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Contests

Source: vignettes/contests.Rmd
contests.Rmd

Understanding DraftKings Contests

DraftKings is a popular daily fantasy sports platform that offers a wide variety of contests across multiple sports. These contests allow users to draft virtual teams of real players and compete against other users for prizes. This vignette will guide you through using the draft.kings package to interact with DraftKings contests programmatically.

Types of Contests

DraftKings offers a wide variety of contest types, including:

  1. Guaranteed Prize Pools (GPPs): Large tournaments with fixed prize pools.
  2. Cash Games:
    • Head-to-Head: Contests between two players.
    • 50/50s: Contests where the top half of entries win.
    • Double-Ups: Similar to 50/50s, but winners double their entry fee.
  3. Leagues: Smaller contests with a set number of entries.
  4. Showdown: Single-game contests focusing on one specific matchup.
  5. Tiers: Contests where players are grouped into tiers, and you select one from each tier.
  6. Classic: Traditional salary cap-based contests across multiple games.
  7. In-Game Showdown: Live contests that start after a game has begun.
  8. Best Ball: Season-long contests with automated lineup optimization.
  9. Step Tournaments: Multi-stage contests where winners advance to higher levels.
  10. Beginner Contests: Restricted to newer players on the platform.
  11. Satellites and Qualifiers: Contests that award entries into larger tournaments.

Each contest type has its own strategy and appeal to different players. The draft.kings package provides tools to interact with and analyze these various contest types.

Key Concepts

Before diving into the functions, it’s important to understand a few key concepts:

  • Contest Key: A unique identifier for each contest.
  • Draft Group: A set of players available for drafting in a particular contest or set of contests.
  • Draft Group ID: A unique identifier for each draft group.

The draft.kings package provides functions to interact with these elements, allowing you to fetch contest information, player data, and more. Let’s explore some of these functions below.

Contest Details

dk_get_lobby_contests()

List all contests in the Draft Kings lobby

The dk_get_lobby_contests() function retrieves information about all available contests in the DraftKings lobby.

contests <- dk_get_lobby_contests()
contests |> 
  dplyr::select(contest_key, name, game_type, entry_fee, entries, maximum_entries_per_user) |>
  head(5)
#> # A tibble: 5 × 6
#>   contest_key name            game_type entry_fee entries maximum_entries_per_…¹
#>         <dbl> <chr>           <chr>         <dbl>   <dbl>                  <dbl>
#> 1   164284870 NFL $2.5M Thur… Showdown…        15   30627                    150
#> 2   164120435 NFL $4M Fantas… Classic           5  269349                    150
#> 3   164120427 NFL $2.5M Fant… Classic         100    4615                    150
#> 4   163439930 NFL $4M MEGA M… Classic        4444     167                     30
#> 5   166253775 MLB Showdown $… Showdown…        11    1969                     64
#> # ℹ abbreviated name: ¹​maximum_entries_per_user

Note: A contest key is the sequence of digits that correspond to a specific contest. This can be found by examining the URL of a contest page. For example: https://www.draftkings.com/draft/contest/133645678#. Here the contest ID is 133645678.

dk_get_contest_info()

Get detailed contest info by contest key

The dk_get_contest_info() function provides more detailed information about a specific contest compared to dk_get_lobby_contests(). While dk_get_lobby_contests() gives an overview of multiple contests, dk_get_contest_info() focuses on a single contest with in-depth details.

dk_get_contest_info(contest_key = 133645678) |> 
  dplyr::select(contest_summary, payout_description, sport, entry_fee, entries, maximum_entries)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 6
#>   contest_summary     payout_description sport entry_fee entries maximum_entries
#>   <chr>               <chr>              <chr>     <dbl>   <dbl>           <dbl>
#> 1 This 215-player co… $5,000             NFL          27     215             215