MME Playbook Guidelines

Mass Multi Entering (MME) a GPP is one of the most exhilarating experiences you can have playing Daily Fantasy Sports. Maxing out a contest with as many allowable entries puts you on an even playing field in some of the biggest payout tournaments offered. There is a different type of stress that comes with MME compared to doing single entry tournaments (GPPs), where your entire week might hinge on that single lineup.

In MME, your week hinges on your player pool, exposures, and variations of stacking rules. It’s more strategy based than research and numbers based. Many people think you’re supposed to use MME to jam in as many plays as you can that are in good spots but that usually just leads to 150 lineups that are pretty chalky. Our goal is to have a good mix of optimal plays along with weighing ownership projections, using game theory, and doing our best to leverage the field. The term leverage can also be a confusing one so I will use my example nice and early in this article so that it makes sense as you read these terms during the specific strategy section of the article.

Pivot – Using a different player similarly priced or one that provides a unique build off a higher owned player at that position.

Leverage – Using a player or opposing defense that directly hurts the fields’ chalk ownership while you stand to benefit.

With FanDuel (FD) and DraftKings (DK) tossing out some massive tournaments with 100,000 + entry formats, it is very important that we make sure to focus our approach specific to the size of the contest. The bigger the contest, specifically these massive 6-figure entrant type contests, the more contrarian we will have to be and the tighter the player exposure we should have. The smaller the GPP contest the more we can lean on some chalk and spread out our exposure a bit more to cast a wider net.

On FantasyDraft (FD2), they have a few MME contests to enter this week and all of them are small to medium sized contests that our optimizer is compatible with. No ownership considerations really need to be our first priority for the FD2 contests.

Where do We Begin?

One of the most important things we need to do for these massive contests is to identify who the chalk will be and weigh our options. Is the targeted player or team in such a smash spot that failure doesn’t seem possible? Will said target carry a chalk ownership of 25-30% or are they entering mega-chalk territory with a possible 40-50% ownership projection? identifying these scenarios is the key to almost any slate and any format, and nothing might be as important as this for the purpose of mass multi entering a contest.

Underweight or Overweight?

Once we identify those players and make our decisions on what we want to do with them, we need to start to plan our road to victory. If we want to eat the chalk, we need to make sure that we aren’t moving with the field. What I mean by that is that if we think “Player A” is going to be 30% owned, we likely won’t have to outright fade them over the course of a 150-max entry contest but we do have to be underweight or overweight. A 30% owned player is someone we might want to have 50% exposure to and be overweight on the field or 10% exposure to in order to make sure we aren’t moving with the field. This way, if said player explodes and scores 40 points at a dirt cheap price, we benefit more than the field by having more than average shares of him.

If we decide to go underweight on the player and he explodes, that means 30% of the field will rocket up the standings but only 10% of your lineups will move upward. It’s pretty much a hedge investment. You’re saying, I don’t really believe in Player A but I am afraid of my weekend being tanked by the chalk eruption. The flip side of this is that if he does great you still have 10% of your lineups in play to win a tournament. If he ends up being a dud, well then only 10% of your teams tanked and you still have 135 (out of 150) lineups with a great shot at winning the tournament because 30% of the field has lineups that tanked. Basically, your 135 remaining lineups have to now only beat 70% of all of the entries (due to the 30% dud rate).

All-in or All-out

Another very brazen move you can make with “mega chalk” is to either be all-in (lock) or all-out (fade). This is completely unnecessary with players that are chalky but don’t reach that mega chalk level. By doing this you are setting up 150 lineups to either be ahead of 50% of the field or behind 50% of the field (or whatever ownership that mega chalk player will have). It’s hard to do this for people and very uncomfortable. There is no worse feeling than fading the chalk and then the chalk goes out and scores two touchdowns. Vice versa, if the chalk duds you know that 100% of your lineups are currently against just 50% of the field.

