NFL DFS Milly Maker: How to Win With Stokastic Sims

If you fire lineups into the DraftKings 🎁 NFL DFS Milly Maker, you already know the math is brutal. A $3 million prize pool, a million to first, and somewhere north of 150,000 entries between you and that top spot. You are not trying to beat a good lineup. You are trying to beat a stadium full of them.

Go deeper: NFL DFS Showdown Strategy: Captain Picks That Win GPPs.

I took down a Milly Maker on a Conference Championship Sunday, and the honest truth is the win was not magic. It was a repeatable process I run inside the Stokastic NFL Sims every single week. Below is that exact process, step by step, including the specific adjustments that left me holding the whole million instead of splitting it. The Milly Maker is the marquee NFL DFS tournament, so this is the build I treat with the most care, and it is the one I want to walk you through.

In Summary (TL;DR)

For the impatient, here is the whole NFL DFS Milly Maker workflow before we dig in:

• Match the Sims to the contest. Set the largest possible pool size (10,000 on Sims Max, 500 on the base package). You need lineups that have proven they can beat a giant field.
• Max out Percent to First. I select 30%, the top option, any time the real field is larger than the simulated pool. It rewards outlier, top-heavy lineups, which is what wins a top-heavy contest.
• Trust the player pool, then audit it. Our Ownership Projections and Contest Sims exposures are sharp, but you still sanity-check spots where you have real information the model does not.
• Boost simulated ROI selectively. Nudge exposure up on a player you have a genuine read on. I boosted Travis Kelce and he became my highest scorer at 24.5% ownership.
• Stay open to weird builds. My winning lineup ran two tight ends and a 1-3 game stack (my QB with one pass catcher plus a three-man bring-back). Those quirks are exactly why it did not get duplicated.

Now the detail.

Why the NFL DFS Milly Maker Needs Simulations, Not Projections

Most lineup tools answer the wrong question. They tell you the highest-projected lineup. In a 150,000-person tournament, the highest-projected lineup is also the one a thousand other people built, and a thousand-way split of first place is not the goal.

The question that actually wins the Milly Maker is: of all the lineups I could build, which one wins this specific contest most often? That is a win-probability question, and it is what the Stokastic Contest Sims are built to answer. If you are newer to this, our DFS strategy guide and our Sims vs. optimizers breakdown cover why simulating a contest beats optimizing a single projected lineup. We build the full NFL player pool, generate a huge set of candidate lineups, then simulate the contest tens of thousands of times to see which lineups finish first across the most simulations. You are optimizing for the trophy, not for a projected point total.

This is the same logic our experts repeat on the NFL Live Before Lock show before every main slate: build the whole pool, find the top lineups, then boost some guys up and push some guys down. Let me show you how I do that for the Milly Maker specifically.

Step 1: Set the Largest NFL DFS Contest Size

The first thing I do for a contest as big as the Milly Maker is select the largest possible pool size in the Sims. That is 10,000 if you are a Sims Max user and 500 on the base Sims package.

The 10,000 selection matters here because of what the Sims are actually doing under the hood. They simulate each of your candidate lineups against each other thousands of times to see which ones win out most often. When I was testing this internally, the lesson was clear: it took a big simulated field, on the order of 10,000, to get a faithful picture of the kind of lineup that beats a massive field consistently. Sim against a 150-person contest and you will surface lineups that win small. Sim against 10,000 and you surface lineups built to win big.

If you only carry the base package, the 500-entry sim still works on the same principle. You are simply working with a smaller simulated field, so lean harder on the differentiation steps below to make up the difference.

Step 2: Max Out Percent to First

Next I set the Percent to First. In the Milly Maker, the prize pool is roughly $3 million with $1 million going to first, which puts the percentage to first around 33%. The highest option in the dropdown is 30%, so that is what I choose.

