DraftKings Diary | Buys, Sells, and What to Look for on DraftKings Reignmakers This Week

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In the DraftKings Diary, each week Lucky Trader's Jason Rouslin will walk through his buys, sells, and team lookahead to give you insights from an experienced DraftKings Reignmakers player.

Check out Jason's full portfolio with the Lucky Trader Reignmakers Portfolio Tool.

Week 4 was one of the most anticipated weeks of the inaugural season, as the new Deep Roster format debuted this week, providing another $300,000 in prizes to the Reignmakers platform.

It also helped create utility for all the player card NFTs likely received over the past few months, including defenses and kickers. Outside of showdown formats, and even in those, they project far from the optimal lineup, but with the new Deep Roster format, they become just as important as the other cards in the lineup.

The Deep Roster format also helps space out the cards providing a higher starting EV for all the other slates this week. In the DraftKings Diary article each week, I will cover some of the aforementioned stats, and how I attacked the week in review.

Lastly, I will set the stage for Week 5 and touch on key pointers for the upcoming slate, including which cards I may be interested in buying or selling for this week and beyond.

Week 4 Slate Review

These were the top lineups I played from the available Week 4 DraftKings Reignmakers slates.

Slate 1: TNF- Miami @ Cincinnati

Captain: Tyreek Hill
Flex: Tee Higgins
Flex: Joe Burrow
Flex: Joe Mixon

Slate 2: Minnesota @ New Orleans

Captain: Justin Jefferson
Flex: Greg Joseph
Flex: Chris Olave
Flex: Adam Thielen

Slate 3: Main Slate

QB: Jared Goff
RB: Josh Jacobs
WR: DK Metcalf
WR/T: TJ Hockenson
Flex: Austin Ekeler

Slate 4: Kansas City @ Tampa Bay

Captain: Mike Evans
Flex: Tom Brady
Flex: Patrick Mahomes
Flex: Travis Kelce

Slate 5: Los Angeles Rams @ San Francisco

Captain: Cooper Kupp
Flex: SF D/ST
Flex: SF D/ST
Flex: SF D/ST

Week 4 Diary

In the beginning stages of the season and the building out of the portfolio, I focused on creating two elite-level lineups within a standard deviation, or two, of an optimal projected lineup. With a couple of nice pack rips and strategic marketplace buying, I reached the goal of having at least one high-quality Elite lineup.

I started Week 4 with around 650 cards in my portfolio, ranging from low serial Elites to Core cards, and created an initial goal to make around 100 lineups for Week 4 contests.

However, it was a rather difficult task, as the injury bug hit the collection significantly this week.

Amon-Ra St. Brown is one of the most significant investments in the portfolio, holding two Elites, multiple Rares, and over 15 Cores. His being unavailable made things a bit tricky, so here's how I attacked the slate without one of my top players.

Week 4 Top Lineup Strategy/Tier & Contest

Contest: Elite Level Main Slate Fiat Frenzy | $250,000 GTD, $100,000 to First

Lineup:

QB: Jalen Hurts
RB: Austin Ekeler
WR: Rashod Bateman
WR/T: Devonta Smith
Flex: Gabe Davis

Hurts paired with Smith, along with Ekeler, St. Brown, and Kelce is as close as my portfolio gets to an optimally projected lineup week in and week out. However, with St. Brown catching the injury bug and Kelce playing on Sunday night, I needed to replace a lot of firepower in my main lineup this week.

With plenty of options in the portfolio to choose from, including T.J Hockenson, Rashaad Penny and more, I instead focused on the Buffalo versus Baltimore game.

The game held one of the highest game totals of the entire slate and provided a ton of intrigue, making it seem like an excellent way to replace the lost production.

Keeping the nucleus of Hurts/Ekeler/Smith together for the main lineup, I decided to chase that headline game and added a Bills/Ravens stack that my portfolio could yield.

Given the prospects of that stack being a WR1 from one team and the WR2 from the other, the replacement cards didn't have a projection that was far off of what Kelce and St. Brown were projected to score. The expected value of the lineup was around $250 going into the week, but sadly the lineup underperformed the projections by roughly 25 percent and finished in a min-cash position.

Week 4 Buys & Sells

After growing the portfolio thru packs in the first few weeks, I've shifted strategy and instead focused on adding core pieces thru the Reignmakers Marketplace. This week I began adding back the Tampa Bay WRs, as their price relative to peers was still relatively low and many pundits weren't sure if they'd suit up.

