DraftKings Best Ball: Top 10 Tips & Mistakes That Cost You Money

Danger breeds best on too much confidence.

Pierre Corneille said it, and that is perfect for describing Best Ball (and fantasy football, honestly) after a draft ends. The roster looks clean, the stacks make sense, and the late-round clicks instill confidence that you were smarter than the room. But it ain’t won by feeling good in June. 

Think about Best Ball (BB) like a marathon. Your lineups are the runners, and you are the coach deciding their objective and position before the gun fires. You have to answer these questions:

• What race(s) are you entering? 
• How many runners do you have? 
• What path is each one taking? 
• Which runners need to be aggressive to win the whole thing?
• Which runners need to simply survive for a payout?

Once the draft starts, you cannot change that objective. That is why the goal is not just to feel good when your runners leave the starting line. The goal is to build each lineup with a clear path before the race begins.

Top 10 Mistakes

1. Thinking Ball Knowledge is Enough

Winning your home league matters, and we love celebrating championships around here (#FootClanTitle 4 lyfe). But if you think that same mindset automatically translates to a massive BB tournament success, you are walking into a gun fight with a knife. It’s like saying you can play guitar, so the trumpet should be easy. Sure, the music theory overlaps, but it is still a completely different beast. 

You have to apply that knowledge and BB strategy. The draft room is not just testing your football opinions; it is testing whether you understand… 

• Lineup construction
• Opportunity cost
• ADP movement
• Playoff schedule correlation
• Advance rates
• Tournament structure

David Montgomery and D’Andre Swift are clean examples because they sit back to back in ADP, with Montgomery at 5.5 and Swift at 5.6 (as of June 3rd). A casual drafter may simply ask which RB they like more, but BB asks what your team needs due to stacks, playoff run backs, and archetype structure. Do you need Montgomery’s stable path on a non-rushing QB team with a better defense? Or do you need Swift’s receiving profile and a different ceiling bet if the Bears take their offense to the moon?

What if you have an Amon Ra, Gibbs, or a DET stack in the works? Swift makes more sense because of the Week 17 correlation. On the flip side, what if you have Nico and got a value on Jacobs (as his ADP free-falls thanks to off-field issues)? Montgomery would make more sense there for the stack-and-run back correlation.

When the ADP cost is nearly identical, ball knowledge is not enough. 

2. Picking the Wrong Contest

Contest selection starts with being honest about what kind of player you are. Some people just love drafting. I get it. Drafting is fun, the sweat is fun, and not every lineup has to be treated like you are managing a hedge fund or moving money around like Marty Byrde. Stay within your budget and play the contests that make the season more enjoyable, NOT stressful. 

Think of it like this: I do not speak Russian, so I am not walking into a Russian-speaking spelling bee just because the banner says $3 million to first and convincing myself the words will magically fall out of my mouth because I’m hopped up on Hopium. That is how people treat BB contests when they chase the biggest prize without understanding the game they entered. At that point, they are not being strategic. They are just bad at Russian. 

We have broken them into three types for simplicity. See Favorite Contests for each drafter at the bottom. 

1. The “I Just Love Drafting” Drafter
   This player wants entertainment and a season-long sweat for a cherry on top. Contest selection matters, but mostly because we do not need a fun hobby pouring lighter fluid on our bankroll and throwing in the Zippo. Low entry contests with capped exposure make sense here because you can draft a bunch of teams without making every click feel like a life decision. 
2. The Lottery Ticket Drafter
   This player wants the glory. Six figures. Seven figures. The kind of finish that gets posted everywhere on X and can pay off your house…and then some. Pipe dreams are fun, but call it what it is. If you are firing at the biggest top prizes, most of your teams are probably going nowhere. You are not grinding steady returns; you are taking educated shots in the dark for that “what if.”
3. The Profit-Focused Drafter
   This is where contest selection becomes a real edge. Now, BB is a portfolio. Every detail matters and needs to lean in the drafter’s favor. The $20M Millionaire is only $25 per entry, but if you max it, that is a $3,750 decision. If you want to make a consistent profit, you cannot only chase the lotto bank and call it a strategy. You need contests where your edge/process can compound, and your season does not depend on a single miracle finish.

The mistake is playing like a lottery ticket drafter while telling yourself you are profit-focused. All of these are great ways to play, but do not try to be something you are not. 

3. Ignoring the Payout Structure

Advance rates tell you how hard it is to advance through your pod and the playoff rounds. If 2-of-12 teams advance, that is 16.7%, the same odds as rolling a seven in Craps (six combinations).  

