When you glance over the field of any large GPP you may see a trend. Multiple rosters from the same user. Most GPP’s have an unlimited entry structure, allowing you to spend as much as you please to try to grab the top prize. In fact, one could argue that this structure is what keeps the large prize pools alive, because of a large amount of entries by the high end players. The same guys you see at the top of the King of the Beach and the Fanduel Fantasy Football Championship. It really doesn’t matter what your average buy in is, because when a million dollars is on the line, you want as many chances to win as possible. Now, you could spend large amounts of your bankroll and hope that something cashes to make up for the amount that you’ve spent. You could get on the referral train and hope that your friends actually stick to their guns and play more than one day. You could spend all the points you’ve collected on free entries but hey let’s face it, you want the DraftKings t-shirt don’t you? Or……… Or…….. you could have a little more control over your entries and the amount of money spent by running your rosters out in the satellites and super satellites as often as you can.
As I am writing this article there looks to be upwards of a thousand games to play where the winner, or top 20-30 percent, receive a ticket for entry to a big tournament. Some of these games are only a quarter to enter and if you have a few bucks laying around, it’s a good way to get your week started off right. Now, the caveat here is that a lot of these ticket qualifiers run all week for different sports, so you need to really hit the daily grind right in order to score tickets for such a small cost. Win at NBA all week in these satellites and you may have a ton of cheap tickets for NFL on Sunday. You want to treat these like you would a GPP, high upside, high variance players with mid to low ownership on your roster because you’ll need some big numbers to win those tickets. But it is important to understand the structure around the satellite and also what satellite you are entering and how they pay out. There are tons of qualifiers for example a $5 entry where the top 30% win a $27 ticket into the Sunday Million. A lineup for this would be best to have low variance plays that are somewhere in between a GPP and 50/50 double up team.
Winning Strategies
The Train – I know what you’re thinking guys so get your head out of the gutter and pay attention. Take your GPP roster and enter the SAME roster more than once in a satellite. If the top 150 entries take home a ticket, you could grab yourself 10 tickets for as low as $2.50. Take a look at the entry limit, but most satellites allow up to 80 entries. When you hit with a strategy like this, you really hit and allow yourself to grow your bankroll considerably if one of these tickets turns into a nice cash.
The Doppelganger – This one is easy, just take your Milly Maker, NFL Sunday Million, or any other big payout GPP roster and throw it in some small dollar satellites. Be mindful of your bankroll as always, but I always leave money on the table for satellites.
The Long Con – This is a common strategy I use for the biggest tournaments of the year. I’m talking about your Millionaire Maker Series, King of the Beach, Fantasy Aces Football Championships and so on. We know when these tournaments are going down so you should plan accordingly. Search the game lobbies for satellites and get your entries in early. I spend all week chasing down Milly Maker tickets in NHL and NBA games because I’d rather spend $100 bucks grabbing $540 dollars worth of entries into the Milly than $540 dollars of my own. Seems pretty obvious doesn’t it. This requires that you grind the contest lobbies at DraftKings and Fanduel. Look for tournaments that are not going to fill and will offer some overlay for you. This is just free value in your pocket and these situations arise on a daily basis on the big sites.
Just remember to play to your strengths. Whatever sport you dominate at, you should leverage your knowledge of the game to win your entries into the games you don’t dominate at. Or just leverage your knowledge of your best sport to set yourself up with as many chances as possible to grab the ever higher payouts that these sites are offering. This is the ultimate skill based game for a reason, so use that skill to succeed.
