Huge amounts of points comes from playing and hitting huge targets, it hurts so unless you are willing to take the losses OR coin them all back then moderate activity and reasonable pvp/bg play is the way to go. Minimize losses, and gain decent rewards, only use what you are willing to lose. As for experience expos those are easier since all factors of the game effect your points so you can pop on an Experience Booster which most of us have for free from tournaments and play bg's or pvp and gain more than you would without one. Also simple things like building upgrades and the personal quests in the events tab count so you can gain a lot more points.
As for the Dragon Derby - that is obvious coining to get such high points you could not possibly max out on or even get decent rewards without boosting your upgrades and buying more "mana" with saphs.
Dragon Derby & Development tournaments are luck of the draw for higher level players honestly, if you don't boost you might be lucky enough to have one of your upgrades finish during the time of the tournaments.
A good tip for lower level players, save your quick upgrades (ie: Dwarf type lost arts) and do them during experience expos since you can get through many in a few days because of the shorter amount of time needed for them. Longer upgrades that take a couple days do during development tournaments because you will score way more points for a longer upgrade - many lower level upgrades wont get as many points during development tournaments.