If only 1-of-12 advances, that drops to 8.3%, the same odds as rolling a four or ten (three combinations). Same room size, but half as many paths to advance. In a 2-of-12 structure, a strong team has more room to advance. In a 1-of-12 structure, you have to hit a top-end outcome, so shooting for the moon is the key. 

4. Treating June like August and August like June

Before you enter a tournament in June, ask whether it will be open all summer or only for a short window. A timeboxed tournament is only available for a limited stretch, which means most drafters are building in the same market. The major tournaments are different. They stay open for months, so a team drafted in May is competing against teams drafted in August with completely different information.

That makes ADP movement a major factor. Take Malik Nabers, for example (see his ADP drop below courtesy of Best Ball Explorer). Early in draft season, he was going near the end of the second round. Now, with the Giants adding WRs and his injury potentially lingering into Week 1, that early price looks a lot more fragile. The drafters taking him later may be getting Nabers plus stronger options in the first two or three rounds. That is opportunity cost. In June, depth charts remain unsettled, creating upside. By August, more information is available, and the market has adjusted. The mistake is drafting every team as if the calendar does not matter.

This also impacts the ambiguous RB rooms. What’s going on with teams like PIT, MIN, and WAS at RB? Taking shots in June can pay huge dividends later. If Bill (Jacory Croskey-Merritt) becomes the starter for WAS, his ADP will skyrocket. Or what if it’s Kaytron Allen? He will jump up 80 – 100 spots (ironically, like Bill did last year). Same for Aaron Jones/Jordan Mason in MIN. 

5. Waiting Too Long to Define A Build

You do not need to know your archetype before the draft starts, but you should know what your team is becoming by the middle rounds. Honestly, by Round 4ish. Don’t marry an archetype just because you want to when you enter the room. Your draft spot and how the draft board falls in the early rounds dictate which archetype you need to lean into. 

If you start WR heavy, your next picks need to support that structure. If you open with an elite QB or elite TE, the rest of the roster has to account for that early investment. Zero RB, Hero RB, Elite QB, Elite TE, and Hyperfragile builds all ask different questions of your roster. The mistake is getting to Round 12 and realizing you do not have a build. You just have players that you like that help you finish in the middle of the pack in your pod, which makes it a losing lineup.

6. Forgetting Week 17

Week 17 should not control every pick, but ignoring it completely leaves tournament-winning upside on the table. The biggest prizes are usually decided in a one-week final, so your roster needs players who can rise together. That starts with a QB stack. If your QB has a ceiling game, one of his pass catchers probably helped him get there. The RB might have done well, too (because the team scored a lot of points). Last year’s milly maker had a QB-RB-WR stack in Week 17. 

The next layer is the runback. If that same game turns into a shootout, a player(s) on the other side likely helps the environment and gives your roster another score-climber. A naked QB is practically dead in lineup ceiling terms with large field finals (100+ lineups), but a QB stack with a runback gives you more ways to separate when the money is on the line. 

Instead of needing multiple, random players to hit on their own, you are betting on one game environment to carry multiple spots in your lineup.

Think of Best Ball like a giant game of Keno, except instead of picking from 80 numbers, you pick from 300+ numbers (players), which are narrowed to eight for the starting lineup. How can we try to consolidate those outcomes? With Week 17 correlation. See below a lineup that came in third from the 2024 DK Milly.

You can find all playoff matchups in our Best Ball Primer.

7. ADP Worship

ADP is a reference point, not the end-all, be-all. It tells you where players usually go, but it does not know your roster, draft slot, contest, exposures, or the build you are trying to create. Beating ADP can create screenshot equity and closing-line value, which matter in large samples, but a discount only helps if the player fits the team. The same goes the other way. Sometimes taking a player ahead of ADP is correct if he unlocks a stack, closes a tier, or will not make it back to your next pick. The mistake is letting ADP make the decision for you. Use it as a map. Don’t worship ADP every single draft and follow it blindly.

8. Being Afraid to Flip the Board

Board Flipping is when drafters intentionally select a player ahead of ADP because the pick fits the roster and creates a more unique build by moving that player to the other side of the draft board. Free yourself of the shackles of ADP! Well, sometimes, and only if it’s intentional. For example, taking a player at pick 25 with an ADP near 36 makes sense if your next pick is not until 48 and that player unlocks the build (or stack) you want. 

Using this year’s board, let’s say you take Ja’Marr Chase at 1.01. You pick at 24 and 25. Zay Flowers has an ADP around pick 36, so taking him at 25 looks early if you only care about the draft board screenshot. But from the 1.01 slot, your next pick is not until 48, and passing on him here gives you a minuscule chance he gets back to you. Especially if the peopleofdraftkings.com have anything to do with it. But if you do take him here, you have avenues. 

