Shark Autopsy – Dissecting the top pros strategy
The Master’s Millionaire Maker
Welcome to the third installment of the Shark Autopsy – Dissecting the top pros strategy where we look at how some of the best in the business attack high profile tournaments. This week we’ll take a look at four top pros; FlavorFlav, SaahilSud, Scout326, and for the first time in this series SamENole. Jae686 did not enter this contest.
- Scout326 and FlavorFlav opted for a much flatter exposure for this contest as compared to previous weeks.
- SaahilSud added a third player to extreme top end exposure
- SamENole followed Scout and FF’s suit in a flatter exposure center.
- From the previous two weeks: Including CSURAM88, top players are generally boasting exposures at the top anywhere from the 40% – 60% followed by flatter exposures between mid-20s to mid-30s for the next 4-8 players.
What does this mean?
A solid Multi-Entry strategy that’s tried and true here in the Army is to have a core set of players and pivot off around them. You can see it in practice here with the top pros max entering contests. Each grinder above has a solid 2-3 core players where they’re pivoting around with sprinkling exposure to other golfers. This type of strategy really focuses on “When you hit, you hit hard” producing either top line ups (like saw in our first article) or bottom line ups (like we saw last week).
Player Pools & You
Limiting your player pool while you’re multi entering really solidifies that win or go home mentality. The larger your player pool, the more combinations you’re open to. The smaller the pool, the closer you need to be to the bullseye. In the previous two weeks, having a tight player pool ended up being the correct decision process. The Master’s and the millionaire maker however are a different beast all together. With a 122.5k runners in the contest, a top 10 line up is 0.0000816% of all the entrants. You’ll generally see the perfect or near perfect LU take it down with this many players. On top of this statistic, Augusta ends up being a brutal course for all the golfers with this year being no exception. The cut line was extremely high going into the weekend as opposed to other events, creating even more variance than usual. In the end with a one off style of event, the top pros kept their pools close to how they built them in previous weeks. Saahil again had the smallest pool of players focusing on a narrow pool to get as many combinations with his core as possible.
Players and Exposure
As discussed above, The Master’s is a different type of tournament than usual. Course history plays a larger role than usual which makes plays on any other given weekend a head scratching disaster, a great idea in The Masters. The pros each had very different player pool makes ups this week because of it. DJ being knocked out the night before probably had them, and us, in a panic to readjust and see who would be benefiting from his absence. One thing they all did have in common was fading Fowler and Mickelson. Considering the tear Fowler has been on and Mickelson’s course history, I’m having a hard time defending the concept or digging much further into it.
Chalk Talk
Remember this is the pros Top 10 Exposures vs. The Fields Top 10 exposures. The 0% do not mean they faded the player completely.
- Everyone agreed Fading Fowler and Mickelson was the correct play. Speaking to last week, sometimes you have to go against the heard to be different. Since so many different players can have success at The Masters, they felt it was worth taking the risk to not having any exposure to them.
- Five of the Ten players the field chalked, only one pro was on.
- Garcia only received 3 out of 4 stamps of approval.
- This week again the pros went against the chalk in their top 10 exposures.
Results
This was another rough week for the pros all together. With the highest place finish being 141st between the four of them, it was another –EV day for all of them. This is another testament to the volatility of playing GPPs vs playing cash.
A Case of Matt Kuchar
Hindsight is 50-50 in DFS and a lot of things in life. Slack Chat had a lot of fire on Kuchar, why he was so low in the DS, and how people “should have” played him in cash. Let’s take a deeper look.
- For the case of Odds: He drifted down nearly 9%, even after the news came out about DJ not playing.
- For the case of course history: Good, but not as good as other players around his price point.
- For the case of stats we focused on: SG Approach to Green had negative stats, while the others are middling.
- For the case of Recent History: MC at the last event, which didn’t have the strongest of fields playing.
Looking at players around his price point, it paints a more obvious picture on why his ownership was low and why he didn’t pop in the default DS.
- For the case of odds: Westwood & Hatton drifted in the right direction at a significant clip.
- For the case of course history: Westwood has the edge.
- For the case of Stats we focused on: Westwood had the advantage.
- For the case of Recent History: It’s a tie.
When we’re building LUs, either cash or GPP, we’re always looking at probabilities, odds, and value. For a $200 savings, Westwood or Haas was a better value on paper than Kuchar. At best it was a coin flip between all four, at worst it was an all-in call on Westwood. All these golfers had merits and in the end it was Kuchar’s week. If we could accurately predict these types of events, we would all be rich vs. digging through game analytics trying to create an edge for the Army every day, week in and week out.