2020 GPP Analysis – Part I

The allure of the Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) contests is the hope that with a small investment, a fantasy owner will have the opportunity to win a huge prize worth many multiples of the original entry fee. However, all too often, the opposite tends to take place as players pour more and more of their precious bankrolls into these large contests and never see a big payday. Obviously, the main culprit for these losing players is simple bankroll management where too much is put at risk in ways that nearly guarantee losses over time. The other, much less obvious issue is in how a player crafts his lineups to begin with.

Each season, we collect data on the winning lineups from most of the large prize pool $3 GPP events all the way up to the winning lineups for the $555 GPP each week. Over the years, there has been much debate among various people within the industry about the construction of cash lineups versus those used for GPP events. While much of the debate has largely been settled since the early days when just a small handful of sites vied for attention within the industry, the perpetual question of lineup construction for GPP events still looms large.

If you’ve never considered the concept of ownership outside of the idea of chalk vs contrarian plays, this should be a column that helps you to recalibrate your process in terms of your overall roster builds from week to week, whether you are mass entering 150 lineups, or simply taking one or two shots at a higher dollar entry event. We are not here to say that there is a one size fits all approach to lineup construction, but in looking at it each year, we can fine tune the total range of ownership which gets us close to an optimal aggregate ownership as well as the individual ownership levels for each player that you can target. This won’t guarantee you success, but it will certainly help you in avoiding failure before the first golfer has teed off to start the week.

Before we dive in too deep, we do feel that it is extremely important to reiterate some key points about GPP play that we try to abide by before we even start to build our teams each week. As we stated above, the easiest way to wreck your bankroll is by putting too much of it at risk each week and also playing in GPP events that do not allow you to make enough lineups to be truly competitive week in and week out. A quick rule for playing GPPs is to put only about 20% of what you risk each week into GPP events. Now, if you have an enormous bankroll and can handle the swings that come from boom or bust weeks, maybe you will be comfortable playing a larger percentage than that. But until you have built your bankroll up into a comfortable five figure range, this just is not going to work very efficiently. Remember, only a tiny portion of all players in DFS are making enormous profits especially with DraftKings making incremental increases to the rake. These professional players are able to profit due in part to players that mismanage their funds on a routine basis. Take your time and utilize the blue print that we lay out for you and you will avoid getting eaten by the sharks out there.

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