Playoff Best Ball Strategy 2025

StatATL has a math degree and a background as a financial analyst, and has blended an analytical, numbers-driven approach with an “OWS mindset” to rack up over $100,000 in lifetime DFS profit while maintaining low weekly buy-ins

Strategy for Underdog’s “The Gauntlet” & “The Mitten”

(Updated 1/6/2025)

Overview 

• Six-player snake draft comprised of ten rounds in a Best Ball tournament format.
• Teams are made up of 10 total players with a starting lineup of five players: 1 QB, 2 WR/TE, 1 RB, and 1 Flex.
• Advancement rates vary by contest:
  • The Gauntlet: four-round structure through the Super Bowl, with the top team advancing out of a group of six in the first round, followed by one team advancing out of a group of six in the second round, and then one out of a group of five in the third round. The finals are composed of 500 teams in the Super Bowl with $500,000 up top. 
  • The Mitten’s advancement is easier in round one (top two of six advance), but then more difficult in the second round (1 of 10) and the conference championships round (also 1 of 10), before a 375-team Super Bowl.

• Getting out of the first round is crucial, but difficult if drafting four or more players from bye teams (as of this writing, the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos) in a 1 of 6 advance structure like The Gauntlet.
• Like a Milly Maker on DK, the payout structure is extremely top heavy. 

• The last two bullets bring up an interesting dilemma as the two bye teams are the most likely to make the conference final and Super Bowl, but drafting several of those players also hampers your chances of getting out of the first round. 

• To win, you will likely need (at least) five players to reach the Super Bowl. This incentivizes stacking your lineups to consolidate around a few teams you are hoping can make deep playoff runs; however, an aggressive stacking strategy has its trade-offs. If you prioritize stacking elite contenders, this will likely have you drafting some poorly projected depth players to round out your team. Someone in your first pod/round will likely have drafted studs on Wild Card teams, and while they will have an uphill battle to win the whole tournament, these teams will have a leg up on getting out of the first round.
• If you consider stacking both bye teams, you must cap that at a total of 5 players, and you are fighting an uphill battle to advance. The tournament is very top-heavy, and the two one-seeds are the most likely to advance, so we will discuss below some of the strategies to best balance this predicament and try to thread a very thin needle to advance a team to the final 300ish teams.

Roster Composition

Stacking is critical as you want to try to set yourself up to build around multiple teams (ideally 3-4 total) with at least one team from each conference. You also want to keep in mind the story you are telling with your build. If your roster is built around two #2 seeds (aka two non-bye teams) making the Super Bowl, you’ll want to keep in mind that if that happens, there will likely be rosters with 7-8 active players (or potentially more) in the finals. As mentioned above, the contests are top-heavy, so a roster with only 4-5 live/active players will be at a severe disadvantage and likely blocked out for first in a situation like this.

Quarterback Strategy