How to Win DFS Tournaments: Expert Strategy Guide

The most popular tournaments on DraftKings and FanDuel let you throw down $5 or $10 with a shot at six figures. We all enter with the same goal: outsmart the field and walk away with a six-figure score. Nobody can promise you that result, it's a low-probability, high-variance outcome, but the edge that improves your odds is real, precisely because these tournaments are packed with players who won't or can't put in the work. I've spent years grinding the biggest low-stakes GPPs, and that edge compounds over a large sample. Let me break down how to win DFS tournaments the way I actually approach them, with the tools woven into the reasoning rather than bolted on the end.

Go deeper: What Is DFS? A Beginner's Guide to Daily Fantasy Sports.

A quick note on the name: I started Awesemo.com (now Stokastic.com) for exactly this reason. The strategy below is the same framework our tools are built around today.

In Summary (TL;DR)

• Winning a GPP is about win probability, not raw projection. Your highest-scoring lineup is rarely your biggest winner because scores are heavily correlated across the field.
• The single most important skill is balancing projection against ownership. You want a lineup that is differentiated from the field yet still likely to post a high score.
• Correlation is the engine. Stack players whose good games happen together so a single hot game-script lifts several of your spots at once.
• Leverage off the chalk. Find players who are owned lower than they should be, and avoid the spots where everyone is piled onto the same name.
• Have a repeatable process and stick to it. I run mine through the Stokastic Sims, Ownership Projections, and Top Stacks rather than rebuilding my approach every night.
• New to Stokastic+? Code STOK10 takes 10% off your first payment: see plans and pricing or jump straight to Stokastic+ checkout.

Why Most DFS Tournament Lineups Are Drawing Dead

Only about 85% of entry fees get paid back out as prizes, so not everyone can win on DraftKings and FanDuel. Based on the historical research I've done over the years, only a minority of lineups entered actually carry a positive expected value once you account for that rake. The catch is that the field isn't evenly distributed: once you climb past the easiest contests, a much larger share of the lineups around you are built by sharp players, which is why contest selection matters as much as lineup construction.

It helps to split a lineup's chances into two questions: its chance of scoring high enough to cash, and its chance of a top finish. The first is mostly about overall projection and correlation. The second swings on how the most popular picks actually perform. A lineup that's more differentiated from the field can have a better chance of winning if its score is moderately high on a night the chalk disappoints.

This is the part novices miss. It's rare that my highest-scoring lineups are my biggest winners, because lineup scores are so correlated across the field. I've had more success on nights the winning score came in low. Managing the trade-off between projection and differentiation is the single most critical factor in GPPs, and it's the one most people overlook.

Start With Projections, but Don't Stop There

For years, accurate projections were all you needed, because the field wasn't good at identifying the best plays each night. That's no longer true. Plugging in the highest-projected lineup won't carry you in modern tournaments, but it's still a great starting point for gauging how strong a lineup is. If you have the highest-projected lineup, you're a favorite in one-on-one matchups against every other lineup in the field. That's great for your cash equity. It is not a great proxy for your odds of finishing first.

If you don't build your own projections, you don't have to. With Stokastic Projections, you can narrow the player pool to only the players who are average-or-better plays on a given slate. Spend most of your salary while leaning toward high-value rankings and your lineup will carry a solid median projection by default.

A few things matter more than the raw number:

• Upside over median. To win a GPP you usually need a player to post a game at least one standard deviation above projection, which happens roughly one in six times. Target higher-variance players and you can hit that ceiling closer to one in five or one in four. Think the NBA guy who gets a heavier run when he's the hot hand, or the MLB hitter with real power but a low average. Stokastic's Boom/Bust projections exist to surface exactly this: which players carry the ceiling you need rather than just the safest floor.
• Accuracy. Projections only help if they're at least as sharp as your competition's. I sanity-check mine against the market: sportsbook lines have their own biases, but books have to be fairly accurate because they're putting their own money down. When my number is far off the market, I dig into why before I trust it.

Correlation Is the Engine of a Winning GPP Lineup

Picking the single best-scoring player across a bunch of separate games is brutally hard from a pure odds standpoint. Correlation is how you beat that math. You pair players whose good games tend to happen together, so one favorable game-script lifts several of your roster spots at once.

Take an MLB stack. If a team breaks out for a seven-run inning, the hitters batting near each other in that order all cash in together, and so does the run-scoring environment around them. That's the swing you want. What you want to avoid is the opposite, where one player's big game comes at the expense of a teammate on your roster, because that just produces a steady, unremarkable score instead of the outlier you need to win.

The hard part is keeping a stack actually correlated. This is where the Stokastic Sims do the heavy lifting: they factor batting-order adjacency and game correlation into the build for you, so your stack lands near each other in the order instead of getting scattered across the lineup. Top Stacks ranks which team stacks have the highest forecasted ceiling on the slate, which is where I start my MLB and NHL builds. Correlation looks different in every sport, so it's worth learning the specifics for the one you play most: I cover the baseball version in my MLB DFS strategy guide and the run-correlation version in my NBA DFS strategy guide.

Here's the part that's hard to do by hand. Contest Sims rebuild the actual tournament you're entering and run it tens of thousands of times, so instead of one projected score you get a distribution: how often each lineup wins, cashes, or finishes near-last across that whole simulated field. The tool surfaces which builds carry the best win probability rather than the best median, which is exactly the projection-versus-ownership trade-off this article is about, automated.

Build for win probability, not one projected score. Stokastic Sims simulate the actual contest tens of thousands of times and score lineups by how often they win, not just by median points. New to Stokastic+? Code STOK10 gets you 10% off your first payment of any Stokastic+ plan: start here.

How to Be Contrarian Without Just Being Reckless

Every lineup wins under some set of outcomes. You want yours to be the winning lineup under the broadest set of outcomes. You get there by overlapping less with the rest of the field while still being a realistic high scorer. The leverage matters more the steeper the payout: you'd differentiate harder in a winner-take-all than in a contest where 20% of the field cashes, because chalk helps you reach a cashing score but does very little to win one.

Ownership. Sound DFS ownership leverage is the simplest way to differentiate: you start by rostering lower-owned players. The fewer entries that share a player with you, the more that player helps your lineup win when he hits. The sweet spot is usually a blend of the best values plus a couple of genuine sleepers, so you keep real cashing equity while opening up paths to first. To predict ownership without spending hours dissecting the slate, I lean on Stokastic Ownership Projections, which are built on an algorithm I developed over years of playing. Leverage is just rostering a player at less than his "fair" ownership when the field is over-piled somewhere else.

Roster construction. Another way to get differentiated is to pair players who don't usually show up together. Two NFL tight ends might each be popular on their own, but a build with one tight end in the flex can appear in far fewer lineups than their individual ownerships suggest.

Spending under the cap. You can also leave salary on the table, which is especially powerful in large-field showdowns on small slates. One of my biggest wins came in a 104,575-person NFL showdown on DraftKings where I only spent $47,600 of the $50,000 cap. Only one other person had that exact lineup, so the prize split far fewer ways than usual. The trade-off was real: every one of my players had to outscore each player within $2,400 of salary. In sports where the perfect lineup often comes in under the cap, that's a viable edge, and it's the kind of build the the Sims can construct deliberately rather than by accident.

Diversifying multiple entries. If you're firing more than one lineup, make them work together. Two lineups that differ by a single player are a trap: on the night one finishes first, the other finishes right behind it, which crushes the expected value of both. The other extreme, building a second lineup that needs the opposite result, is usually a weak lineup by construction. The best path is to make sure each lineup differs from the others by at least three players. The Sims's exposure controls let me set this up across a portfolio instead of eyeballing it.

Trade-offs. DFS is no easy game. You'll rarely find a player who's optimal in value and projection and low-owned. Winning is about finding the inefficiencies: players owned higher or lower than they should be. And context matters. Evaluate projection and ownership for the whole lineup, not player by player. Playing nothing but sub-1% plays is a losing strategy even if every one of them is underowned. The ideal build mixes a few high-probability spots (which inevitably carry higher ownership) with a few lower-probability, lower-owned dart throws.

My Process for Building Tournament Lineups

Good DFS tournament strategy isn't just lineup theory; it's a routine you can repeat. Have a set strategy and stick to it. Reevaluate every few weeks, not every day. The goal is to conserve your energy for the few decisions that actually matter by systematizing the rest. Here's roughly what a main slate looks like for me (ET):

1. Early afternoon: Review each team's recent games and adjust my model inputs (snap counts and target share for NFL, minutes for NBA, batting order and matchups for MLB).
2. Late afternoon: Compare my projections against the market and other sources, and flag where I differ. Then I decide whether I'm right or the market is.
3. Pre-lock: Watch strategy content to stay current on news and get exposed to viewpoints that challenge my own. Stokastic's Live Before Lock show is built for exactly this window.
4. Build: Start building on the Sims. I look for players showing up far more or far less than their projected ownership and take a position on each.
5. Trim: Sort through the generated lineups and decide which ones to actually enter.
6. Final check: Re-check entries on-site so a process error doesn't sneak in. After lock, I update for late news; a ruled-out player or a batting-order change can change everything, and late swap is the highest-value in-slate move you can make.
7. Review: After the games, I check whether my assumptions held and where the model missed.

