Vegas Bargain Rating: A Recap
Over the last several weeks, I have been looking at Vegas odds for PGA tournaments and how they affect daily fantasy golf strategy in guaranteed prize pools. I created what I’ve termed a “Vegas Bargain Rating,” which A) predicts the DraftKings salaries of golfers (since DK salary and implied Vegas odds are strongly correlated) and B) measures the difference between their actual salary and their Vegas-predicted salary.
In my research, I found that the highest-priced golfers are generally way underpriced relative to their Upside, because of which I believe that it makes sense (especially in large-field tournaments) to go extremely stars-and-scrubs in your lineup building: “Extremely,” as in take two or three of the highest-priced golfers and then match them with minimum-priced guys.
Dustin Johnson: Is He Worth It?
This week is unique (especially in comparison to what we’ll see next week) in that there is a huge favorite relative to the field in Dustin Johnson. He is priced much higher than any other golfer: His $12,800 salary is $1,500 higher than the next salary (Phil Mickelson’s). Of course, he also has much better odds than any other golfer. His 14.3-percent implied odds are nearly double the odds of the next guy in Brooks Koepka. His Upside is expensive to roster. Is it worth it?
Let’s say that you fade Johnson this week and take the next three highest-implied golfers to win the tournament instead. The sum of the odds of Koepka, Mickelson, and Ryan Palmer is 20.3 percent, compared to Johnson’s single mark of 14.3 percent. The salaries of those three golfers would put you at $33,200, giving you an average of $5,600 per golfer to fill out the remaining three spots of your lineup. Just about every golfer in that range has implied odds of 0.1 percent, putting your odds of rostering this week’s winner at 20.6 percent.
If you take Johnson and his high salary of $12,800, that gives you $7,440 per player to fill out the remaining five spots of your lineup. Even if you don’t go stars-and-scrubs and simply balance out your roster around Dustin Johnson, you will select guys in the 1.2-percent odds range. The sum of that lineup is 20.3 percent, nearly equivalent to that of the lineup with Koepka, Mickelson, Palmer, and three nameless scrubs.
So What Are You Saying?
I’m not trying to go against last week’s article. I’m not telling you to go balanced around Dustin. In fact, if you go ultra stars-and-scrubs with him (let’s say Johnson, Koepka, Harris English and three random guys), the sum of that lineup’s odds would be 26.6 percent. If we compare this lineup to the Nos. 2-4 stars-and-scrubs lineup above, the three-percent bump we see is equivalent to the odds of a golfer priced at $8,550 (if using the Vegas formula to predict salaries).
Here are the Vegas Bargain Ratings of all golfers versus their salaries:
We can interpret this graph in two different ways:
- The highest-priced golfers are very underpriced relative to their Upside. This was my theory last week.
- The golfers priced $8,000 to $9,500 are very overpriced relative to their Upside.
My new theory is that both interpretations are correct.
Playing and Fading
I believe that Dustin Johnson, relative to his Upside of winning this week’s St. Jude Classic, is very mispriced and should be heavily utilized in tournaments. I also believe that the players in the next range of salaries are very mispriced and should probably be faded in tournaments — or at least faded in comparison to their field ownership.
We’ll see how this works out and revisit it next week for a Major: The US Open. If you like playing Euro Tour DFS Golf, be sure to check out tomorrow’s article with the Vegas Bargain Ratings for this week’s Euro tournament.
Finally, here are all of the Vegas Bargain Ratings for the St. Jude Open:
