- Justin Bailey dives into his tournament strategy for small-field GPPs on DraftKings in Week 17.
- He identifies his favorite stack to build around, and his favorite one-off plays.
- The FantasyLabs Leverage Scores are the main driver of this data-driven analysis.
I started playing DFS on DraftStreet in 2013. For the next six years, I primarily played cash games because I was in love with the slow, methodical grind, along with the safety that comes from playing a format where you only have to beat one other person or roughly half the field if you’re in 50/50s or double-ups.
Nowadays, I’ve decided to pull the ripcord on the safety net so that I could seek out more upside.
The hardest part of switching to GPP only? Getting comfortable with losing … a lot more often. However, with proper game selection and bankroll management, all you need is one or two nice scores to be in the black when the season ends.
And when you’re mainly targeting small-field GPPs, your lineups don’t need to be as perfect compared to when you’re entering these larger fields. Personally, I consider a small field as a tournament with 500 or fewer people, but some DFS players may have a broader definition.
And typically, I am playing in tournaments with 300 or fewer people.
Anyway, each week I’ll be using our extensive suite of analytical fantasy tools and the FantasyLabs Player Models to discuss my overall strategy for how I’m attacking these smaller fields.
General Strategy
My overall strategy for these formats is quite simple. I try to find the best spots to correlate and utilize the Leverage Scores in our Player Models to find pivots off of players who are projected for higher rostership.
A lot of the time, when looking for games to target, you land on high-total games because that’s where we’d expect the most points to be scored. Naturally, high-total games come with higher projected ownership on certain players. However, it’s still possible to have unique builds when targeting these games, and we can still insert other one-off plays to differentiate our lineups.
You don’t need a whole lineup of contrarian plays to win a small-field tournament, though it helps to pivot in the right spots. I also tend to rely on the Ceiling Projections instead of Median Projections when I am making my lineup decisions.
Also, keep in mind the projected ownership levels in the models are geared toward large-field GPPs, so there is some guesswork on estimating ownership projections for smaller fields.
Note: I play these small-field tournaments on DraftKings, so that’s what this analysis will focus on.
Additionally, our Lineup Builder is the perfect tool to use when hand-building your small-field GPP lineups.
And don’t forget to check out our brand new Minimalist Tournament Model, which is my favorite Player Model for finding overlooked stacks or underutilized one-off plays with high ceilings.
The Game or Stack I’m Building Around
