Welcome back to the Shark Autopsy Report! If this is your first time reading the Shark Autopsy Report, Welcome! Over the course of the MMA season this VIP ONLY article will deconstruct winning DraftKings lineups in contests where the dark waters of Guaranteed Prize Pool (GPP) contests that are ripe with sharks. Navigating these waters where the sharks smell blood in the water is not easy, but the DFSArmy has you covered, providing you with the essential daily tools to help our VIPs turn into sharks!
Follow me on Twitter and if you are a VIP I will see you in the MMA channels. I enjoy seeing and hearing from all of the VIPs when things go well. If you aren’t a VIP member, there’s an easy way to get a free month to test the Army out. Just Click the Link Become a VIP DFSArmy Member!!!The Army has all of the content, tools, second-to-none Domination Station Optimizer, and the most accessible MMA staff and coaches in the industry to guide you in your journey of becoming a better DFS player. The Shark Autopsy Report has now gone behind the paywall, if you love lineup deconstruction as much as we do at the Army, become a VIP member and enjoys the riches that no other site has!!!!
The Shark Autopsy Report has now gone behind the paywall and ONLY VIP members can have access to it, if you love lineup deconstruction as much as we do at the Army, become a VIP member and enjoys the riches that no other site has!!!!
The DFSArmy and its Advantages
For those of you who are new to Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) and are looking for a top notch, second to none DFS site that can provide you with the tools to construct quality DFS lineups like the pros use, then look no further, the DFSArmy has you covered. The DFSArmy doesn’t just focus on the major sports, we have as much focus on the niche sports and dominate the competition as we do in the major sports. DFSArmy’s coaches are truly amazing at their crafts, and the MMA coaches are no different, with each coach spending hours upon hours researching each fight card to the nth degree. DFSArmy prides ourselves on the ability of our coaches to teach and provide our members with the methodologies, processes, tools and thought processes to become an equitable DFS player, who can grow their bankroll with proper bankroll management and turn your everyday DFS Joe into a DFS Pro. DFSArmy covers all of the DFS sports from the main 4 (MLB, NBA, NFL & NHL) to PGA, MMA, Soccer and College FB and BB. Additionally, DFSArmy has its own Sportsbook team to help you with sports betting. The DFSArmy is an all-in one Fantasy Sports and Sportsbook site that you can’t afford to not be a member! Our members get the opportunity to learn from the top MMA DFS players that are all top 10 ranked by RotoGrinders.
Synopsis of the Shark Autopsy Report
The Shark Autopsy Report concept was built out of the quest to understand how the Top DFS players in the world were constructing their lineups, as well as how’d they get onto certain players whereas we weren’t on them. In the beginning of the concept, the report went through multiple authors in the DFSArmy at the time, but it never stuck. Then FFootballGeek approached the current author of the report Burns273 and said make this great and make it stick. I started writing the Shark Autopsy Report during the MLB season of 2018, and then it took off during the NFL season of 2018-19 with dynamic graphics and writing. Now the Shark Autopsy Report has been written for the 2019 MMA’s biggest slates. The Shark Autopsy Report has become one of the top lineup deconstruction reports breaking down NFL’s Milly Maker, MMA’s Throwdown and other big contests.
The Shark Autopsy Report is different from the other DFS site’s lineup breakdown articles that you can read online, as there are a multitude of these types of articles. The Shark Autopsy Report isn’t a haphazard DFS article that shows you the winning lineup and gives you a few sentences or a paragraph on the winning lineup, nor does it provide you with generic and basic graphs that anyone can do in Microsoft Excel. The Shark Autopsy Report provides you with a dynamic breakdown of the top ranked DFS pros lineups construction, from the total number of lineups they utilized each fighter in the Throwdown contest, their percentage of that fighter drafted overall in the Throwdown contest, the percentage the tourney field drafted the fighter, and the variance between the DFS Pros’ percentage drafted of a particular fighter as compared with the tourney field. The Shark Autopsy Report also breaks down our coaches’ fighter usage in their Throwdown lineups, no other site in the industry does this! Oh yeah, and the graphics are dynamic and descriptive! Note: with the Shark Autopsy Report, you will see negative and positive variance percentages. The positive variance values showcase the DFS Pros were overweight on a particular fighter as compared to the tourney field and negative variance values showcase the DFS Pros were underweight on a particular fighter as compared to the tourney field. We want you to become great DFS players and our site’s coaches and staff produces top quality content and articles so that you too can take down the Throwdown GPP contest!
Are You Performing Weekly Lineup Deconstruction?