DFS can be a full-time job, but it doesn't have to be. I built these tools so you can compete in today's games without making it your full-time job. Stokastic's scoring and ownership projections compress most of that timeline, and you can simplify further by capping how many lineups you make or how many sites you play. Automate everything you reasonably can.

Cash Games Versus Tournaments Need Opposite Builds

One caution before you take any of this into a cash game. Everything above is GPP strategy: leverage, contrarian ownership, ceiling, and contest simulation are tournament tools. Cash games (double-ups and 50/50s) only ask you to beat about half the field, so they reward the highest-floor lineup you can build straight from projections, not the simulated-tournament pool. Don't run your tournament build in cash, and don't bring cash-game chalk-stacking into a GPP. They are different games. Stokastic's Sims and "percentage to first" framing are for tournaments; for cash, build for floor.

A Realistic Word on Variance

DFS, and MLB especially, is a high-variance game. Judge yourself on long-run process, not one night's result. The best lineup you can build pre-lock can still finish near the bottom on a given night, and a build you weren't thrilled about can take down the whole thing. That's the range. None of this is a promise of profit. It's an edge you press over a large sample, with proper bankroll management so the swings don't take you out. Start with the easiest, biggest low-stakes tournaments, where the field puts in the least work, and step up as your competition sharpens.

How to Win DFS Tournaments: Final Thoughts

DFS is, at its core, a competition, and winning long-term requires an edge over your opponents. The less experienced the field, the easier that edge is to find, which is why I always tell newer players to start in the huge low-stakes tournaments. You don't have to be an expert to beat low stakes, because so many entrants simply aren't putting in the work to build good lineups. Apply the basic strategy for your sport, balance projection against ownership, and you'll go a long way.

You can't optimize every part of your game at once. It's death by a thousand cuts. Pick the highest-leverage areas and work them one at a time. Watch other players' content, find where your approach differs from theirs, do a little research, and figure out whether your read or theirs is sharper. Iterate enough times and you'll be ready for almost anything.

We all enter for the love of sports and competition, but with real prizes on the line every day, the work pays off. Know your sport, and also learn the general DFS concepts, because tournaments are structured similarly across every sport: projecting performance and ownership carries over no matter what you're playing.

Ready to put a real process behind your builds? Stokastic Sims simulate the contest tens of thousands of times and rank your lineups by win probability, while Ownership Projections and Top Stacks handle the leverage and stacking decisions for you. New to Stokastic+? Use code STOK10 for 10% off your first payment: start your Stokastic+ plan.

FAQ: How to Win DFS Tournaments

What is the single most important skill in DFS tournaments?

Balancing projection against ownership. Your goal is a lineup that's differentiated from the field but still a realistic high scorer, because your raw projected total mostly drives your chance of cashing, not your chance of finishing first.

Why isn't my highest-projected lineup usually my biggest winner?

Because lineup scores are heavily correlated across the field. When the chalk does well, thousands of entries rise together, so a high projected score doesn't separate you. You tend to win on nights the popular plays disappoint and a more differentiated, moderately-high lineup pulls ahead.

How do I use ownership to win a GPP?

Find players owned lower than they should be and avoid spots where the field is over-piled on one name. Blend a few high-probability (higher-owned) plays with a couple of genuine low-owned sleepers. Stokastic Ownership Projections estimate the field's ownership so you can target leverage instead of guessing.

Do tournament and cash-game lineups use the same strategy?

No. Tournaments reward ceiling, correlation, and contrarian ownership; cash games reward the highest floor. The Sims and "percentage to first" framing are GPP tools. For cash, build the safest projection-based lineup, since you only need to beat about half the field.

Can any tool promise I win DFS tournaments?

No, and you should be skeptical of anyone who claims it can. DFS is high-variance, and even the strongest pre-lock lineup can finish poorly on a given night. The Stokastic Sims, Projections, Ownership are built to give you a repeatable edge you press over a large sample, not a promise of any single result.

How much does Stokastic+ cost, and is there a discount?

Pricing for all Stokastic+ plans (Sims, Projections, Ownership, Top Stacks, Live Before Lock) is on the pricing page. New subscribers can use code STOK10 for 10% off the first payment.