We are back once again to take a look at how cash contests should have gone for you this week if you start with the chalkiest lineup possible based on the ownership projections we release and just make the needed changes to mitigate risk. Playing cash on DraftKings really is as simple as eating chalk most weeks, and this article solely exists to raise your level of awareness of that fact. Last week we went into the single-entry tournament stuff as well, but it took me like four hours to create all the different scenarios and pivot points, so going forward we will be sticking mostly to cash and just briefly touching on small-field single-entry in this, and future editions, of this article.
Below you will find the most owned lineup you could possibly afford on the UFC Vegas 78 DraftKings slate. I calculate the total projected ownership, total salary, and the total score of the chalkiest lineup possible, and then move on to discuss where changes could have been made. Hindsight is always 20/20, but when you are simply using ownership numbers and the concept of a “safe floor” for your cash contest selections you should win more than you lose when it comes to cash.
The purpose of the DraftKings Rewind article will be to take a look back on cash lineups and single-entry tournament lineups, specifically small-field contests because they play nearly identically to cash games. By doing this I believe that it will be easier to demonstrate how experienced DraftKings players use ownership to make decisions that open the door to long-term profitability.
THE CASH LINE
Before we can jump into retrospective lineup construction for cash games, we need to know what the cash line is. For those that don’t know what I am talking about when I say “cash line,” this means the lowest score possible in your cash contests where you could have won money. In double-ups, this is the top 45% of the field, and in 50/50 it is the top 50%. You do not get a bonus for finishing near the top in these contests so the cash line is all that matters. You can look at each one of your specific contests to see what your cash line score needed to have been.
For the purposes of staying consistent, we will be using the chalkiest lineup possible as our cash line. The actual cash line will vary from contest to contest in a given week but is usually within a few points of each other in one direction or the other.
UFC Vegas 78 Chalk Lineup
As you can see, if you used the six chalkiest fighters you could possibly cram into a lineup for this weekend, you would have scored 607.82 points. Normally this lineup would have you hovering around the cash line most weeks, but this week had very few underdogs that won, so you probably were well above the cash line with this lineup that contains the two chalkiest underdogs. Not to mention that Dulgarian and Dobbs were the only underdogs over 20% ownership aside from Chris Daukaus, who I would hope that everyone would agree didn’t have a safe floor for cash games.
That doesn’t mean that we are going to abandon the process though, because when the goal is long-term success your process is everything. So let’s see where we can make changes to this lineup and if you would still be above your cash line in your contest.
A good way to build a cash lineup is to start with the most chalk-heavy lineup you can and then make educated changes based on ownership and your own intuition. From the lineup above, the most reasonable fighters to have an issue with are Terrance McKinney or Jaqueline Amorim in my opinion because they were both considered pretty boom or bust. Between the two though, I think it’s pretty obvious which one had the safest floor without the benefit of knowing the outcome of the fight.
Let’s take a look at the potential pivots that could have been made from Terrance McKinney, even though there is a strong chance that moving off of him may have reduced your score some. I have eliminated the opponents of other fighters in the lineup from consideration. Here were the available options;
UFC Vegas 78 McKinney Pivot Options
Based on those options, you would have had around a 67% chance of increasing your score and a 33% chance of decreasing it. Once you have the list of available options you can start using fight scripting to narrow down your options. For those that don’t know, that basically just means how you believe that the fights will play out. You will be attempting to remove anyone without a safe floor. Simply put, if the fighter scores single digits in a loss, you don't want to risk it. Here is that narrowed-down list;
Making any of these changes would have placed your fantasy score in the range of 561.23 to 625.01. While the Dawodu version of that swap would have hurt your overall score, there is a good chance that is still above the cash line in most contests. In fairness Dawodu had the lowest ceiling of that group as well, so he likely would have been the least used option.
The money that we saved there from McKinney would have provided anywhere from $200 to $600 for us to move off the main event stack for tournaments as well. If you moved off Luque in tournaments then you couldn’t win, so I won’t even bother entertaining that switch, but if you moved from Rafael Dos Anjos, let’s take a look at what you could have ended up with.
SMALL-FIELD SINGLE-ENTRY
Jumping over to tournaments with anywhere from $200 to $600 to move from Rafael Dos Anjos would have left us with several options from the list above. Just like we did with cash, let’s narrow the list down a bit. First I am going to assume we didn’t play Dawodu in tournaments because his ceiling was fairly low and JoeyT had him written up as the fade this week. Instead, I am going to assume we moved to Khalil Roundtree who was in the premium GPP core plays in that McKinney pivot, and then that you moved to Luana Santos from Rafael Dos Anjos who was also written up in the GPP core. Let’s take a look!
UFC Vegas GPP Core Pivots Lineup
As you can see, that lineup would have scored 680.22. I am writing this not knowing what the optimal lineup was, but I would imagine you wouldn’t be too far off here. Now, of course, making these great decisions from our starting point would be a rarity. So let’s take a look at what the lineup would look like if we made the worst rational decisions which would have been keeping Dawodu and moving up to Luana Santos from Dos Anjos per the premium GPP core plays.
UFC Vegas Alternate SE Lineup
Take a look back in your small-field single-entry contests and see if these lineups would have put you over the cash line. Again, we are not making too many wild decisions here, just simply starting with the most chalk heavy lineup you can afford, and then making small changes based on ownership, your own common sense when it comes to the sport, and then using the premium plays offered by We Want Picks as a guide once the usefulness of the numbers exhausts itself.
FINAL THOUGHT
Once again, back-to-back weeks, you should be able to see how this process can help guide your cash game and small-field single-entry lineups. There will of course be times where you make the wrong decisions, and then there will even be times when the slate just goes crazy and removes all rational players from contention. Over time you will win more than you lose starting from the chalkiest point possible and using your own knowledge of the sport or the WWP premium plays section to make subtle changes to your lineup for the contest you are entering in the cash and small-field single-entry world.
If you have any questions or are actually committed to learning to play DraftKings please feel free to message me on Twitter (X) @WebGuyWWP. I am not by any means the oracle for DraftKings advice, but I do understand these ownership numbers and how to use them well enough to help you make informed decisions rather than just throwing darts in these types of contests.
Just because this was the premise that started this series I will be repeating at the end of each one of these articles. Ownership matters everywhere in DraftKings!