There is a second reason I max it out, and it is the part people miss. Even if the Milly Maker were structured at 25% to first, I would still push this lever to 30% because the real contest is so much larger than the pool I am simulating. The live field runs well over 150,000 entries while I am only building a 10,000-lineup pool. Percent to First is a dial for how aggressively the Sims reward outlier lineups. The higher you set it, the more credit a lineup gets for ceiling and uniqueness rather than safe, repeatable points.

So my rule is simple: generally match the contest exactly, but any time the field is bigger than 10,000 entries, I lean toward maxing this out. The Milly Maker always clears that bar.

Step 3: Build and Audit the NFL DFS Player Pool

Here is the part that surprises people: for the player pool itself, I usually do not touch the settings at all. What matters far more than anything I do on the front end is what the Stokastic team is doing behind the scenes to get the exposures right.

The most important input to the whole process is getting player exposures as accurate as possible. We have spent years refining how the Contest Sims pool builds those exposures, and at this point it is often more accurate than a raw historical Ownership Projection and sharper than most sources around the industry. The Top Stacks Tool feeds the same engine, so correlated game stacks get represented at sensible rates without you hand-forcing them. The tool surfaces those projected ownership rates per slate, which is what lets the simulation know who the field is actually on. If you want the deeper logic on why game stacks win tournaments, our DFS stacking strategy guide breaks down the correlation math.

That said, I do not blindly accept the default pool every week. If I have a hunch that something is off with a player's data, a stale injury designation, a snap-count change the projection has not caught yet, I will tweak that player in the pool. You should too. Treat the model as the floor of your process and build up from there with what you know. On my Milly Maker weekend, the exposures were on point, so my edits were light. Some weeks they are not, and that is where your own read earns its keep.

Step 4: A Worked Example of Boosting Simulated ROI

Even with exposures dialed in, there is room to work with the data the pre-contest simulator gives you. For my Conference Championship Milly Maker, I focused on boosting the simulated ROI of a handful of players to land my exposures exactly where I wanted them. The clearest example was the most famous player on the slate.

Travis Kelce was coming off a slightly down regular season, a small step back from his peak years. But I expected Patrick Mahomes to look his way in the biggest moments of the biggest game, especially given the issues the rest of the receiving corps had dealt with all year. Mahomes did exactly that, and Kelce caught 11 balls.

Kelce ended up at 24.5% ownership, meaningfully owned but not chalk, and he was easily my highest-scoring player. That is the model of how to use the Sims without letting them use you. I could have churned out solid lineups with zero adjustments, but I had a real reason to bump Kelce's value, and the Sims took that input and handed me more exposure to the best fantasy asset on the board. This is the same boost-up / boost-down workflow you can run inside the Sims to enforce a read across hundreds of lineups at once.

Want to run this exact build for this week's slate? Stokastic NFL Sims simulate the Milly Maker field tens of thousands of times and surface the lineups that actually win it, then let you boost the players you believe in. Code NFLSIMS10 takes 10% off your first Stokastic Sims payment if you subscribe.

Subscribe to Stokastic Sims It does, automatically and in seconds, the simulation work this article just walked you through by hand.

Step 5: Stay Open to Differentiation Options

The single most talked-about feature of my winning lineup was a player it did not have: Christian McCaffrey. He finished in over 60% of all lineups, and leaving him out was a big reason I did not have to split the million with anyone.

But here is the nuance that matters. I did not tell the Sims to ban McCaffrey from everything. I had him heavily in most of my other lineups. I simply kept an open mind and refused to reject candidate lineups just because they looked unconventional.

A lot of people were stunned this lineup was not duplicated, because every player in it was fairly popular. Two things made it unique anyway. First, no McCaffrey at 60-plus percent ownership. Second, the construction itself was odd: it ran two tight ends, which subscribers told us all year they hated doing, and the game stack paired my quarterback with just one of his own pass catchers, then brought back three players from the other team's offense. That 1-3 build, one player with the QB and a three-man bring-back, is not one most people reach for, and that is precisely what kept it from getting copied.