Plant Your Flag

We just decided what we were doing with the chalk, now we need to start making decisions. We have to start to identify players at each roster spot that we want to make sure are showing up in our lineups no matter what. These are the guys we are going to want to put minimum percentages on for ownership. The example in the following photo: I know I want “X” percent of each of these quarterbacks and created my stacking rules in the Domination Station (optimizer, aka DS).

Our goal is not to create a player pool, per say – but more so just to make sure we have minimum percentages (min%) on those guys that our research station, articles, coaches, and content have made us want to use. We also don’t want these min% players to take up too much of our player pool at each position. If there are 4 quarterbacks that I really want exposure to I might just add up their min% total exposure to 60% or so of the 100% total at the quarterback position. I want the algorithm of the DS to select the other 40% of quarterbacks (and thus the other 40% of my stacks) without my meddling and bias. I want that purely mathematical optimal approach that the algorithm uses. This needs to be done at each position.

Identify Pivots

Each week of the NFL season, players will have vastly different ownership projections while possibly having similar game scripts and price points. It’s just the way it is. The industry can drive a player two players in opposite directions by using statistics and trends to sway public opinion. There might be two players at similar price points (e.x. a $7,800 RB vs an $8,000 RB) with similar circumstances surrounding their outlook. Both players might be home favorites, both players might be in a good spot to receive 20+ touches and red zone work etc…For whatever reason, name brand recognition can sometimes put up horse blinders on DFS players and keep them from seeing the gem at a fraction of the ownership as the player they’re drooling over.

We need to identify the price point pivots, decide if the opportunity cost of fading the higher owned player while taking the guy in the lower-owned spot makes sense. Likely, the lower owned guy simply is slightly more volatile – but those are tremendous situations to take advantage of.
*Photo of pivot example between 2 players similarly priced with distinct ownership separation*

1. Kamara has a 42.08% projected ownership. We have identified he is chalk, and pretty much mega-chalk at that level. A beautiful MME/GPP pivot in general, is David Johnson at a similar price point, a similar projection, and similar ceiling. That’s literally as good as it gets and he’s just projected to have a 9.02% ownership.

2. Melvin Gordon has a 21.73% ownership projection. We can pivot off of him by using one of my favorites this week, Leonard Fournette, who has half the ownership (11.2%) and a similar projection. Pivot!

Establish Our Global Exposure Cap

Each slate and every week presents us with a unique strategy. Some slates might be massive, others might be smaller. Some might have multiple 50+ implied totals for each game and sometimes we might only have one or two games over 50+ points. Each week we need to create the global exposure cap based on the needs of the slate.

For me personally, as far as exposures go:

60% global max across the board for me.
Minimums for each position when you add up all the players you put minimums on:
1. 60-80% total minimums for QB
  120-160% total minimums for RB
  120-160 % total minimums for WR
  60-80% total minimums for TE
  60-80% total minimums for DEF

Example: If your QB player pool is Brees, Wilson, Keenum, Bortles.

Brees 30%
Bortles 20%
Keenum 5%
Wilson 15%

That totals 70% (and because it’s out of 100% for the QB position you allow the DS to select the other 30%). Again, these are just guidelines. Feel free to flex these ranges anyway you’d like or don’t use them at all.

Create Stacking Rule Sets

I don’t think there is a perfect setup that can be used all 21 weeks of the NFL season (including playoffs). Sometimes you might roll out your own 150 entry CSV file into a small 7-game Early Only slate, in which case you would want stronger correlation and a more brazen stacking rule set. Other times you’ll have a 12-game main slate where we feel like there are plenty of options do to softer pricing and we will want to cast a wider net and keep a looser rule set and allow the DS algorithm to flex its mathematical muscles.

There might be several games with massive 50+ point totals that I know I want to run game stacks with of a QB + Receiving Target + Opposing Receiving Target one week and the next week I don’t see any games where I want to run it back with an opposing pass catcher. Each slate is different. The top defenses might not have a clear-cut running back to pair for the standard and popular running back + defensive team stack one week and the next the top-3 defenses have stud RB’s with salivating matchups that you’ll want to stack together.

