DFS Football 101: Multi-Lineup Strategy for Qualifiers

This article is part of our DFS Football 101 series.

The great thing about this tournament is qualifiers and satellites started as low at 5 cents! It has been a great way to get into a large-field tournament for a huge prize without risking much.

I started to take advantage of these contests by using my FanDuel points, which is like found money. I entered as many lineups as I could in all the contests that were less than $1. It paid off for me a few weeks ago when I won a $250 ticket for just $1. I also hit a bunch of satellites in the $5, $10 and $12 range.

I had five entries in last week's $12 qualifier. It paid out 300/5,157 – only 6 percent of the field qualified for a $250 ticket. It is a swing-for-the-fences approach with five entries and $60 in equity. I had about a 30 percent chance of getting one ticket, so I was going to be happy with that. I just missed out on a second ticket by about one point, which was a brutal beat. But I will go in with two entries this week. Next week, I will chronicle my strategy on how I built the lineups.

Here are how my 5 lineups finished

163.54 (69 of 51,57)
141.46 (325 of 5,157)
118.98 (1361 of 5,157)
85.7 (4454 of 5,157)
78.62 (4800 of 5,157)

In addition to having them in the qualifier, I also decided to invest a small amount in other contests like single-entry tournaments, 100-man tournaments and some cash games just to hedge. The No. 1 lineup paid off nicely along with No. 2, so I was able to make a nice profit about 4x my entries in addition to my second $250 ticket.

My strategy going into the qualifier was identify the five stacks I liked the most.

Patriots, Chargers, Jets, Vikings and Dolphins I liked for different reasons. I knew the Pats and Chargers were going to be chalk, so I had to offset that with some lower-owned players. The Vikings and Jets were the mid-tier plays I thought could hit and be lower owned. Then I took a dart on the Dolphins because the Broncos have been so bad and I knew no one would be on Miami.

My stacks:

Pats – Brady/Cooks/Gronk
Chargers – Rivers/Allen/Henry
Jets – McCown/Anderson/Kearse
Vikings – Keenum/Thielen/Diggs
Dolphins – Cutler/Parker/Thomas

I thought the Vikings stack could be huge because the Falcons were missing Desmond Trufant and Brian Poole in the secondary. Also, Case Keenum had played incredibly the last four weeks but was still underpriced and under owned.

The Jets faced a Chiefs defense that has been torched all year, and the total was relatively low at 43.5. I've been riding McCown and Anderson for a lot of the year in DFS, and then with Kearse getting a ton of targets last week it was a great play.

Davante Adams was highly owned, but his price and matchup were incredible and it was hard for me not to have exposure. With his ownership 30 percent, though, I would have faded him if I knew it was going to be that high. The other WR I liked was Devin Funchess, who was in a high-total game and Greg Olsen was out. Also, Christian McCaffrey was not 100 percent healthy, so I thought Cam Newton was going to lean on Funchess heavily. The main factor was Marcus Lattimore being out again for the Saints, which meant the Panthers likely would be able to move the ball in the air.

I went with Gostkowski as kicker because I thought the Patriots would put up at least 28-31 points as they have owned the Bills for a long time.