No matter the sport you determine to invest your bankroll, you should as a DFS player be analyzing the contests you enter winning lineups and the DFS Pros’ lineups within those contests. Don’t just look at the lineup of who won the contests you entered, but familiarize yourself with how the top 20 constructed their lineup and the DFS Pros’ lineups. If you are new to Daily Fantasy Sports and are not familiar with the DFS Pros that compete (not participate) in the respective sport you are playing, then go to RotoGrinders Leaderboards and look at each sport’s leaderboards. The top guys are there and familiarize yourself with their screen names. Lineup deconstruction in some way, shape or form should be part of your repertoire as a DFS player to revisit the prior week’s winning lineups, not just for the top heavy payout contests (think NFL Milly Maker, MMA Throwdown), but all of the contests you entered to see how the winning lineups were constructed. Additionally, you should be looking at your own lineups to determine WHY certain plays in your lineups went off and WHY other plays did not. This will ultimately make you a better player, but it will help you determine lineup construction trends you may not have otherwise noticed if you were not reviewing over past week’s lineups. If you don’t think that lineup construction is as much an art as it is a science, then you are simply kidding yourself and you need to rethink your methodology of lineup construction.
DraftKings $150K Throwdown Contest – June 8th UFC 238 Slate
Unlike the NFL Milly Maker contest with top prize of $1M, MMA doesn’t offer tourney top prize payouts that the casual DFS players will flock to. In fact, similar to other niche sports, MMA has smaller contest pools and smaller contest payouts, though the payouts in the Throwdown are really good. As compared to the NFL, the Throwdown is MMA’s equivalent to the Milly Maker. Like any other sport you intend to enter lineups, make sure that you are researching the contests and strategizing the right contests to enter for you and know that not every contest is created equal to another.
Shark Autopsy Report Author SOLO Wins UFC 238 Throwdown!
We finally have a solo winner of the Throwdown during UFC 238! It has been at least a few months since we’ve had a solo winner in the Throwdown. The author of the Shark Autopsy took down DraftKings $150K Throwdown and $30K. The lineup also took first place in the $20K Mini-Max, $25K Sprawl and the $2.5K Quarter Jukebox. You’re probably thinking how did you land on the lineup you landed on without a single fighter over $9K. To win the largest GPP tourneys, you have to be willing to take calculated risks based upon research and determining if players or fighters are in +EV situations. The risks I took were in my high ownership of Eddie Wineland, Calvin Kattar and Aljamain Sterling across the entire slate. The fights I concentrated with 100% ownership across the board were the Cejudo v. Moraes and Ferguson v. Cerrone. Were these good plays… Well let’s see what the coaches had to say of Eddie Wineland that would lead me to my higher ownership on Wineland:
FFootballGeek said in the coaches notes:
DFSniper said in the coaches notes:
BigMarley said in the coaches notes:
What you have to remember in MMA and other sports is, just because a play may seem like a bad play to the masses, you look deeper and it turns out that it may actually be a great play. Wineland a veteran of MMA, and in accordance with Chiefst on the pod has faced good MMA competition that he’s held his own in the octagon. Popov was an older newcomer, but as DFSniper said in his coaches notes, “Popov blocks punches with his face”. To me with Wineland bringing forward pressure was a recipe for Popov to get KO’d.
After watching how Sterling faced off against Munhoz on twitter feeds, the thoughts that came into my mind were “I don’t care how much ownership is on Sterling, I have to have him in at least 30-45% of my lineups, because he is going to crush Munhoz”. Munhoz looked scared in the face off with Sterling and Sterling looked ready and possessed to win the bout. It’s the little tidbits like these that get you on fighters that others may not necessarily be on, pay attention to the little things and they will pay massive dividends for you.
My ownership of Kattar was solely based upon FFootballGeek’s coaches notes and the pod, Kattar was facing an older fighter, who though is a solid fighter, relies on take downs with ground and pound. Kattar has excellent take down defense, points there for Kattar, but moreso I thought if Kattar gets to him early in this fight he’s going to win with his superior technical striking and he did just that. He had a knockdown and a TKO/KO and that was all that was needed for a 100 + win and 12.61x his salary.
FFootballGeek said in the coaches notes of Kattar:
Some players in DFS have instant success in a slate or two or maybe even as much as a few more slates, but then they fade into the DFS ether and you don’t hear from them again. Or worse they start to play very loose with their bankrolls and find they are not doing as well as they had when they first started and have to re-up their bankrolls and say the same old adage I hear and see so much in the industry, why can’t I catch a break and do as well as I had before when I was winning? Here’s my thoughts on these guys and gals in the industry who say this or have this mindset, FIX IT and DON’T COMPLIAN ABOUT IT! Players that enter the DFS arena for the first time and have instant success without a well formulated process and system are plain lucky, and then they fade because they don’t have a process, models, or plan of action for the day’s slate.
