Contest Simulation scores your lineup pool against a contest before you enter it. It builds a field of opponent lineups, plays the slate thousands of times, ranks every lineup in every play, and pays each finish from the contest's payout ladder. Use it after a build, or as the second half of Build & Sim, to decide which lineups deserve your entries.
What one scenario is
A scenario is one contest: its Contest Size, its Entry Size (max entries per user), My Entries (how many of your lineups go in), and its payouts. One run can hold several scenarios, and each gets its own numbers. A lineup can look strong in a small GPP and weak in a large one.
How it works
The opponent field
The field looks like a real contest of that size and type on that site:
- Ownership comes from the whole slate. Exclude a chalk player from your pool and the field still owns him.
- Stack shapes match real contests. A football field carries quarterback stacks and a baseball field carries hitter stacks.
- A single-entry tournament gets a single-entry field. A scenario that comes from a single-entry tournament, by Prefill from Contest or from your entries file, draws opponents shaped like real single-entry fields.
- Part of the field is sharp, so the top is as hard to beat as a real one.
- Your own entries are in the field. As many of your lineups co-enter as the smaller of My Entries and Entry Size allows.
- Duplicates are modeled. Chalk lineups appear more than once, the way they do in a real contest.
Top 1% and Top 5% are shares of the contest field.
Player scores
Each play draws a score for every player around his projection, with a spread that matches his volatility. Players on the same team move together, so a stack booms or busts as a unit. A player in a postponed game scores 0 in every play, and the field does not roster him. The simulator draws whole-event outcomes, on the individual sports too (golf, NASCAR, MMA, tennis, F1), so linked results move together. Only the per-game Game Sim panel is limited to team sports.
Ranking and payouts
In every play, DFS Hero ranks your lineups against the field and records how often each one finished 1st, inside the Top 0.1%, Top 1%, and Top 5%, and inside the paid places. In a GPP, 1st Place takes the top prize and the rest of the Prize Pool decays down the paid ranks. In a cash contest, the Prize Pool splits evenly across the paid ranks.
Expected ROI is the average prize per play, shared with the expected copies of that lineup in the contest, minus the Entry Fee, as a share of the Entry Fee. A realistic contest keeps a rake, so the average ROI across a pool is usually negative.
The same pool and the same scenario return the same numbers every time.
Why results differ from projections
- Projection ranks lineups by expected points. The sim ranks them by how often they finish in a paying place, which depends on the field.
- A lineup full of chalk can project well and still show a low ROI, because it shares first place with many copies of itself.
- A low-owned lineup with a wide range can rank low by projection and high by Top 1%, because a few of its plays are big.
- Two stacked lineups with the same projection do not have the same ceiling.
Treat the numbers as one input for ranking your own lineups, not as a promise. A higher Top 1% is a point in a lineup's favor for a tournament, alongside ROI and duplication. A stated 2% is not a guarantee of 2%.
Tips
- Simulate against the contest you will enter. Use Prefill from Contest so the size, fee, and payouts match.
- For a GPP, rank by ROI or Top 1%.
- Keep the pool large. The simulator can only pick the best of what the build gave it.
- Re-Simulate after you trash lineups. A filter alone changes nothing the sim sees; trash the filtered lineups first.
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