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DraftKings Billion Dollar Contest - Looking back at 2016's Perfect NFL Lineups
The first daily fantasy sports billionaire? Could it happen Week 1 of the NFL season? It’s unlikely to happen(like crazy, lottery ticket style unlikely) but DraftKings is giving someone the shot with it’s NFL Week 1 Billionaire Maker Free Roll.
If you draft the perfect lineup, they best possible combination of players then you’re on your way to rarified rich air.
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DraftKings is heavily insured (4 different companies taking a piece of that action, and likely the big winners in this whole thing). But to quote Lloyd Christmas, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance”.
In order to prep for the Billy-Maker, I went back and looked at 15 weeks of perfect lineups from DraftKings’ main slates last season. Why fifteen weeks? Well week 16 was the weird Christmas weekend and I kind of ran out of steam after that.
Let’s take a look at 15 weeks of truly optimal DraftKings’ NFL lineups and see some of the takeaways.
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7
WEEK 8
WEEK 9
WEEK 10
WEEK 11
WEEK 12
WEEK 13
WEEK 14
WEEK 15
The things that immediately jumped out to me (and would love to know the things I missed, leave a comment):
- Every week but one included a QB/ WR or QB/ TE stack. Week 2 saw the rare QB/WR/TE stack with Newton, Benjamin/ Olsen. Colin Kaepernick was the only "naked" QB in Week 12.
- 10 of the 15 weeks had less than $1500 leftover in salary. This strikes me as lineups with the maximum points will often (but not always) trend toward full utilization of the salary cap.
- Week 9 left major money on the table with topping out at $41,800. That's $8,200 leftover. If you had the balls to make that lineup, then kudos.
- T.Y. Hilton and Golden Tate appeared the most of any WR at 3 times each.
- David Johnson and Ezekiel Elliott were the most of any RB at 3 times each. DJ's came a crazy three weeks in a row.
- Trevor Siemian made it twice!
- The Flex position was pretty much split between RBs (7 times) and Pass catchers (8 times).
What other things did I miss? Leave them in the comments below.
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thanks for the info,. some of these scores are crazy. you really have to think outside the box for this.
Week 11 had rare QB/RB/WR stack of WAS players
Luck 2x
These aren’t cash game lineups or anything, but it seems to me that the really off-the-wall tournament type lineups only win on those weeks where one of the top-priced players has a career game and puts up 50 points. Basically if you’re going to punt a position with someone like Dontrelle Inman to pay up for Julio Jones, even getting a great performance out of your punt isn’t going to work if Julio only gives you an average Julio performance. Effectively, if Julio has one of those 10 catches for 300 yards and multiple TDs type weeks, he’s pretty much guaranteed to be in the perfect lineup, but it’s nearly impossible to build a perfect lineup around him if he doesn’t do that.
My suspicion is that your chance of hitting the perfect lineup is probably better with second and third tier players than with a top-tier player and the accompanying punt, simply because you’re not depending on the top guy AND the punt BOTH having career games.
The odds of winning are ridiculous enough, but even if you win, you’re obviously not going to see a billion dollars from Draftkings. They’re paying it out over 51 years, and it’s not an even split.. it’s 250 million for the first 50 years, and then 750 million in year 51, if you’re still alive, or they’re still in business.
Conveniently, they’ll offer $300 million in a lump sum, and nobody but the most spiteful (and young) person is going to stick it to Draftkings and make them pay out 5 mill a year, and hope you don’t get to the billion. This challenge could more accurately be described as the $150 million (after taxes) challenge.
The $300 million lump sum is a straight up better payout, anyway. Just invest in index funds and you’ll be a billionaire several times over before 50 years is up.
Invest? See… that’s the problem. You’ve bought into the corporate game of investing. $150 Million after taxes… What more do you need to invest? YOU WON! GAME OVER! You have won huge in the game of Life. Take that money and LIVE. How much money do you people need?
Week 1 you had to stack 2 NO WR without their QB
DraftKings isn’t paying this out either way. Companies buy insurance for props like these. They pay a premium in case it hits. The insurance company who underwrote the policy would pay if someone wins it.