line-up and finish in the top 10/20 beating 99% of the field. The lop-sided payout structure means one will be lucky to break even with the top 10 finish most times. So what is the point of playing DFS GPP’s ? We might as well make it lottery winner take all contests and be honest with it.

None of these platforms are moving the structure to a more sensible GPP definition, actually to hide the insane rake they have gone the path of 100k to 1st – and 500 to 10th sort of silly payout structures. Sensible GPP structures pays 10% to 1st place and then proportionally rewards those that finish Top 5/10/20 beating 99% of the field with an elite score. The platforms churn out a lot of customers and in the long run this will accelerate that as it makes us all losers in the long run. Cash game grinding is not for all and most cash games with insane rake and information overload have reached an equilibrium making them unwinnable.

If I recall correctly most ads for DFS platforms says play in our platform, you do not need to be 1st all the time. Top 10 finishers can be duly rewarded too. It is better than seasonal game, it is better than sports betting etc… Then do as it says on the tin.

If anyone is interested on how contest payout structures should be done properly, read this study in the link.

‘We initiate the study of these challenges by examining one concrete problem in particular:
how to algorithmically generate contest payout structures that are 1) economically motivating
and appealing to contestants and 2) reasonably structured and succinctly representable’

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.04203.pdf

well said.

I agree completely. However, what I was referencing, and more directed towards the original post’s tail end, is the min-cash payout. I wasn’t referencing the top end at all, which I agree is an issue. More importantly, I was touching on the concept that we should make the min-cash a double up scenario.

Thanks for sharing that study. Looking forward to digging into it after I get some sleep.

I built this app to try to understand how payout structures affect variance: https://gppsim.herokuapp.com

Haven’t put any recent structures into it, and it’s slow (especially to load, but also to run) because I’m using the Heroku free tier, but it should work.

Very interesting read. I can see why you are blogger of the month. TBH I have never tried cash games but they do seem to have the best odds kinda like Blackjack. It seems more like a patience game that in the long run could pan out better than gpp’s. At the same time with the more and more top heavy contests they have to be upsetting the max entry people.

It is fine if you prefer cash games and want to see GPPs remain with top heavy payouts, but why should a GPP not double your investment?? It is still quite difficult to cash in a GPP (20%) as opposed to a H2H or double up (45-50%) so I’m confused why a min cash shouldn’t double your investment? By taking some money off the outrageous 1st play prizes and cascading that down throughout the pay structure and providing 2x min cashes you can keep a much larger % of the player base continuing to churn their bankrolls and filling GPPs thus making players happy and ensuring DK doesn’t run out of players to rake

Because sirrobert seems to have a strong bias toward double ups and cash games where you have to grind out a slow profit, and against GPPs where you have the potential to quickly make a large profit?
Personally I prefer GPPs and have no interest whatsoever in cash games, but to each his own.

Ya I really dont understand the $222’s and stuff having such top heavy payout structures. I get the appeal of an $8 paying 25-33% to first because that attracts recs, but the $222 being like a 300k with 100k to first just seems silly for a tournament that’s mostly going to be regs anyways.

Why was my post deleted?

Just curious and made a simple double up cash mlb lineup. The odds seem to be insanely on us grinders. Close to 50% cashes? Hmm

You sure you even hit the ‘Leave a Reply’ button? I see no deleted posts in this thread.

I must not have. Thanks!

Agreed. The payouts are way the f&%k too top heavy. First should never be more than 20% of the total pool, and in my opinion it should almost always be 10%. As someone previously, mentioned, this way you don’t have to luck into first to have a nice profit…you can still get 4th and have a nice payday. The top heavy payout gives more of the prize pool to just one person, rather than spreading it out so that more people are coming back to play in the future with their winnings. Makes no sense…I don’t even play when first is over 20% unless I’m just in the mood to light money on fire.

This has been brought up multiple times, but it continues to get worse and I’m pretty sure that the sites don’t care / have different priorities.