Get Stacked

Winning Top-Heavy DFS Contests Requires Creative & Heavy Lineup Stacking

Introduction

Stacking, or playing two or more players from the same game in your lineups, is fundamental to a successful DFS strategy. This is especially true for Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP), or “top-heavy”, contests that pay out only a small portion of the top scoring entries. The basic logic behind stacking is that it increases correlation among players in your lineup, maximizing the potential ceiling for scored points. For example, if the quarterback in your lineup throws for 400yds/5TDs, there’s a high likelihood that one of his WRs had a great game as well. You’re looking to capitalize on this correlated production to win big in top-heavy contests.

If you’re an experienced DFS player, you probably already understand the value of lineup stacking. But you may not realize just how heavily daily fantasy pros are relying on stacking. This blog post dives into some of our latest DraftKings research where we analyze top-heavy contests to investigate stacking strategies of the top contest winners, illustrating the size, number, and variety of stacks being used. Then, an overview of stacking functionality in the Daily Fantasy Optimizer tool is provided, showing how you can mix and match creative stacking strategies to maximize your chances of success in top-heavy DFS contests.

Stacking Analysis of Past Contests

An analysis was done to study stacking strategy used by top contestants on DraftKings. Contest data was gathered from week 10-16 in the 2020 season for the top-heavy, $0.50 buy-in contest for the all-day Sunday game slate. These contests were 150 max. multi-entry and typically had 300k entries total and 10-13 games in the slate. The top 25 scoring lineups from each contest, representing profits of 300-30000X and 175 lineups total, were collected and the game stacks were determined for each.

A breakdown of the total number of stacks and total number of stacked players per lineup found in the top 175 entries is shown below. The charts show that these top contestants are stacking their lineups heavily: a large majority of the lineups have two or more individual game stacks and five or more players stacked. Furthermore – only one lineup out of the collection of 175 (0.6%) top-performing lineups had no stacks.

The total number of stacks and stacked players per lineup from top entries in top-heavy contests.

A closer look at stacking strategy for one of the contests (week 13) is shown below, displaying both the number of stacks and stacked players in each of the top 25 entries. Every lineup used a QB Tier (or primary) stack with 2-4 players, and nearly all of the lineups had two or more individual stacks.

The number of stacks and stacked players in the top 25 scoring lineups from a 2020 top-heavy contest.

Finally, the most common stacks were identified, shown in the table below along with the number of occurrences found in the collection of 175 top entries. The most common stack was QB/WR/OppWR, which appeared in 43, or about 25%, of the lineups (QB/2WR/OppWR also appeared 13 times). More standard stacks like QB/WR and RB/DST appeared significantly less but were still relatively common, showing up in 17 and 20 lineups, respectively.

Bottom Line

If you want to win money in large, top-heavy contests, you need to be stacking heavily to increase the correlation and upside of your lineups. Most top lineups had 2+ game stacks with over half of their players stacked/correlated while almost none (0.6%) neglected stacking altogether. Moreover, the top contestants are thinking outside the box with their stacking strategy – going beyond simply standard QB/WR or QB/TE stacks to include a variety of multi-player and multi-game stacks.

The Daily Fantasy Optimizer provides a variety of stacking options. For beginners, you can select standard stacks (e.g., QB/WR) with a single click. But there are also a number of advanced options including filters on teams from which stacks will be drawn and cross-team stacking. If you aren't familiar with stacking using the Daily Fantasy Optimizer, you can start with standard stack selections and then edit them afterward to learn how to create more complex combinations. Once your lineups are generated, simply verify that stacks are appearing in your lineups with the desired exposure percentages, and you’re ready to go!