• The board above shows how a rare Zero RB start can come together if you are willing to flip the board instead of drafting straight from ADP. With Zero RB losing popularity after two disappointing seasons, that structure becomes a unique runner. You are not just taking Chase at 1.01 to be different; you have created a roster path fewer drafters are willing to follow, and you do not have to worry about the Joe Burrow QB snipe that happens wayyyyy too often and is way more popular. Plus, you get a delicious Week 17 BAL/CIN correlation.

• Above, you can also pivot into a Hero RB or Elite QB build with Chase, one of the RBs in purple, the BAL stack, a yellow WR3, and a turquoise WR4. That roster tells a completely different story from the one in the same draft slot. You still have Week 17 correlation, but in a different flavor and archetype.

Hindsight is 20/20, but play the season out in your head. If we get to December and the early RB position is crushed by injuries, where do you want to be? In a pack of sheep blindly following ADP and going robust RB? Or with a unique lineup(s) that loaded up on elite WRs, captured a possible Lamar QB1 ceiling, and built from a structure the field abandoned?

It does not mean you should flip the board in every draft. It means this build deserves a place in the portfolio. Think of it as another runner in your race to $3 million. Maybe that runner gets buried (and honestly, likely does). Maybe he gets laughed at when the draft board screenshot goes up. But if the RB landscape breaks a certain way, that might be the runner who finds the path less taken while the herd falls into a hole no one saw coming. 

9. Not Scrolling Past Pick 220

Novice drafters get lazy/fatigued late in drafts and often click the top names at each position after Round 17 (see: primacy effect). Picks after 220 are more rewarding because of low ownership. If they hit, you create massive separation. A lot of these players will not be drafted, but have the same outcome probabilities as players drafted between picks 150 and 220. So, if you hit the right one, you get leverage from the sheep that didn’t scroll down. Think about Puka Nacua’s breakout season. He didn’t get drafted until August, late, and then won people millions of dollars. But he is special; do not expect that. These fail far more often than they succeed, but the draft capital is so cheap that it usually doesn’t matter. 

Here are the players who are currently 100% owned, compared to those drafted after pick 220. Are their outcomes really that different? 

If a popular player after pick 220 has a spike week, a lot of rosters benefit as you do. If a low-owned player hits, fewer teams get those points, which means your roster separates. That does not mean you should click random names just to be different. It means the final rounds are a chance to find cheap stacks, fragile depth-chart bets, rookies with unclear roles, and players attached to good offenses before the room cares enough to scroll down (like the DAL RB2, IND RB2, KC WR 3-4, etc.).

10. Drafting Teams That Do Not Talk to Each Other

If you have 20 runners, you do not want all 20 taking the exact same path. If every lineup needs the same rookie breakout, the same fragile RB room to collapse, the same QB stack to hit, or the same Week 17 game to shoot out, then one bad outcome can wipe out your entire season. 

One runner should take the chalky, safe path. Another should find a contrarian route. One can bet that the backfield will become concentrated. Another can fade that backfield and attack the passing game instead. The goal is to give every lineup a reason to exist within the portfolio, so make sure you know your exposure and are tracking it (lots of great free tools out there, or you can push exposures in DK to check). If you want to be that person who takes 100% of Blake Corum (or whoever), go for it, so you can brag about calling your shot. But understand that taking a stance may pay off… but it could also completely destroy you. Diversify so that no single player dictates your entire NFL Best Ball season.

A BB portfolio should work like a shotgun pattern rather than one bullet. If every lineup is aimed at the exact same outcome, you’d better be perfect, and that’s almost impossible to do. 

Contest Selection

A lot of people can sit down at a poker table and play a $20 game of Texas Hold’em. They understand the rules and how the game works. But take that same player and put them in a $10/$20 blind cash game, where every hand can cost hundreds of dollars, and suddenly it is a completely different experience. BB is no different.

Michael Dubner publishes a ranked list of contests every year, which is an excellent resource for deciding what to enter. You can find it here: Best Ball Tournament Ratings.

Happy Best Ball Mania release day!

The NFL Best Ball Contest Score & Tournament Tracker can be found here:https://t.co/3Gbi4GgAoe pic.twitter.com/4HGhtZVI24

— Michael Dubner (@Dubner_Michael) April 27, 2026

Favorite Contests on DK

1. The “I Just Love Drafting” Drafter
Drafters who mainly want to draft and/or have lineups to sweat in the season, but do not want to spend a bunch of cash. 

2. The Lottery Ticket Drafter
Drafters chasing a massive payday without worrying about ROI. 

3. The Profit-Focused Drafter
Drafters who treat BB more like a portfolio than a Powerball ticket.