Welcome to the DraftKings Millionaire Maker review, ladies, and gentlemen. This will be a weekly digest of the DraftKings’ Millionaire Maker to give you an idea of what it took to win $1 million in addition to seeing what some of the top professional DFS minds did in this large-field GPP.
Week 13 Millionaire Maker Recap
It was an insanely high scoring week for winning GPP players, but overall Week 13 was a mixed back of chalk hits and duds. Several professional DFSers did extremely well, including the newest Milly Maker champ ‘chess_is_ok’. In fact, this week 8 of the top 10 finishers in the tournament were from max entrant users. Chess’ 104th entry (max entered 150 lineups) hit the big time, totaling 241.14 DK points.
Chess used a construction that seemed commonplace with many of the top pros in this contest – a game stack of Kansas City and the New York Jets. The game ended 38-31 with extremely concentrated production from a few select individuals. Chiefs’ QB Alex Smith went berserk at just 1.7% ownership, scoring 40.64 DK points. Smith tossed for nearly 400 yards, four touchdowns, and even ran for 70 (!) yards on one carry. It was a true ceiling performance in every sense of the phrase. Chess was heavily exposed to Smith, too, owning him on 32/150 lineups for VERY overweight exposure compared to the field. As we often see, it makes sense to stack your quarterback with a few pass catchers and indeed that was the case again in Week 13. Chess chose Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, Smith’s big play options. Hill was under 5% owned, but possesses massive upside with his breakaway speed and Kelce is about as stable as they come – and he came in at 7% ownership. Chess took an overweight position on Kelce (55/150), but actually only owned Hill on 6/150 lineups. He just happened to hit the nuts on this one! Both players caught two touchdowns from Smith, so the trio of Chiefs ended with a ridiculous 105.54 DK points.
In order to keep throwing the ball, that meant that the Jets had to keep up with the Chiefs. As a result, Chess “brought it back” with Jermaine Kearse and Robby Anderson, the two best wide receivers for the Jets. Anderson was chalky at 20% but paid off the tag through an 8-107 game and Kearse one-upped him with a 9-157 game to cement this game stack as a GPP smash.
OK, so now that Chess had contrarian spots left and right littered throughout that game stack, he chalked it up a bit more for some security through players like Rams’ running back Todd Gurley, Miami Dolphins’ running back Kenyan Drake, and Oakland Raiders’ wideout Seth Roberts. Gurley has been getting such a significant workload that his floor is so solid, but he also had the game script against the Arizona Cardinals that suggested he would need to run a lot (the Rams were 7.5-point favorites). Drake was set to receive additional looks as the main back in town and he carried a depressed price tag – he was, therefore, one of the best values for DailyRoto. Lastly, Roberts was the pass-catching target for Oakland with Amari Cooper and Michael Crabtree both watching from the sidelines. It all made sense and they all performed, even if Roberts didn’t quite hit value – he did enough to get Chess over the edge. The last piece of the lineup was the Dolphins’ defense. Sure, there is volatility in this position every week and multiple defenses scored touchdowns on the day, but the Dolphins were facing a Denver offense that has sputtered all year long, particularly with wreckless quarterback play. The Fins took advantage with three picks, a blocked field goal, and two safeties. Oh, and they were only owned at 2.3%. That’ll separate you from the rest of the crowd.
Unlike many max entrants that happen to find one lineup separate itself to win, Chess actually had a tremendously successful day outside of the top lineup in the Milly. He also finished 73rd and 148th – and had 10 lineups in the top 1000. Although it wasn’t one of the sexiest matchups on paper (5th highest O/U game on the board), it was clearly a sneaky game stack to get leverage on and Chess took full advantage. From one of the top GPP players in the game, it was no surprise that he found his way into a big day in Week 13.
