DFS

Lineup builder

Every lineup here was scored against a simulated field of opponents in thousands of correlated game outcomes. Cash lineups are picked by how often they beat the cash line. Tournament lineups are picked by expected payout under that contest's prize curve, which is what separates "good lineup" from "lineup that wins money." Build your own set below with locks, exposure caps and stack rules, then export to DraftKings.

Honesty rail: the win rates and EV numbers are measured against our simulated field, so use them to rank lineups against each other. They get calibrated to real contest results every week once the season's standings exports start coming in.

Where to enter (the lever most people skip)

Game selection moves your return more than player selection. The rules that survive across both sites: seek the smallest rake, understand the field size, prefer flatter payouts (10th place near 10% of first, a 2x minimum cash), and find the softest opponents. Our modes map to contests like this.

Cash lineup

Single-entry double-ups and self-posted head-to-heads under $5 (limit one game per opponent, block anyone who keeps scooping you). Avoid multi-entry double-ups. The cash mode ignores ownership on purpose: highest median with an eye on ceiling.

Small fields and single entry

FanDuel's 3-man to 100-man lobby (10% rake cap, the softest action there is) and the smallest single-entry tournaments. One hybrid lineup across all of them, registered Sunday morning when the fields are softest. Do not get cute: a couple of pivots off cash is enough.

Small and medium tournaments

20-max or smaller fields at the lowest rake you can find, with the 2x min-cash structure. Single-entry fields see the obvious plays over-owned because opponents reuse their cash roster; that is where the leverage lives.

Large-field tournaments

$1 to $3 twenty-max contests are the practice ground before the Milly Maker. Correlated, deliberately different, and sized so one week cannot end the bankroll. Track results by contest type; play more of what you are good at.

A $100 week, as the pros split it

Cash lineup: $17 across three single-entry double-ups plus $26 of $1 head-to-heads. Twenty large-field lineups at $1 each. Three 3-max lineups in a $5 mid-size tournament. Two single-entry mid-size lineups at $10 and $12. Scale the same shape up; the extra money buys access to lower-rake contests.

Showdown

Single-entry lineups belong in single-entry contests. In the multi-entry Wildcat-style fields, max-entry players sim at +12% while single-entry players sim at -10%; the structural edge is theirs, so the bankroll is better spent where they are a smaller share of the pool.

The Special over the Milly

Same lineup, different contest. In the Special, second place pays 25% to 40% of first instead of 10% to 15%, and 48 of 55 top-five finishers in one season made the same or more than the Milly would have paid them. Build for the Milly curve, enter the Special when it is offered; the "Special" contest type on the builder scores lineups on a flatter-top curve. Alternate slates (Early Only, Afternoon Only) condense ownership and make low-owned plays worth more; when the lobby has one, it appears in the slate menu above.

Contest board

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How the machine works

Projections

Half stat lines (targets, carries, yards, touchdowns from each team's volume, the matchup, and each player's share, scored exactly the way the site scores, bonuses included) and half the consensus times matchup rule engine. Injuries from the news engine zero sidelined players.

Worlds

Thousands of simulated Sundays. Games run hot or cold together, teams swing, a passing script lifts the quarterback and his receivers while it dents the running back, and every player has a right skewed range, because a 40 point game happens more often than a negative one.

The field

Thousands of opponent lineups drawn from projected ownership, stacking about half the time and spending nearly the full cap. Your lineup's finish in each world is where it lands against them.

Payout curves

Double ups pay the top 44% two times. A Milly Maker pays the top 22% a little and the top 0.05% a fortune. The same lineup can be great in one and useless in the other, so each contest type has its own objective.

What winners look like

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Lineup shapes

Winning lineups are not one shape. We measured 46 Millionaire Maker winners and 69 true optimal lineups: some stack the quarterback with one teammate, some with two, some run him alone, and only about four in ten bring a player back from the other side. Forcing any one shape costs almost nothing at the ceiling, so the builder spreads your entries across shapes the way winners spread them instead of forcing a bring-back into every lineup.

Ownership

Projected field ownership is a behavioral model of what rooms chase. Upload a provider's projected ownership or a DraftKings contest export to replace it. Leverage is our exposure minus the field's.