Stokastic Sims: Contest Archetype & Percent To First

Two of the most common questions we get in office hours look unrelated until you line them up. One is "which contest archetype do you use when modeling player ownership projections?" The other is "when using the Sims for cash games, what percent to first should I use?" They're actually two halves of the same question, and it's the question that decides whether the Stokastic Sims are grading your DFS lineups for the contest you're actually in or for some contest you're not. Archetype tells the Sims what kind of field to build; percent to first tells them how to rank your lineups against that field. Get those two dials right and everything downstream, the ROI numbers, the leverage, the lineup you finally enter, is answered for the correct contest. By the end of this you'll set both off the contest's own lobby page in about ten seconds.

In Summary

• Contest Archetype controls what the Sims generate: the KIND of field you're up against. Low Stakes builds a softer, chalkier field; High Stakes builds a sharper one; Marquee builds the day's flagship.
• Percent To First controls how the Sims grade the lineups they built: a high setting rewards contrarian, ceiling-chasing builds; a low setting rewards consistent, chalkier ones.
• The clean way to set percent to first is the contest's real first-place share, e.g. $200K to first out of an $800K prize pool is 25%.
• Two settings, two jobs: one models the field, the other scores your lineups against it. Match both to the contest in your lobby.

Watch The Video

Before the settings, it helps to hear how the field itself changes as you move up in stakes, because that's exactly what the archetype dial is modeling. In our High Stakes show, Neil Orfield and Travis Pettey get into why the sharpest fields end up looking so similar to each other.

Watch on YouTube

Two Settings, Two Different Jobs

The reason these settings confuse people is that they sound like they do the same thing, and they don't. Here's the split that makes the rest of this easy: archetype and pool size decide what field gets generated; percent to first decides how the lineups in that field get graded. One builds the opponents, the other scores your builds against them.

That matters because you can set one perfectly and still get numbers that don't fit your contest if the other is wrong. Model a soft Low Stakes field and then grade it like a top-heavy tournament and the Sims will hand you contrarian builds nobody in that soft field is fading. Model a sharp Marquee field and grade it for consistency and, in a top-heavy contest, you'll leave the ceiling you needed on the table. So we take them one at a time: first the field, then the grade.

Contest Archetype: What Kind Of Field You're Modeling

Archetype is the Sims asking a single question: what kind of contest are you entering? As we cover in office hours, the archetype describes the type of contest you're entering, and the two levers behind it are buy-in and field size. Those two things together decide how sharp your opponents are, which is the whole point of simulating a field in the first place.

Here's how the three shake out:

Archetype	What it models	The field you're up against
Low Stakes	The huge, cheap fields (think a $0.25 mini-max)	Softer, chalkier opponents; more mistakes to exploit
High Stakes	Higher buy-in, smaller fields	Sharper lineups; fewer soft spots
Marquee	The day's flagship (big prize pool, huge entries)	The biggest, deepest field of the day

The row that surprises newer players is High Stakes. You'd think the toughest fields would be the most varied, but the opposite tends to be true, and it's why the archetype dial changes your builds so much. As Travis Pettey laid out on our High Stakes show with host Neil Orfield, the high-stakes regulars are more solid but they play a lot more similar to each other, leaning on the same chalky, game-theory style, so a couple dozen of them in a smaller field end up overlapping and playing right into each other's hands. A sharper field is a more concentrated field, and a concentrated field is one the Sims will want to attack with contrarian pivots off the plays everyone shares.

That's the answer to the ownership-modeling question directly: you set the archetype to the contest you're actually entering, because that's the field whose ownership you're trying to beat. Modeling a Marquee's ownership when you're grinding $3 double-ups points the Sims at the wrong opponents entirely. If you're still deciding which contests deserve your entries in the first place, our DFS contest selection guide is the companion to this one.

Percent To First: How The Sim Grades Your Lineups

Now the second dial, and it's the one people reach for too fast. Percent to first does not change the field that gets generated. Pool size and archetype already did that. What percent to first changes is how the Sims rank the lineups they built. A higher percent to first ranks the more contrarian, ceiling-chasing lineups higher; a lower percent to first favors the consistent, chalkier builds.

So the setting is a payout-shape dial. A top-heavy tournament, where first place is a huge share of the prize pool and everything below it is scraps, demands that you win outright, so you want the high, contrarian end. A flat payout, where cashing looks a lot like min-cashing looks a lot like the middle, rewards consistency, so you slide it down.

The clean way to set it, rather than eyeballing it, is to use the contest's real first-place share: take the money going to first and divide it by the total prize pool. If a contest pays $200,000 to first out of an $800,000 pool, that's 25 percent, and that's your setting. You're not guessing at "how contrarian should I be"; you're reading the number off the contest and letting the payout structure answer for you.

Quick rule: first-place prize ÷ total prize pool = your percent to first. A top-heavy Milly Maker lands high; a flat double-up lands low.

That's also why percent to first is the wrong tool for cash games, which is worth its own read if that's your format. In a double-up you're sorting on projection, not on this simulated grade at all, so the dial does little here; cash lives one lever over. This article is about the tournament settings, where percent to first does real work.