I am here to tell you the top DFS players in the world (DFSArmy has a multitude of them as coaches) didn’t get there with a defeatist attitude, we persevered, we study our processes and improve them, we deconstruct winning lineups of top DFS players and players who win contests and see where our lineups went wrong and work to fix them, we put a great deal of time and effort into becoming top players, many top players build and refine models and systems to optimally determine the best players each night, but more often than not we believe in our abilities to read situations and the landscape of the DFS sports we play in and we win!
As the author of the Shark Autopsy Report, I have grown accustomed to deconstructing my lineups, the lineups of the top DFS pros in the sports I write the Shark Autopsy Report for, the top winning lineup and the top 20 lineups for the big contests the Shark Autopsy Report covers. Thereby, I see the spots that won these massive GPP contests, the ones we want to win, and systematically deconstruct the lineup(s) leading me to a more thorough understanding of what wins and it has definitely helped my play. There is not a singular ideology that helps you take down a massive GPP, but the lineups that win these contests are artfully built with scientific technic that takes the $50,000 DraftKings salary budget and molds it to produce a Tournament Winning lineup!
Was the Throwdown Tourney Top Scoring Lineup “Da Nutz”?
So, was the author’s Throwdown winning GPP lineup “Da Nutz”?? The lineup as shown below, utilized $49,800 of the overall salary cap, the lineup fully faded Valentina Shevchenko the highest priced fighter on the card, Tatiana Suarez the highest owned fighter on the card, the Yan’s, and Lewis whom rounded out the remainder of the $9K + fighters. The highest owned fighters in the lineup was Tony Ferguson and Henry Cejudo, whom the author went ALL IN on both of those fights with 100% ownership in the fighters in both fights.
But was the top scoring Throwdown lineup “Da Nutz”? This lineup was not only the top scoring lineup on the slate, it was also Da Nutz lineup for the slate! The valuation of the $9K + fighters simply didn’t pay off their salaries, with all but Shevchenko coming in below 10x.
There’s been conversations and research performed on the Throwdown contest and achieving the top scoring non-tying lineup and the remaining salary parameters it takes to achieve that sole ownership of first place in the Throwdown. For that type of analysis, you really need to invest wisely and become a VIP member of the DFSArmy!
In “Da Nutz” lineup, four fighters had ownership in the mid-teens. The total average ownership of the top scoring Throwdown lineup was 23.05%. So to answer your question of what does it take to win a big GPP contest on DraftKings? Well that depends on the slate, but holistically, pick +EV spots in your lineup(s) that is projected to have lower ownership, a contrarian play, that if the player or fighter performs to your expectations and the ownership is low you will hit that top scoring lineup. That is what the author did, he knew 3 fighters that he had to have in his lineups (Sterling, Kattar, and Wineland) with low projected DFSArmy ownership of 17%, 14%, and 14% respectively.
We see a very similar dynamic across all DFS sports, no matter which sport it is, that picking your spots on a few players or fighters to be contrarian on is THE most optimal lineup construction methodology. Research has proven in the top heavy GPP contests, going full contrarian at more than a few lineup spots will lead to the least optimal lineup construction. If you read my NFL Shark Autopsy Report articles, you were able to see over the course of the 2018 – 2019 NFL season that this ideology held true at a very high percentage of the time within the top 10 scoring lineups in the Milly Maker contest.
Tourney Winner’s Total Number of Lineups
It never ceases to amaze me that many casual players across the DFS industry believe that the only way to win the top prize in the big GPP tournaments is to max enter the contests with the hope that one of those lineups will be the contest’s top scoring lineup. I am here as I was during the NFL season to tell you, you are DEAD WRONG! In the words of the leader of the DFSArmy’s above, “Damn @burns273 looks like just 20 lineups or so… you are a beast!!”, the author entered 20 lineups into the Throwdown for the UFC 238 slate. When the author placed 6th in the Milly Maker during week 16 of the 2018-2019 NFL season, he had 20-25 lineups in that contest. So…, if you want to keep saying that you have to max enter the GPP contest to win or place high in these top heavy huge payout and field contests, you’d just be wrong time and time again!
Stay tuned to the Shark Autopsy Report each week during the rest of the MMA 2019 season and the 2019 – 2020 NFL season, as the author will be inserting a new section into the Report that details how many lineups the top scoring lineup of the Milly Maker and Throwdown contests max entered.
So how many of the top 20 lineups max entered the UFC 238 Throwdown contest? Of the top 20 scoring lineups, only player max entered the contest or 5% of the top 20. Of the remaining 95% top 20 lineups that didn’t max enter the contest, the author’s 20 lineups entered was the highest.
Now does max entering the big tournaments lower your overall variance amongst the field and set you up in a position for one of the 150 lineups to hit “Da Nutz”, absolutely, but that is the mathematics of it isn’t it!
