2 Low-Owned Stacks for Small-Field DraftKings Tournaments on Wild Card Weekend

Michael Hitchcock
January 14, 2023

If you want to improve at DFS, you need to find the types of contests that allow you to have success and continue to play mainly in those. This enables you not only to have a greater chance of success each week but also to improve in identifying contest specific dynamics and trends.

I am a lower-stakes, small-field tournament player. I do not play cash games, and I do not play large-field GPP contests unless I am just tossing in an entry for fun. The contests I am playing in typically have 60 entrants or fewer. These contests are my favorite because you do not need to get as many things right to get near the top of the leaderboard. Finding the right stacks in small fields is a great example of this. Most people do not stack enough in these types of contests. Finding the right stacks and leverage points is a great way to vault up to the top of the leaderboard.

THE MOST FUN SLATE OF THE SEASON

The playoff and Thanksgiving slates are my favorite slates. I’m sure most people reading this are familiar with the differences between a regular season Sunday slate and a primetime slate, but just in case you are new to playoff DFS, I will lay out the differences. The games are all island games, meaning there are never two games on at the same time unless one game goes into overtime. On a normal Sunday slate the majority of the games players lock at 1 p.m. Eastern time and the other few games lock at 4:00 or 430 p.m. Eastern time, meaning you only have a small window to make pivots in your lineup if you are behind. On the playoff slates, you have all night Saturday after the late game and all morning Sunday to assess how far behind or ahead you are, and what players the rest of the field may have left to pass you.

For example: If on Saturday you are playing in a contest with less than 60 people and you fade Christian McCaffrey and Austin Ekeler at high ownership, you will need to make some serious pivots to catch up. The pivots you do make will need to be plays you know that no one in a small field contest will be playing, in hopes they have a big game and allow you to catch up. Most people will not be doing this, so make sure you take advantage of that edge and look at all the teams in your small field contests.

The stacks I am discussing in this article are in the context of the full weekend six-game slate on DraftKings.

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