Vegas Bargain Rating
I have been studying Vegas implied odds in daily fantasy golf for a while now. What I’ve found is that, because of the correlation between DraftKings salaries and Vegas implied odds to win a tournament, using an extreme stars-and-scrubs lineup approach is optimal for PGA Tour DFS contests.
Because the correlation between Vegas odds and DK salaries is very strong, we can predict what a player’s salary should be based solely on Vegas odds. Measuring the difference between that number and a player’s actual salary, we can find inefficiencies in pricing and create essentially a ‘Vegas Bargain Rating’ (VBR), which can show us the discount or premium available on any given golfer’s Upside.
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The 2016 Quicken Loans National
In daily fantasy golf, we should treat each week — each tournament — as its own entity. DraftKings does, as its Vegas-heavy pricing is determined less by overall talent on the PGA Tour and more by the strength of a specific field. The pricing for this week’s Quicken Loans National shows the extent to which strength of field (and not talent) impacts salaries.
Based on the correlation between Vegas odds and DraftKings pricing, this week Rickie Fowler — with slate-high 6.7 percent Vegas odds — should be priced around $16,200. Instead, he is priced at $12,000. Of course, if we used the prediction formula from just last week, we’d see that a golfer with implied odds of 6.7 percent would be priced around $12,300, so Fowler’s salary this week (even if it’s still too low) is around where we’d expect it to be, based not on Vegas odds but on DraftKings history of pricing down a slate’s top-tier golfers.
This week also has an interesting quirk: It has the strongest correlation (R-squared value) that I’ve seen so far. Our usual R value is around .78 to .80. This week it is .90. What does this mean? It likely means that in a weaker field — especially one without any of the Big 4 or anyone with double-digit odds to win — DraftKings leans more heavily than it usually does on the Vegas odds for pricing.
The 2016 Quicken Loans National Vegas Bargain Ratings
Here are the VBRs for this week:
As mentioned above, I normally take a stars-and-scrubs approach when constructing PGA DFS lineups. However, this week — even though the best VBRs are still at the top — there are two main factors that make me hesitant to employ a super stars-and-scrubs approach.
- The highest implied odds are at only 6.7 percent.
- The formula and correlations differ drastically in comparison to last week’s.
Of course, the second point might not be as important as it seems, since DraftKings softened its pricing last week because the tournament was a Major. Most weeks I would expect Fowler’s implied salary to be around $13,000, not $16,000. Is he still a value based on his Vegas odds this week? Yes, but probably less than his VBR would have us believe.
A Balanced Approach?
Under these circumstances, I’m a little more willing this week to create a balanced roster and forgo the super stars-and-scrubs approach. According to the table above, we may not even need to sacrifice Upside in being balanced: Bryson DeChambeau and Byeong-Hun An have respectable VBRs in the $8,000 to $9,000 range and would allow you to roster a top golfer as well as some golfers priced just below them.
Part of the fun of DFS is continually adapting to tournament strategy. I’ve been preaching the stars-and-scrubs gospel for a while now, and while I still firmly believe in it most weeks there is reason to doubt it for this week’s Quicken Loans National. The top golfers are likely still the best ‘values,’ but I think that the actual best VBRs — because of the strong correlation — are pretty spread out across tiers.
Good luck this week, and check back tomorrow for VBRs for the BMW International Open, this week’s Euro Tour stop.
