Golf has a lot of unique characteristics as a daily fantasy sports product, as I’ve written before, but only one of those characteristics has kept me up at night for the past year: Its legality. So imagine my relief when FanDuel announced its launch of a golf product, putting an end to the uncertainty and setting up golf for great growth and increased interest. Additionally, the FD golf product was developed with an intriguing variation to ensure compliance with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIEGA): In addition to picking golfers, you also have to pick the period (Thursday/Friday or Saturday/Sunday) over which they accumulate points. Plus the FD scoring system doesn’t include points based on finishing position. All of that means that we have more strategizing to do compared to not just DraftKings golf but also all other DFS offerings.
I’m not sure people grasp how significant these variations are and how they will affect strategy. Imagine if NBA adopted a similar variant: In addition to setting your roster, you had to choose whether your players got their points in the first or second half. How would blowout potential change your calculations? How much would ‘Fourth Quarter Isaiah Thomas’ become his own thing? People would debate whether his late-game heroics are truly predictable or are just outlying data points in a hot streak. And even if they were predictable would they make rostering him in the second half worth the risk if there were also a chance of a blowout? All of these considerations apply to golf, except even more so because of the cut.
I imagine people to start will play the intuitively correct strategy: Stars in Rounds 3-4 and scrubs in Rounds 1-2, because the stars have a lesser chance of missing the cut. This strategy is generally correct for maximizing scoring, but supporting data and analysis can take your strategy to the next level. As confusing as the new format can be, there are some pretty straightforward ways to work it into your existing processes for roster construction and game theory. Over the next couple weeks, we’ll explore some of these topics to develop some FD-specific strategies, so by the time the productive is live you’ll have an edge on the field. Here’s a preview of what we’ll cover in the next couple weeks:
• The general shape of projections for Rounds 1-2 vs. Rounds 3-4
• How and why golfers might deviate from that general shape
• What to look for in Player Models for early-round vs. late-round players
• Roster combinatorics with the new early/late-round decisions
• Implications of a scoring system that has no points for finishing position
The researching and roster-building process for FD will be largely similar to that for DK, but it’s the small fraction of difference that will provide the overwhelming edge as people figure out the new system. We’ll position you to exploit that fraction and capitalize on this exciting new introduction to DFS.
