DraftKings Week 6 High Stakes Ownership Report
Tags: Sports Analytics, NFL, Fantasy Sports, Fantasy Football, Sports Betting

Looking at the sharpest plays to learn from week 6

In daily fantasy sports, ownership is a key consideration in tournament lineup building. Reviewing lineup construction and player ownership at the highest stakes reveals valuable information regarding trends that we can take advantage of in the future.

Typically, high stakes players focus on the optimal lineup, or, simply put, the team they believe projects for the most points. With this in mind, we can infer that the popular players in high stakes contests likely had the strongest overall value when measuring cost against projected fantasy points.

In this article series, we will analyze ownership numbers from a low stakes, large field DFS contest (the $9 NFL Slant), and compare them to the ownership in a high stakes contest (the $3,000 Luxury Box). As many would expect, a contest with a $3,000 entry fee tends to have significantly sharper players, so it’s important to review high stakes ownership to see where the pros invested in a given week.

$3,000 Luxury Box Ownership Leverage Leaders

Everyone, but especially sharp players, continues to short the league-worst New York Jets as both the Miami defense and starting Dolphins RB Myles Gaskin were owned on 1/3 or more of high stakes teams. Even with a much-improved MIA secondary and Gaskin projected to earn goal line duties for the second week in a row, these plays were more of an indictment of the Jets rather than praise for Miami.

Two other teams offered similar Vegas implied team totals to the Jets in week 6, Philadelphia and Denver. However, neither of those teams’ opponents registered comparable ownership to the Dolphins, with the Ravens D/ST only at 1.6% ownership and the Patriots D/ST at 1.9%. While both the Ravens and Patriots defenses were more expensive than the Dolphins, such a massive gap in ownership suggests sharp players are very low on New York.

High stakes players were also rather low on Atlanta, as both Vikings RB Alexander Mattison and the MIN D/ST registered significant ownership. Atlanta played by far their best game of the season, leading to both of those plays killing sharp lineups across the board. On the other side of that game, we see Julio Jones makes this week’s list at 14.1% ownership in the Luxury Box. In retrospect, Julio was clearly a sharp play, as the combination of his relatively low salary, his overall talent level, and his full recovery from a nagging hamstring injury saw him earn a full compliment of targets as the WR1 in this Falcons offense, something we hadn’t seen much from him this season.

Every week, we see high stakes players taking advantage of injury news more than lower stakes players. This week was no different. Both Trey Burton and Phillip Lindsey were set up for more usage than normal thanks to injuries to teammates at their respective positions. While the subsequent returns of Mo Alie-Cox and Melvin Gordon could push Burton and Lindsey back down the fantasy totem-pole, these situations arise every week, and it’s crucial that DFS players take advantage.

$9 NFL Slant Ownership Leverage Leaders

In week 5, Anthony Firkser saw 5 targets from the TE spot, a clear red flag for those looking to roster Jonnu Smith. With Mycole Pruitt out again in week 6, Firkser continued his surprisingly high usage in the Titans pass game, leading the team with 9 total targets. While virtually nobody played Firkser (0% Luxury Box Ownership), high stakes players did lay off Jonnu Smith more so than low stakes players, likely to do Firkser-related concerns as to how Jonnu would be used in the passing game.

Both Robby Anderson and Brandin Cooks were coming off strong games, leading to increased ownership in week 6. Just like previous weeks, we see high stakes players fading receivers coming off great games, although they were somewhat burned by Cooks given his 21.8-point performance.

Kareem Hunt logging just 4.1% ownership in the Luxury Box is certainly surprising, but it also reflects the growing sharp sentiment that Cleveland isn’t as good as initially thought. The Steelers have the 2nd-best defense in terms of yards allowed, and we already saw this Browns’ offense struggle mightily against another great defense, the Baltimore Ravens. Hunt is a good player with a great fantasy opportunity, but that doesn’t matter if Cleveland can’t move the ball.

Individual Lineup Breakdown

In this segment, we will take a look at some of the specific lineups that notable high stakes players entered in the week 6 Luxury Box. Studying top players is one of the best way to improve in DFS, as reverse-engineering their process can assist our own in the future.

empiremaker2

Total entries: 3 ($9,000)

ROI: -100%

Empiremaker2 is widely regarded as the top cash game player in the world. For those unaware, cash games (50/50s, double-ups, head-to-heads) revolve around beating roughly 50% of the field, and playing the highest possible projected lineup to maximize your lineups median outcome.

While he isn’t the world’s top tournament player, his lineups almost always reflect the sharpest optimal teams possible, given his cash game background.

In his three Luxury Box Entries, EM2 went all-in on Alexander Mattison, Adam Thielen, Mike Davis and Myles Gaskin. Usually, when we see sharp players have 100% exposure to someone, that guy is almost always a RB, as their touches are more predictable.

It’s always advisable to pair a WR or TE with your lineup’s QB in tournaments, but EM2 failed to do so in 2/3 lineups.

Why might this be? Like stated previously, empiremaker2 has traditionally dominated a game type where maximizing projected points is crucial, but maximizing player correlations isn’t. While the world’s top tournament players mainly focus on player correlations to increase the ceiling of their lineups, EM2 simply plays the best plays, paying little mind to player correlations. While this strategy has benefitted empiremaker2 greatly over the years, the -100% ROI shows it didn’t work out in week 6.

CSURAM88 aka Peter Jennings

Total Entries: 2 ($6,000)

ROI: 3,333%

FantasyLabs cofounder and legendary tournament player CSURAM88 took down the week 6 Luxury Box for $200,000, with his Kirk Cousins led lineup finishing 1st out of 370 entrants.

Unlike EM2, we see CSURAM88 stack multiple pass catching teammates with his lineup’s QB, while also ‘running it back’ with at least one player on the opposing team. CSURAM88 took this to the extreme with his winning team, stacking three teammates with Kirk Cousins and running it back with Julio Jones.

With only David Montgomery on both teams, CSU left himself plenty of margin for error in case one of the teams/games he stacked failed to put up points. In the end, it worked out beautifully, as his Brady team scored only 82.74 points, good for 356/370, while his Vikings team won the contest with a 223.32 score.