DraftKings Reignmakers | Week 2 Contest Recap

The Week 2 DraftKings Reignmakers slate wrapped up last night and we saw some mammoth totals at the top of leaderboards. This week, if you didn’t prioritize players from the Dolphins/Ravens game then you were fighting an uphill battle. Among the winners of the biggest contests in each of the five tiers, all of them included at least three players from that game.

Last week I described how a key strategy in Reignmakers is to find a stack with upside that contains non-Superstar players. In week one this was successfully done with Jalen Hurts to AJ Brown stacks. This week the trio of Tua Tagovailoa, Tyreek Hill, and Jaylen Waddle not only fulfilled that criteria but also gave you access to an incredibly condensed target tree. Hill and Waddle combined for 32 targets while the rest of Miami’s receiving corps combined for five.

Lineup construction differed a lot in week two as well. There was only three Superstar running backs to choose from in Christian McCaffrey, Najee Harris, and Jonathan Taylor, but it was non-Superstar Nick Chubb who dominated with 32.3 points, over 12 points more than McCaffrey in second.

Even more surprising, there were five Superstar wide receivers to choose from but only Cooper Kupp had a fantasy-winning output with 35.8 points. CeeDee Lamb, Deebo Samuel, Ja’Marr Chase, and Davante Adams all had 15 fantasy points or fewer. All this to say that teams don’t necessarily need to include Superstar players just for the sake of it. In fact, two of the winners this week did just that.  

Here is a look at the winning teams in each tier from the main slate:

Core - $50K Fiat Frenzy

The winner of the $50K Fiat Frenzy at the Core level was kirkdiese with a whopping 197.72 points. This team had four players from the Dolphins/Ravens game led by Superstar Lamar Jackson. If Mark Andrews was swapped for Amon-Ra St. Brown, this would have been the best possible lineup to play. Kirkdiese played 26 lineups in this contest, however, only two of those teams featured Dolphins/Ravens game stacks. The second game stack placed 143rd. Unlike the winner of the Core contest last week, kirkdiese spread out his ownership, rostering 14 different quarterbacks in the process.

Rare - $80K Fiat Frenzy

The winner of the $80K Fiat Frenzy at the Rare level was yet-again, kirkdiese, who played the same lineup in this contest. Kirkdiese had 8 lineups in this one, and surprisingly, among the 26 lineups in the Core and 8 lineups in the Rare, this was the only team that was entered in both contests. This worked out very nicely for kirkdiese, who profited $15,000 between the two contest wins.

Elite - $250K Fiat Frenzy

The winner of the $250K Fiat Frenzy at the Elite level was austin03 who scored 185.66 points with a Tua-Hill-Waddle triple stack. This team was the only winner to not include any Ravens and also the only team to have four players with over 40 fantasy points. Austin03 had two teams in this contest, the second featured a Lamar Jackson-Rashod Bateman stack and finished in 174th place. In this lineup, a subpar game from Joe Mixon was more than made up for by a 42.4 outing from Amon-Ra St. Brown. This team also did not include a Superstar, but it didn’t matter because anything other than a Cooper Kupp swap would have dramatically decreased the total.

Legendary - $100K Fiat Frenzy

The winner of the $100K Fiat Frenzy at the Legendary level was mrinn14 who played a Lamar Jackson-Mark Andrews stack with a Tyreek Hill bring-back. This was the only team amongst the winners to not play Jalen Waddle and this team managed to win despite a 2.2 point performance from Jerry Jeudy. This was the lowest-scoring winner by a healthy margin and would have placed 77th in the Core tournament. Mrinn14 had 7 teams in this contest and successfully placed 15th or better with 3 of them, including this winner.

Reignmaker - $100K "The Alpha"

And finally, the winner of the $100K "The Alpha" at the Reignmaker tier was Bales, who scored more than 20 points more than second place. Bales had a four-man gamestack of the Dolphins/Ravens game including Tua, Hill, Waddle, and Andrews. This was the second winning team to not feature a Superstar player.

Although the stack was rounded out by a dud from Rhamondre Stevenson, it didn’t matter. If Bales wanted to optimize this team with, say, a Jonathan Taylor Reignmaker card, this would be a -EV strategy because the cheapest version on the marketplace is currently listed at $25,000, more than the top prize for this contest. Per the blockchain, Bales purchased the Rhamondre card for just $5,600.

This is the kind of secondary market strategy that is so important in Reignmakers.