How to win $1,000,000: The Ultimate Guide to Winning The Masters Draftkings Millionaire Maker DFS Tournament.

First let us say that our experts have played in a lot of extremely large DFS contests both in golf and football. Of course this past season there was a new Millionaire maker tournament every week for football, but for golf, one has never previously existed. In the past, the largest 1st prize has been $100,000 and fields nowhere near the 100,000 plus entrants that are expected for the Masters Millionaire Maker. We desperately want one of our premium members to take home the $1 million and we will do everything in our power to arm you with all of the information you will need to have a chance at winning, becoming the first million dollar fantasy golf winner in history, and forever a fantasy golf legend. We will be covering the players in depth in other articles as well as our regular previews, which will include our best picks, but this article is geared strictly toward strategies. Below are several important ideas that you should be thinking about in preparation for the Draftkings Millionaire Maker event.

Overlay –Draftkings currently has the size of the contest at 125,900 entrants and a $20 buy-in, so the number we are looking at for an overlay is 110,000 entrants. (Prize pool = $2.2 million) so 110,000 people at $20/entry = $2.2 million. Any amount of entrants below that will produce an overlay and there will be money that is not represented by entries (so essentially free money). It is hard to tell how many entries will end up in the Millionare maker event, because so often large numbers enter within the last few hours of registration before the tournament begins. Our hunch is that there will end up being somewhere close to 100,000 entries so we will base our commentary on that.

Play to Win – The prize pool is ridiculously top heavy. To get the attention, you need a huge first prize, but with that, the rest of the prize pool is depleted.

Here is the prize breakdown:
1st $1,000,000.00
2nd $100,000.00
3rd $50,000.00
4th $30,000.00
5th $20,000.00
6th – 7th $15,000.00
8th – 10th $10,000.00
11th – 13th $7,500.00
14th – 16th $5,000.00
17th – 20th $3,000.00
21st – 30th $2,500.00
31st – 50th $2,000.00
51st – 75th $1,500.00
76th – 100th $1,000.00
101st – 150th $500.00
151st – 200th $250.00
201st – 300th $150.00
301st – 500th $125.00
501st – 1000th $100.00
1001st – 2000th $75.00
2001st – 3000th $50.00
3001st – 5000th $40.00
5001st – 10000th $30.00
10001st – 24025th $20.00

With such a top heavy prize pool and specifically first place, our ultimate goal is to win it, period. Don’t get us wrong, it would be nice to win $100,000, but would you ever be so disappointed to win $100k if you were a point out of first and the million dollars?  You need to have the mentality of picking a team to win it all rather than trying to get six guys through the cut and just cash. If you took between 10,000-24,025 place, which would be the top 10-25% of the field, you break even. Whoopity Doo. If you place 1,001 place, the top 1% of the field and a very good accomplishment, you win $75. This is why our strategy is to build lineups capable of winning the tournament, rather than trying to get 6 guys through the cut.

Need to be near perfect – In order to win the Millionaire Maker you are going to need all 6 of your golfers in the Top 10 (including the winner). With that in mind we would not roster anybody who we did not think was capable of placing in the Top 10. For example, a guy that we have a hard time seeing as capable of a Top 10 is Fred Couples. Does he consistently play well at the Masters? Yes. Do we think he will play well this year and make the cut? Probably. Will he outperform his price-tag? Maybe. Is he capable of placing in the Top 10? It is really hard to envision it. Last year he had an influential run and played extremely well for most of the tournament and ended up 20th. We think that is best case scenario for Couples. So with that in mind, we can’t have him on a roster and win the Millionaire Maker event. You need to determine those players that you believe do not have the ability to make a Top 10 and not include them in your rosters. Unlike most other events making the cut and outperforming their price-tag are not factors this week in this particular Millionaire Maker event.

Throw value out the window – As we have already talked about, we are going to need to have six guys in the Top 10 and needless to say, you are going to need the Masters Champion on your roster. With that being said, is Rory Mcilroy a good value at $14,900? Who cares, if the dude wins the tournament, it doesn’t really matter if he was $20,000, you need to have him on your roster. Yes, we realize you will have to roster players at a lower cost because you have Rory on your roster, but again, if he wins the tournament it does not matter. The Millionaire Maker is unlike any other fantasy golf event that has ever been and you need to plan accordingly. Every other week we are looking to identify value and those players that are underpriced based upon their expected performance. That is not the case this week. Just to follow up on rostering Rory, you may ask, will the Fantasy Golf Insider experts be rostering Rory on some of their teams? You better believe it, he can easily win this tournament and if he does we just need to identify another five guys to crack the Top 10.

Identify players that you like, that will have low ownership – As with most weeks in large GPP tournaments it is important to try and find players that will be owned by less than 5% of the field and then have that player jump up and play well. This is the best way to separate yourself from the field, especially in an event this large. Often times it is the European guys that have low ownership levels. Think Jonas Blixt was highly owned last year? It may also be a player coming off a really poor performance. Week in and week out we see people not select great golfers based upon one poor performance. This presents a great opportunity for us as we know not to involve our emotions and are able to disregard one bad performance if nothing fundamentally was wrong with the golfer. In other cases, it may be players who are perceived as priced too high. People tend to fade the highest priced players, which may be an opportunity for us. They are obviously priced high for a reason, they are really good. If they end up playing up to their ability and others have avoided them, we will separate from the field a bit.

Don’t go too Scrubish with Your Studs and Scrubs Lineup – The Masters employs the very different rule of giving exemptions to past winners forever. With this comes some really bad players in the field. Looking closely at the salaries, it looks like anybody below $5,000 is not a viable option. Please do not confuse a player that you perceive to have low ownership as a good option if they just are not any good. Names like Crenshaw, O’Meara, Olazabel, Woosnam, and Watson included on a roster would essentially be lighting your $20 on fire. We are advocates of a Studs and Scrubs strategy this week, but keep your scrubs above that $5,000 mark and choose guys who have a chance and give yourself a chance.

Keep checking back for more great Masters insight leading up to the biggest fantasy golf event in history. Are you getting excited? We sure are!!!!!!

-Jeff Bergerson