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A Worked Example: Setting Both For A $200K Marquee

Let me walk the exact clicks I'd make for a top-heavy Marquee, because seeing the two dials work together is where it clicks. I open the Contest Sims for my sport, load the slate, and set the archetype to Marquee so the field the Sims generate looks like the flagship's actual field — a big prize pool with a huge, deep set of entries. That's the first job done: the opponents are now the right opponents.

Then I set the grade. I pull up the contest in the lobby, see that first place pays $200,000 out of an $800,000 pool, and set percent to first to 25. Now the Sims aren't just building a Marquee-shaped field, they're ranking my lineups by how often they'd actually take down that top-heavy payout. The build that rises to the top is the one built to take down a top-heavy contest, not the safe one that min-cashes.

Contrast that with a $5 Zone Special on the same night. Same slate, completely different dials: I'd drop the archetype to Low Stakes to model that softer, chalkier field, and because the Zone's payout is flatter, I'd pull percent to first down toward consistency. Same tool, same slate, two different contests, two different answers, exactly as it should be. The 25 percent I used on the Marquee would be actively wrong here, chasing a ceiling a flat payout doesn't reward.

The takeaway: don't carry one contest's settings into another. Reset the archetype to the field and the percent to first to the payout every time you switch contests, even on the same slate.

Where These Settings Meet Pool Size And Uniques

Archetype and percent to first don't work alone. The third piece of the generation half is pool size: the number of opponent lineups the Sims build, which you set to mimic your real contest's size rather than maxing it out, since a realistic field beats a big one. Change the pool size or the archetype and you're changing the field itself, which means a full re-run; adjust only how the existing output is graded or filtered — a percent-to-first change, an ROI boost, an exposure cap — and you don't.

Uniques then sits on the far end, once the field is built and graded. It trades ROI for stability across a portfolio, and the tool's Portfolio Overview shows you the min and average ROI at each uniques setting for tonight's slate so you can pick from data instead of a hunch. In office hours we'll pull it up and read the numbers straight off it — say, a min ROI around 15% and a 41% ROI average at 3 uniques on a given night's slate — then compare it to 2 and 4 and take the setting the data likes. Those figures are the sim's projected ROI for the pool on that slate, not guaranteed returns. The point is that these dials form a chain, and each one answers a question the last one raised:

1. Archetype — what kind of field to build (Low, High, or Marquee).
2. Pool size — how many opponents to build, matched to the real contest.
3. Percent to first — how to grade your lineups against that field.
4. Uniques — how much of the graded output you actually fire.

Set them in that order and nothing downstream is answering the wrong question.

One honest note that keeps all of this in perspective: the raw simulated ROI number isn't a promise, it's a ranking. It compresses as the rest of the market gets sharper through the season, and that's fine, because what you're using it for is to pull the best lineups off the top of a correctly-modeled, correctly-graded field. The dials are how you make sure that ranking is answering the right question.

The Bottom Line

Strip away the settings-panel intimidation and archetype and percent to first are one small act repeated twice: you're telling the Sims what's real. Real field, then real payout. The ownership you're modeling belongs to a specific contest, and the ceiling you're chasing is priced by a specific payout structure, so you hand the Sims both and let them grade for the game you're actually playing. Do that and the ROI numbers stop being abstract — they're ranking your lineups inside the exact field and payout you're actually playing. The next time you sit down to build, don't start with the players. Start with the two dials, set them off the contest in front of you, and let the field you built tell you which lineup wins it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which contest archetype should I use when modeling ownership projections? Set the archetype to the contest you're actually entering, because that's the field whose ownership you're trying to beat. Low Stakes models the huge, cheap, chalkier fields; High Stakes models the sharper, higher buy-in small fields; Marquee models the day's flagship. Modeling one contest's ownership while entering another points the Sims at the wrong opponents.

What does percent to first actually change? How the Sims grade your lineups, not what field they build. A higher percent to first ranks contrarian, ceiling-chasing builds higher, which is right for top-heavy payouts; a lower setting favors consistent, chalkier lineups for flatter payouts.

How do I pick a percent to first number instead of guessing? Use the contest's real first-place share: divide the money going to first by the total prize pool. If first pays $200,000 out of an $800,000 pool, set it to 25. You're reading the number off the contest, not eyeballing how contrarian to be.

What percent to first should I use for cash games? For cash you sort lineups by projection rather than by this simulated grade, so percent to first barely matters, and if you set it at all you want the low, consistency-favoring end. Cash is a different workflow than the tournament settings covered here.

Does changing the archetype mean I have to re-run the Sims? Yes. Archetype and pool size both change the field that gets generated, so changing either one requires a re-run. Adjustments that only affect how the existing output is graded or filtered don't.

New to the Sims? They model the right field for your contest and grade your lineups against it, all in one place. Take 10% off your first payment with code ARCHETYPE10: get the Stokastic Sims. You can also try the free Sims or browse projections in the DataHub first.