Hello DFSArmy! As NBA DFS continues to grow it is important to breakdown different game types that sites have to offer as they are available. Today we dive into the process behind creating, executing, and success in the “Tiers” contests on DraftKings. My name is Michael aka @MadnessDFS on Twitter, make sure to give me a follow as I’ll occasionally make updates to the article throughout the day as news breaks. But, you’ll mostly find me in our VIP coaching forums where I provide detailed lineup maneuvers and answer all lineup questions. With that said, let’s get it started!
What is “Tiers”?
Normally when it comes to playing DFS and NBA DFS especially, value is king, and finding guys that are underpriced is something we treasure while we try to avoid those who are overpriced. Well, Tiers is different in that there is zero salary or salary restrictions, simply pick your favorite guy from Tiers one through six. Tiers are broken up by production and matchup, so you won’t find a guy like Ish Smith in the same tier as James Harden or Giannis Antetokounmpo for obvious reasons. Tier one consists of a few elite players while tier six consists of seven or eight secondary options or guys that you may not really think about on a classic slate.
Attacking Tiers in MME
Normally when I play tiers contests I do it to MME. I’m usually not an MME guy in terms of main/classic formats, but tiers is a lot of fun to MME and much less to try and take in on a night to night basis. Usually, I will play a 20 entry max tournament and max that puppy out and head straight to the Domination Station. Many of you are already familiar and comfortable with the Domination Station, but if you feel like you could use some more insight into it, I suggest checking out the tutorial video below.
-> Domination Station Tutorial <-
Once you are in the Domination Station, you will want to select, NBA and then select the “Tiers” box under Draftkings. Then simply select your slate and we are cooking with gas. From there you will want to select the number of lineups you’re making, in this case, I will be making 20 so, enter 20. Then I always give my self a randomization percentage no matter if I’m making 150 lineups or just a single bullet. I normally keep this percentage between 1-10, so nothing all that crazy, but enough to set myself apart from the field. You will also want to give yourself 2-3 unique players, just something that I normally do when making a handful of lineups. You can run it in either “Optimal” or “Tournament” mode, that part is fully up to you. Now that we have the essentials set up we can begin manipulating the player pool. My first step in doing this is heading to the Coaches Notes as displayed below.
This is where I begin to make my player pool different and make it unique. I like to go tier by tier and play with the player’s ownership and projections, so I will start with tier one and go all the way down to tier six, doing a little something to each tier. As you see in the Coaches Notes, I have James Harden and Karl-Anthony Towns listed as 4-star plays with LeBron James being a 3-star and Kawhi Leonard being a 1-star as he was ruled out. First off, I will take Kawhi out of my player pool as you don’t want a zero in your lineup, the Domination Station will likely do this for you, but it doesn’t hurt to double-check. Now that we have Tier one broken down to three players we can start playing with their ownerships. Since Harden and Towns are both 4-star plays, I would consider having a similar amount of each and then leaving a small percentage for LeBron James as a 3-star. Let’s say I want to split ownership on the two, I will set my min exposure to 35% and max to 45% then the optimizer will give the remaining percentage to LeBron James. Let’s see how this plays out in a trial optimize.
So the optimizer spit out eight teams with Harden and Towns on them, while LeBron is on four teams and I think that sounds pretty good, so we can move on to tier two and so on. You will want to repeat this process for each tier, and we will actually move on to let’s say tier six as it will have more players for us to look at. Below are the Coaches Notes for Tier six…
You will notice we have a player in this tier that is labeled as a core. There are a few ways we can go about manipulating core plays in the Domination Station. The first way is to simply hit the lock button on them. This strategy is higher risk but it is important to set yourself apart from the field, so if you can handle taking the risk, go 100% on a guy in one tier, if he finishes as the highest scorer in the tier you have already put all 20 of your lineups at a huge advantage. Another way to attack a core player is to “Love” or “Adore” the player and set a max exposure of 80-85% if you don’t feel comfortable going with 100% exposure. So, for example, let’s say we want to max our Lou Williams exposure at 80% and we also have a 4-star play in Bradley Beal that we want to “Like” and get at least some exposure to so we’ll give him a min exposure of 5-15%. Let’s see what the DS gives us here…
So after maxing my Williams exposure at 80% and getting a minimum of 10% on Beal, this is how much of each player the DS gives me for tier six. When making 20 lineups I usually like to pick two or three tiers that I feel confident in and make a stand in those tiers, whether it be locking players or going way overweight the field. Say you lock a player in tiers one and three and both of these guys do as you project, you have already set yourself so far ahead of the field that if you hit on a couple of other tiers (which you should as your ownership will be more spread out in those tiers that you feel less confident in) you could see yourself sitting pretty in your contest. The thing that makes MME’ing tiers contest more simple is late-breaking injury news is less of a hassle. Say for example Bradley Beal gets ruled out after you optimize either close to or after lock, you don’t need to scramble to see who benefits or which $3k scrub you need to jam into your lineup. You simply take him out of your player pool, re-run your optimization and boom you’re all set. I know I didn’t get super deep into some other facets of tiers, but this is exactly how simple it can be to build yourself 20 entries and max out a 20-entry contest. The more you practice, the more you will mold a process that is consistent with your style of play.
As always I appreciate everyone who gave the article a read! Feel free to mix it up with me in our coaching forums as news breaks and lock approaches. If you don’t know about them, our two newest pages contain Breaking News and our exclusive Coaches’ Notes……both invaluable for late-breaking news and pivots in NBA.