Sure, beating your buddies in a home league is cool. But you know what is really cool? Turning $25 into $1,500,000.

That's what is possible this year in Underdog Fantasy's flagship tournament, Best Ball Mania V.

We've been covering best ball from all angles around here, but BBMV is a unique beast that requires different strategic angles than other contests. 

To compete for the top prizes–and there are some juicy ones–we'll need to understand the structure of the contest, the importance of the playoff weeks, the different drafting windows, and how to manage a portfolio.

Let's dig in to everything you need to know about Best Ball Mania V…

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Best Ball Mania V Payout Structure

The first four editions of Best Ball Mania featured extremely top-heavy prizes to first place. 

Last year in BBM4, first place got $3M, second place got $1M, and third place got…$300,000. And while no one is turning up their nose at $300K, it's a massive, $2.7M swing for only a two-place differential that was separated by only a couple of fantasy points.

This year, however, Underdog has smoothed out the payouts in a major way:

• Last year 30% of the playoff prizes went to first, this year it's 10 percent
• Last year only the Top 5 teams won 6-figure prizes, this year 20 teams will win 6-figure prizes 
• Last year 4th place got 150k, this year 10th place gets 150k
• Last year 10th place got only 1% of the 3 million first place prize–30k. This year 10th place gets 10% of the 1.5 million first place prize–150k
• In 2023, the last place teams got just $1,000 back (which means if you max entered the contest for $3,750 that's–150 entries at $25 a pop–you could have potentially lost $2,750 despite the insane accomplishment of making it to the finals).
• In 2024, the teams who finish 401st-539th in the finals will all return $3,750, which locks in a break-even finish (at worst) for those who max the contest and make it to the finals.

All of these changes should be very much welcomed by best ball drafters. The flatter payouts mean there is less variance in the Week 17 finals and more drafters will be rewarded with big prizes for making it to the top of the leaderboard.

Still, this is a massive tournament with 672,672 entries and it will be extremely difficult to make it to the finals.

Before we dig into more concrete strategic angles, It's important to understand exactly how a team makes it to the finals. Here is your gauntlet for 2024:

• Round 1 (regular season): 2 of 12 teams will advance from the regular season to Week 15
• Round 2 (Week 15): 1 of 13 teams will advance from the Week 15 pods to Week 16
• Round 3 (Week 16): 1 of 16 teams will advance from the Week 16 pods to the Week 17 final
• Round 4 (Week 17): 539 teams will compete in the Week 17 finals

If you crunch the math, you'll realize that only .08% of teams in the contest will make it to the finals (2/12 * 1/13 * 1/16). That means if you were an average drafter who maxed the contest every year (150 entries), you would only be expected to get a team to the finals once every 8.3 years. 

I know that's a sobering thought, but we need to be realistic and know what we're signing up for when entering BBMV. If you don't want to embrace that kind of lotto-esque variance, it's important to shop around for contests that could be better for your bankroll.

Still, there are many levers we can pull to increase our chances of getting to the finals and winning serious money…

The Importance of the Playoff Weeks

Because $9.9M of the $15M prize pool is paid out in Week 17 and another $1.4M is paid out in Week 16, the importance of the playoff weeks can't be understated.

Two years ago, I made a video called Week 17 is all that matters where I argued that drafters should optimize their teams to perform the best in Week 17. Here are the basic Cliffs Notes for this case:

• The Best Ball Mania finals are essentially a small-field DFS contest. The only difference is that your team is drafted and locked months and months before the contest takes place, not minutes before the games start like in DFS.
• But if our goal is to win the contest, then we can still approach our drafts as if we are building a DFS lineup that needs to beat 538 other entries in Week 17.
• Stacking and, more generally, correlation, reduces the number of things we need to get right (aka when a QB hits, his pass catchers are more likely to hit). And correlation also increases our variance (these stacks will either fail together or succeed together, which is a feature, not a bug) in these top-heavy contests.

On top of all of that, we have plenty of data from both best ball and DFS contests that winning teams heavily feature game stacks and team-level correlation. 

The BBM4 champ, Farid Shaheed, had a double stack and a bringback from the Week 17 Green Bay/Minnesota game last year, as well as Dallas/Detroit stack without the QB.

Pat Kerrane's winning BBM3 team had three different game stacks, with 12 of his 18 players coming from just three Week 17 games. 

With the schedule now released, we can finally start correlating our teams with the fantasy playoffs in mind, specifically Week 16 and Week 17.

Next week, we'll dive into the schedule, the best playoff matchups, and why correlating for both Week 16 and Week 17 is uniquely important in Best Ball Mania V.

The Different Drafting "Windows"

One unique thing about Best Ball Mania compared to other contests that will pop up on Underdog throughout the summer is that it will span the duration of the entire summer.

Because of this dynamic, we should be pushing different strategic edges at different times. The edges to push when drafting on the opening day of the contest are much different than the strategic levers to pull when drafting before the contest closes in September.

Here is a simple month-by-month guide for things to consider when drafting:

• April (NFL Draft, Contest drops) - This is in the rearview mirror and we've previously talked about attacking rookie risers and avoiding landmines who saw their value decrease after the Draft.
• May (the NFL schedule drops, OTAs at the end of the month) - We can now start correlating for Week 16 and Week 17. This is also when rookies start making noise and we need to pay attention. I wrote about Tank Dell and Puka Nacua in the same Fantasy Life Newsletter on May 25th last year.
• June (dead period) - Not much happens in June. This is a good time to evaluate the ADP landscape and decide how aggressive you want to be on certain players and structures.
• July (training camps open) - This is when we need to start reacting to new information. At this time last year, Kyren Williams began making noise at Rams camp. Even if it surprises us, we need to use this new information that earlier drafters didn't possess. 
• August (preseason begins) - This is where we get the most information and we need to use it to build strong teams. We can also start "scrolling down" in drafts and selecting unique players who were not selected during the early months of the contests. We can also more viably lean into structures like Zero RB because we have a better feel for depth charts and the RB sleepers at the end of the draft.
• September (contest locks, season starts) - Wrap up your drafts. 

For more in-depth explorations of the edges to push in these specific drafting windows, you can check out the month-by-month video guide I put together.

Managing Your Portfolio

If you plan on drafting more than a handful of teams, it's important to review your portfolio and make sure the "stands" and "fades" you are making are intentional and not accidental.

Fantasy Life has a free portfolio tool called The Best Ball Hub that makes it easy to upload your Underdog teams and quickly review your player exposures, team stacks, and much more.

Here's an early look at my exposures in Best Ball Mania V after 20 drafts:

I made a video on how to leverage the tool if you'd like a quick tutorial on how to get started.

Let's go get the 1.5 milly.