Decide where you want your upside to lie, figure out who you’re going to invest in and how to best take advantage of their matchup. If we know we want Team A and a piece of their 30 point team total, weigh the ownership of the players on their team and decide who gives you the most upside for a stack.

***The following are some of my personal stack rule sets that I will execute***

QB + WR/TE (best correlated and safest stack rule)
QB + WR/TE + Opposing Team WR/TE (phenomenal for bigger GPPs with 2nd best correlation)
QB + RB (only works with pass catching RBs really) Think cam newton + McCaffrey where they could literally combine for 4 TDs and bonus from Newton to McCaffrey.
RB + DEF – Best used when the RB has a solid workload projection and the spread is big (bigger the spread the more the opposing team has to throw the ball to come back or play from behind – which leads to sacks/TO/def TDs in theory…)
QB + WR/TE + RB/WR/TE – Team Stack – high correlation, entire lineup hinges on your offense scoring 35+ points and all touchdowns being scored by your targets.
QB + WR/TE + WR/TE + Opposing WR/TE – Onslaught approach is for massive GPPs and has such high correlation you either CRUSH or get CRUSHED. Only use this if you think there is a game that will end in a massive high scoring affair.

Mix and match these rule sets with each optimization run.

Examples:
One optimization, Tom Brady at 30% exposure and roll out a QB + WR/TE + Opposing WR/TE for 10 lineups.

Second optimization, Tyrod Taylor at 20% exposure, Cam Newton at 50% exposure, Brees at 10% and roll out a QB + WR/TE + RB for the team stack for 20 lineups.

Third optimization, Ravens DEF at 40% exposure, Saints DEF at 30% exposure, Case Keenum at 50% exposure, Eli Manning at 25% exposure and roll out both a QB + WR/TE stack and a RB + DEF stack for 20 lineups and only on 2 uniques for a tighter player pool.

Boom, I just created 50 lineups in this example. It can be this easy. If you want to set minimum exposures to specific players at each position and then run these optimizations, then do that! You have control, complete and utter control.

Leverage the Field

The last thing to do is to take everything you’ve worked on all week and take into consideration one thing, “how can I benefit if the public is wrong about situation X?”. If a running back is going to be 50% owned, we can leverage the field (the 50% ownership) by fading him and using the opposing defense. We can leverage the field by targeting the quarterback and stack a WR or TE teammate, with the thinking that the running back might do well but not score any touchdowns and the QB will throw a couple to our stack who will be super low-owned because the field is on the running game and not the passing game.

Once we ponder that question, I always want to make sure I have a few slices of the leverage pie involved in my MME Strategy each and every week. This is a massive way to leap the field and normally will be incredibly low owned. Seriously, I’ll repeat myself – you have to ask yourself what will happen if the public is wrong and what could happen. Then target that theory and hope it comes to fruition.

Optimization Preferences

I will run multiple files to get up to the 150 lineups needed to max enter something. I will never set up the DS with rules and exposures and then just run it once for 150 lineups. I’ll run it in groups of 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 etc…I’ll sometimes lock in a QB and set rules then optimize for however many lineups I want of that quarterback. Other times I plan on locking in a defense that I might be leveraging ownership against – like the Browns for 10 lineups out of 150 in Week 1 against mega-chalk, James Conner.

I plan on using both 2 uniques and 3 uniques, depending on how big my stack rules are or if I have multiple stacking rules set for the specific optimization. If I have an onslaught or big game stack I’ll make sure I only have 2 uniques as the setting and run that for as many lineups as I want. When using a chalkier quarterback or stack I’ll probably want to use 3 uniques to try to cast a wider net with a chalkier guy, that way I don’t have dozens of super chalky lineups rolling out with only 2 new guys in each lineup.