I also added several J.K. Dobbins cards, as he finally looks healthy after a long absence and doesn't have much competition in the Ravens backfield, at least not until Gus Edwards returns in a few weeks. While most of my buys came from the marketplace this week, the one "pack rip" I opened this week featured a Gabe Davis Elite card. It was a card I had my eye on for quite a while and was found in a Rare Momentum pack, a solid pack break for the week.

Now, turning the attention to the sell side, I decided to cash in on Brandon Aiyuk's showdown slate and sell his Elite level card for just above market value. Given my portfolio only had one Elite-level card for the showdown contest, selling it and replacing it with a Rare-level card added liquidity to my portfolio while not giving up any expected value.

Week 5 Lookahead

Week 5 brings five separate DraftKings Reignmakers slates.

Slate #1: Colts vs. Broncos
Slate #2: Giants vs. Packers
Slate #3: Main Slate
Slate #4: Bengals vs. Ravens
Slate #5: Raiders vs. Chiefs

One of the main points of emphasis for my portfolio this week will be capturing value in spite of Lamar Jackson and Pat Mahomes not being available for the main slate.

While neither is available on the Main Slate, they are both available for the Deep Roster format, and for this week, I'll use them in those contests attempting to capture more expected value in the Deep Roster format rather than through showdowns.

We'll report on this strategy in next week's DraftKings Dairy.

In addition to adding in Jackson and Mahomes in the Deep Roster format, I'll be adding team defense of the Denver Broncos, who are going up against a very banged-up Indianapolis Colts squad and will likely be without their best player in Jonathan Taylor on Thursday, set to miss his first game as a start.

Also, the Jacksonville Jaguars will be another addition of mine this week who has a plus matchup against the Texans and have shown the ability to score on both sides of the ball this year.

Moving on to another slate that draws my attention this week is the Sunday Morning Slate in London featuring the Packers and the Giants. Saquon Barkley's reemergence as a star in the league has made it such that his likelihood of being the optimal scorer for the Giants is significantly high. Given that, and his overall secondary market being relatively liquid, he will make a solid investment for this specific slate. Romeo Doubs continues to impress on the Packers' side and has yet to see his prices skyrocket either. Using Barkley's non-superstar status and Doubs's value, the cost to roster both of them in an Elite lineup is $470.00, and at Rare for just $62.

Lastly, a few other situations deserve monitoring and could provide advantages this week and beyond when continuing to build a portfolio. There are obvious situations like Javonte Williams getting hurt and being done for the season, which brings up Melvin Gordon's value. Or Mitchell Trubisky being benched for Kenny Pickett and, in turn, sending his values up over 200 percent.

There are a few I'll be monitoring this week. First is Rashod Bateman's status. While the impact of him not playing is rather obvious, meaning Mark Andrews gaining even more of a target share, it also brings up the likelihood of Andrews being the optimal Tight End in Deep Roster formats as well.

The other situation is the injury to Falcons Running Back Cordarrelle Patterson, who will be out for at least the next four weeks. The Falcons drafted running back Tyler Allgeier in the fifth round this past offseason and are expecting big things from him. His prices are still reasonable for someone that could be in a starting roll on a solid offense and looked productive in his limited action after taking over for Patterson—having finished the day with a stat line of 10 rushes for 84 yards and 1 catch for 20 yards.

On that same team, the injury to Patterson should also open up, even more, touches for Kyle Pitts and Drake London in the next few weeks, increasing their expected value. They’ve got a divisional matchup with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this week, who will be looking to get back on track after suffering back-to-back losses.

Looking for a few more additional tips for Week 5, including who to target in this week's Marketplace? Check out the Weekly News & Marketplace Inefficiencies article here! Good luck in Week 5 with all your Reignmaker Contests!

Author Bio

Jason Rouslin

Hailing from the great, but little, state of Rhode Island, Jason decided that year-round golf was too hard to pass up. So, after 29 years of bitter cold, and only being able to play golf 4 months a year (comfortably), upended those roots and moved to the sunshine state, Florida. 5 years later Jason is the proud Dad of two young boys and a black lab Bella. . In his professional time he can be found diving into the DraftKings Reignmaker game, researching PGA Tour stats, and investing, with a heavy focus on equity markets. In his spare time, playing golf is likely on the docket. If not that, then it's likely something to do with Disney, as he enjoys just about everything, from the theme parks to the Marvel movies. Shoot him a message on Twitter @dfsgolfer23, he'd love to chat!

Disclaimer: The author or members of the Lucky Trader staff may own NFTs discussed in this post. Furthermore, the information contained on this website or the Lucky Trader mobile application is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as financial advice. AI may have assisted in the creation of this content.