Analyzing DFS Pros Fighter Usage
The field was overweight on the following fighters: Tatiana Suarez at 63.80%, Marlon Moraes at 50%, and Pedro Munhoz at 43.07%. So did the DFS Pros’ go overweight or underweight with their ownerships of the three highest owned fighters? How did their fighter usage stack up?
The Shark Autopsy Report analyzes some of the top DFS Pros in the MMA ranks to determine where the spots (fighters) they placed their highest amount of ownership upon and the fighters they faded (minimal to no usage). Of the DFS Pros’ lineups we’ll be looking at are BDHolla89 and Moklovin. BDHolla89 is the number 1 ranked overall MMA player per RotoGrinders and Moklovin is 2nd ranked overall MMA player.
Additionally, we’ll be looking at ChiefST and BigMarley3 lineups. ChiefST is currently ranked 7th overall per RotoGrinders MMA rankings and BigMarley3 is currently ranked 12th overall per RotoGrinders MMA rankings. Additional notes about ChiefST and BigMarley3, they are MMA coaches for the DFSArmy and when you become a DFSArmy VIP Member, you will have access to them as MMA coaches for valuable lineup construction and fighter information that you would not get anywhere else in the industry! Additionally, BigMarley3 is MMA Expert for CBS Sports and SportsLine, winner of the coveted MMA ToutMaster, and is one of, if not, the top MMA bettor in the industry. ChiefST and BigMarley3 have qualified for the coveted DraftKings Knockout King Qualifier contest and have multiple first place large field GPP contest wins. It pays to have coaches like these paving the way for you!
Looking at BDHolla89 and Moklovin fighter usage and lineups, we can get an idea of the fighters they used as shown below. Let’s see their ownership of the Throwdown field’s highest owned fighters (Tatiana Saurez, Marlon Moraes, and Pedro Munhoz) to get a sense of how much valuation they place on these fighters.
As you can see in the above diagrams, BDHolla89 was overweight as compared to the field by 36% with respect to his ownership of Tatiana Saurez, utilizing Saurez in 100% of his lineups. BDHolla89 was overweight on the field by 2% in his utilization of Pedro Munhoz in 45% of his lineups. BDHolla89 was flat on his ownership with the field in his utilization of Marlon Moraes in 50% of his lineups. The fighters BDHolla89 placed significant ownership importance on outside of the top 3 owned fighters as detailed above, were Valentina Shevchenko at 56.82% owned, Angela Hill at 53.79% owned, and Petr Yan at 36.36% owned.
Moklovin was significantly underweight to the field in his ownership of Tatiana Saurez by 28%, Marlon Moraes by 28% and Pedro Munhoz by 23%. Moklovin’s ownership was flat across all of the fighters he utilized as compared to BDHolla89. Moklovin’s ownership in a single fighter did not exceed 36%, thereby placing more equity in having a larger pool of fighters and spreading them out more across all of his lineups than BDHolla89.
Side-by-Side Comparison of DFS Pros Fighter Usage
Moklovin’s ownership was more flat as compared to BDHolla89, as he did not fade a single fighter on the night (0-3 total lineups where a fighter was used), as compared with BDHolla89’s 4 fighters. If you were to expand the ownership viewpoint and look at 10 lineups or less with a respective fighter owned, it further proves the point that Moklovin distributes his ownership on fighters more evenly as compared to BDHolla89. BDHolla89 is a more risk adverse player taking more stands in his lineup construction than Moklovin on the slate.
DFSArmy’s Coaches Fighter Usage
Please note, that BigMarley3 did not play more than 25 lineups in the Throwdown, and the smaller sample size for his lineups will have more outliers as compared to the other top DFS players we are looking at. But, you can still see that BigMarley3 took stands in his lineup construction on the slate! Should he have played more lineups, his ownership in fighters of the slate may have been more flat as compared with what it was. His ownership was centered around five fighters of 50% ownership or greater, and was significantly overweight as compared to the field on these fighters.
ChiefST placed massive significance in his ownership of Tatiana Saurez at 82.54%. As compared to the field, ChiefST was underweight in his ownership in Marlon Moraes and Pedro Munhoz. ChiefST full faded 4 fighters on the card. ChiefST had solid ownership in Wineland, Kattar, and Ferguson, 3 of the top 5 scoring fighters on the card. But, his ownership in Grasso and Sterling was slightly above the field.
To conclude this installment of the Shark Autopsy Report, the DFS Army was started based on the concept that brings high-level tools, projections, and information to average players would allow them to compete on a level playing field with the DFS pros that have been dominating the industry for years. Check out our full Wall of Wins to see countless other screenshots from regular players utilizing DFS Army tools and advice to take down 6 figure prizes on a regular basis. Sign up as a DFS Army VIP today to take your game to the next level and start competing like a pro.