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I’m obsessed with Underdog’s Best Ball NFL tournaments. You can join the latest one for just $4
By Adam Spencer
Published:
The NFL season doesn’t start for a couple more months, but don’t tell Underdog Fantasy. The platform continues to launch contest after contest to wide appeal as fans create rosters for their high dollar best ball tournaments.
What the heck are we even talking about? Let me give you the basics, then I’ll explain why these tournaments are so fun.
The Basics
Underdog NFL Best Ball contests are basically versions of fantasy football contests where you put up an entry fee, draft a roster in a pool of 12 teams, then compete over the course of the upcoming season for some pretty big prize pools. The big one is Best Ball Mania IV with a $15 million prize pool, but it also comes with a $25 entry fee. You can enter as many as 150 rosters (at $25 each).
But if you’re new, you can do one of the smaller contests with smaller entry fees such as $4. Underdog just launched “The Chihuahua” with a $4 entry fee (and a maximum of 25 entries).
The best ball format means you don’t have to do anything after you draft your team. No roster maintenance. No setting your lineups. No waiver wire pickups. You draft your team, and the platform automatically inserts your highest scoring players each week into your weekly tally. Simple.
Compete over 4 rounds of the tournament to try to win your share of a $750K prize pool during the 2023 season!
Get started today and use Underdog Fantasy promo code “SOUTH” when you sign up to get a first-time deposit bonus of up to $100!
Some Strategy & Some Fun
Like any form of fantasy football, you’re trying to draft the best roster. The difference here is there are some strategies folks use to work the best ball format and prizing format. One of them is called “stacking.”
Stacking refers to doubling up on a set of players in the event that if one player scores well, it’s likely the other one does as well. For example, if Ja’Marr Chase dominates one week, well you can bet that Joe Burrow probably did, too. After all, he’s the one chucking the ball to Ja’Marr.
Where you are in the draft and where the ADP (average draft position) of various players are — this can dictate your ability to stack some players.
Here’s a draft I just put together in the $4 entry “Chihuahua” contest on Underdog:
I had the No. 2 pick, and the guy ahead of me opted to draft Ja’Marr Chase instead of the typical No. 1 pick of Justin Jefferson. Once I had Jefferson, I figured I’d grab Kirk Cousins with a later pick to complete the Minnesota stack at a pretty decent price, but Patrick Mahomes was available by the time my second pick rolled around, so I went with the Chiefs QB.
To complete the Chiefs stack, I grabbed my boy from Gainesville, Kadarius Toney.
Here are some other fun stacks you can go for:
- Tyreek Hill (3.9 ADP) & Tua Tagovailoa (96.8 ADP) or Jaylen Waddle (16 ADP) & Tua Tagovailoa (96.8 ADP)
- AJ Brown (8.5 ADP) & Jalen Hurts (24.6 ADP) or DeVonta Smith (21 ADP) & Jalen Hurts (24.6 ADP)
- Calvin Ridley (32 ADP) & Trevor Lawrence (67.3 ADP)
One other piece of advice? Make sure you check everyone’s bye weeks! You don’t want to get locked into a situation where you have multiple quarterbacks with the same bye week, for example. As you can see above, I snagged Kenny Pickett with the No. 167 pick to back up Mahomes. I completed a second stack with Pickett, as I had added George Pickens at No. 74.
Remember, you can enter up to 25 rosters, so don’t get too locked in to one specific strategy! Let your draft position and available players help dictate what you do each time.
More Details
The Chihuahua Prize Pool
There is a total prize pool of $750K for The Chihuahua, so there are plenty of opportunities to win big! The first-place prize is $25K, which isn’t bad for one season of work!
Here’s a full breakdown of the prizes available in The Chihuahua best ball contest:
- 1st place: $25,000
- 2nd place: $15,000
- 3rd place: $12,500
- 4th place: $10,000
- 5th place: $8,000
- 6th place: $6,500
- 7th place: $5,000
- 8th place: $4,000
- 9th place: $3,000
- 10th place: $2,000
- 11th-15th places: $1,250
- 16th-20th places: $750
- 21st-50th places: $500
- 51st-100th places: $268
- 101st-235th places: $110
- 236th-470th places: $40
- 471st-1,175th places: $30
- 1,176th-2,350th places: $20
- 2,351st-5,875th places: $8
- 5,876th-11,750th places: $4
That’s right — if you finish in the top 11,750 players in the 70,500-player pool, you’ll at least make your money back!
Are Underdog Fantasy Best Ball contests legal in your state?
Underdog Fantasy is available in all U.S. states except for the following 9 state: CT, DE, HI, ID, IA, LA, MI, MT and NV. So, if you’re in one of the 41 states where Underdog Fantasy is available, you can absolutely participate in the daily fantasy drafts on the popular app, including the Underdog Best Ball contests (like The Chihuahua).
Visit Underdog Fantasy today to get in on the NFL DFS action! Remember to use promo code “SOUTH” to get a first-time deposit match of up to $100:
Adam is a daily fantasy sports (DFS) and sports betting expert. A 2012 graduate of the University of Missouri, Adam now covers all 16 SEC football teams. He is the director of DFS, evergreen and newsletter content across all Saturday Football brands.
