Shell Houston Open $33 Dogleg Deep Dive
Welcome back to another in depth look at how the top pros in PGA are multi entering tournaments. Again this week we’ll take a look at the top 4 grinders; FlavorFlav, Jae686, Saahilsud, and Scout326. We’ll also be bringing rank #16 CSURAM88 into the comparison this week as his strategy was able to take down the tournament.
Similar to last week, FlavorFlav, Jae686, and Scout326 used the same approach
- Heavy on 2-3 players (core)
- Middling exposure on 6-8 other players (value plays)
CSURAM88 went with a much flatter approach than the other three:
- Five (5) players with 39-42% exposure
- Five (5) players with 31-39% exposure
SaahilSud continued his high variance approach:
- Basically all in on two players
- High exposure on a third player
- Middling exposure on 6-8 other players (value plays)
CSU’s tactic paid off this week using a hedging style against his core players with using few outliers by taking 1st and 4th in this week’s contest. Something this data doesn’t show is the player pool each grinder used:
Player Pools & You
CSU’s philosophy this week was different than the others in that he focused his player pool to a very limited amount of golfers.
What does limiting a player pool as small as CSURAM88 above mean as opposed to an approach like the top three grinders with 41 to 51 golfers?
- Limiting your player pool means that when you’re correct in your projection model, you’re really correct. This is a win or go home style of tactic in GPPs.
- You have less options of hitting the bullseye. In any sport, we all know that there’s always that outlier out there that makes the difference between a 0.01% line up and a 0.001% line up.
- This is a similar but different approach to being heavy on 2-3 players. Instead of picking those few horses in the race, you’re giving heavy exposure to a bigger core.
Players and Exposures
All five pros had a similar player pool with a few unique except for Jae686. Everyone ate a lot of chalk this contest in terms of exposure as well for good reason: limited field of top talent condenses the usable pool of players you expect to make cuts. Instead of digging into stats and why the top players over exposed compared to the rest of us, let’s dig into the why.
GPPs and the top players know that the can be extremely volatile and that the field gets anchored on someone as a “sure thing” when in theory we never should. Sports are unpredictable and volatile. A great example this week is Phil Michelson. Name one tout who wasn’t on Phil and I’ll give you a nod of approval.
Everything here from our custom sheets and the industry is telling you Phil is a lock for cash and good for exposure in GPP. He’s a cut maker, has unbelievable history on the course, has good form and solid Efficiency Scoring Projections. Then why did 4 out of the 5 top pros fade him in their top exposures? The answer is the odds they’re getting against the rest of the field.
Here’s the thing with GPPs, winning them, and what the top players are doing where others aren’t. When you build your own custom projections or even use ours, and you’re also creating what you think the golfers ownership projections will be. As example, let’s say your model is telling you Phil will be 30% owned. You have the following options:
- Over expose: You believe that player will be under owned in comparison to his final score making it a good bet to be heavier than the field. So this means an exposure of anywhere from 31% – 100%
- Under expose: You believe there is more value in not owning the player as much as the field because you think there’s a chance he’ll under perform. So this means having an exposure of 1% – 29%.
- Fade: You’re will to take the odds this player isn’t going to perform well enough and pivot to someone else that gives you better odds. As example with Phil let’s say you’re projecting him to be 30% owned in the GPP. You’re also projecting Kegan Bradley to be 5% owned. You expect Kegan to produce a great result 10% of the time. This means you’re getting 6 to 1 odds that 10% of the time Kegan goes off and you’re crushing 30% of the field with this pivot.
*GPP Tip: Don’t get tied to a play because everyone else in on him. Even if it works out, the best in the business at their sport have bad days. The best in the business rarely, if ever, ratchet their exposure up to 100% on anyone in any format.
Chalk Talk
One constant between 4 of the 5 pros was fading parts of the chalk in some way. Looking back at Players and Exposures section, we talked more in detail as to why they would.
- The pros only agreed upon Justin Rose and believed he would be worth over exposing as compared to the chalk.
- Four out of Five agreed fading Finau, Mickelson, Fowler, and Rahm was the correct call. The field was more correct on making Fowler and Rahm chalk than they were this week.
- The other five were a toss-up being close to evenly split on whether or not to expose to these guys.
*note that this chart is in reference to their top 10 player’s exposure vs. the fields top 10 exposures. They may have had limited exposure to chalkier players.
Results
Overall the top pros in PGA didn’t fare too well this week. It’s a good reminder that everyone can have off days. This week’s big winner was CSURAM88 with nearly $60,000 in profit. This is the second week we’ve looked at where a more extreme approach paid off large dividends as opposed to a balanced approach.
Conclusion
Hindsight is 20/20 in DFS but there are a few conclusions we can draw looking forward into the Master’s this week.
- Most pros take a somewhat balanced and hedged approach to how they build their line ups and core player pools.
- However, two articles in a row it’s a different type of strategy that focuses on the more extremes that paid off.
- Keep an eye on slack this week in conjunction with our tools to give you an edge in picking the right core to focus in on versus everyone else.