I’ll run it on tournament mode pretty much all season unless I personally want the most optimal 10-20 lineups with a specific stack. If I know I want Player X as my quarterback and also have a certain TE and DEF I want, I might just lock the 3 of them and set it to 3 uniques and run it on optimal for 10 lineups with a QB + WR rule set. Stuff like that is all up to the user. I don’t think there is any right or wrong way and in NFL – beauty is absolutely the eye of the beholder.

Example

I did my settings
1. 10 Lineups
2. 3 Unique Players
3. Tournament Mode
4. I clicked POSITION STACKING OPTIONS and set these two rules
  1. QB with no less than 1 player of WR / TE from Same Team
  2. QB with no less than 1 player of WR / TE from Opposing Team

Then I quickly just picked the QBs I liked and made sure the *minimum* exposure didn’t add up over 100% (because obviously, 100% is the max). On a larger scale, I would only pick about 60% of my quarterback exposure and then just allow the DS to fill in the other 40% of my quarterbacks (and thus, my stacks). I did select a full 100% of minimum just for the sake of showing you how much control you have over the DS!
Brees, Watson, Ben, and Newton all received various minimum percentages until it added up to 100%.

Then I optimized the 10 lineups. Clearly, you can see the rules were followed by the DS – in the first lineup below:

In that first lineup, you can see Big Ben stacked with Antonio Brown and Jarvis Landry (from the Browns). My ruleset asked for a QB + WR/TE from the same team AND with an opposing WR/TE. Nailed it DS, nice job.

Now of course, when I run a true CSV file I would want to select my RB exposures (I would not total my RB targets over 120-150%), WR exposures (I would not total my WR targets over 120-150%), TE exposures (not over 50% total on my targets) and DEF exposures (not over 50% total on my targets). You’d want to run different files of different sizes (10 lineups, 20 lineups, 50 lineups etc…and vary your uniques between 2 and 3 depending on how tight you want each specific player pool size to be for each file optimized)
Try getting funky and setting up a QB + WR rule set and also an RB + DEF rule set and run the optimizer with both of those together. Get jiggy with it
There is also a TEAM SETTING OPTION where you can select specific teams and make sure only one player from that team is showing up in each lineup. I.E. If you run the optimizer without selecting anything here, it might see Austin Sefarian-Jenkins and Keelan Cole as Grade A value and shove both of them into a bunch of lineups. We definitely don’t want that! In this scenario, you would use the TEAM SETTING OPTION, pick the Jags, and select NO MORE THAN 1 player from the team
Ultimately, if there is a specific stack you want to run you can just simply lock the guys you want and run the optimizer for however many lineups. You have full control over this tool and I would advise you to practice with it prior to Sunday

That is pretty smooth and easy, right?

Closing Remarks

MME is not for everybody. I probably could have saved some of you some time and said this in the beginning before you read over 5,100 words before this sentence. Sorry, not sorry. The only way to know if MME is right for you is to give it a shot. The beauty of MME is that you can grab exposure to more players that you might not have had the option to do so in a single entry tournament. Also, and quite possibly most important – don’t be afraid to fade the chalk in MME because you can still use them in your cash lineup.

Either way, something good will happen by following this very simple instruction. If you cash lineup duds with chalky players and you had very little exposure to them in MME, then your MME lineups likely are screaming up the leaderboards. It works both ways, if your MME lineups are stinking, then your cash lineup likely is having a very good day and covering your MME losses. In theory that is.

If you’ve been around for a while you’ve heard this a billion times from me. I don’t believe in DFS rules – DFS is an ever-shifting landscape and each slate has its own challenges and needs. I do believe in DFS guidelines and think we need some sort of process to approach each slate with a loose guideline to follow or else we are just throwing darts.

Need Help Downloading CSV Files and Uploading to FanDuel or DraftKings?

If you need help with the technical aspect of downloading your CSV file from a DFS site and using our optimizer and uploading, then read this 11-step process and write it down on a sticky note next to your laptop.

Mass Multi Entry (MME) Playbook Guidelines for NFL DFS