I was comfortable with both of those quirks. Sometimes how you build a lineup matters as much as who you build it with. I did not send the Sims out to manufacture an un-duplicatable lineup. I accepted those strange builds as legitimate options, and one of them crushed. Keep your mind open. Do not let the Sims only show you what you already wanted to see. For more on the ownership and leverage thinking behind this, our DFS ownership and leverage guide goes deeper.

A quick note on history for newer readers: Stokastic.com was formerly Awesemo.com, so if you find these tools referenced under the old Awesemo name in older content, it is the same projections and the same simulation engine, now at Stokastic.com.

Cash vs. GPP: a Milly Maker Caveat

Everything above is a tournament workflow. The Milly Maker is a top-heavy GPP, and the Contest Sims, Percent to First, and differentiation steps are built for exactly that: beating a huge field by being a little weird in the right ways.

Do not run this same build for cash games. Double-ups and 50/50s only ask you to beat about half the field, so the winning approach there is the opposite: a high-floor lineup built straight off projections, not the simulated tournament pool, and no chasing of low-owned ceiling plays. Use the Sims for the Milly Maker. Use a floor-first build for cash.

A Word on Bankroll

One last thing the highlight reels never show. I won this Milly Maker, but I will not win every one, and neither will you. NFL DFS is high variance by nature: the best lineup pre-lock can finish near the bottom when a game script breaks the wrong way. That is the range you are signing up for. Size your Milly Maker entries as a sensible slice of your roll, expect cold stretches, and judge yourself on process over any single result. Manage your bankroll and play smart.

Frequently Asked Questions (NFL DFS Milly Maker)

What is the DraftKings Milly Maker?

The Milly Maker is DraftKings' flagship NFL DFS tournament, a large-field guaranteed prize pool contest where first place pays $1 million out of a roughly $3 million pool. It typically draws well over 150,000 entries, which is why a top-heavy, differentiated build matters so much.

How do Stokastic Sims help you win the Milly Maker?

Stokastic Contest Sims build the full NFL player pool, generate thousands of candidate lineups, then simulate the contest tens of thousands of times to find which lineups win most often. Instead of handing you the highest-projected lineup, the Sims optimize for win probability in a specific contest size, which is the question the Milly Maker actually asks.

What contest settings should you use for the Milly Maker in the Sims?

Set the largest pool size available (10,000 on Sims Max, 500 on the base package) and max Percent to First at 30%. Because the live Milly Maker field is far larger than the simulated pool, maxing Percent to First rewards the outlier, top-heavy lineups that take down giant fields.

Should you boost your own players in the Sims?

Yes, when you have a genuine read the model lacks. Boosting simulated ROI on a player nudges your exposure up across your lineups. I boosted Travis Kelce on my winning weekend and he became my highest scorer at 24.5% ownership. Save boosts for genuine reads the model lacks, and leave the unsupported hunches alone.

Is this Milly Maker strategy good for cash games too?

No. This is a GPP workflow. Cash games (double-ups, 50/50s) reward a high-floor lineup built straight off projections. Run the Contest Sims for the Milly Maker, and a floor-first build for cash.

Start Building Your Milly Maker Lineups

There is no single correct way to use the Stokastic Sims, just as there is no single way to win a million dollars. My choice that weekend was to adjust a couple of player ROIs and otherwise trust the pool. Yours might be more aggressive. What does not change is the framework: set the Sims to mirror the contest as closely as possible, make the adjustments your own reads justify, and stay open to the odd lineup constructions that buy you separation from the field.

New to Stokastic? Our NFL Sims do the heavy lifting this article described: they simulate the Milly Maker field tens of thousands of times, surface the lineups built to win it, and let you press the players you believe in. Use code NFLSIMS10 for 10% off your first Stokastic Sims payment when you subscribe.

Subscribe I hit on this one. The next Milly Maker is yours to chase, so go build it.

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