Vegas Bargain Rating
I have been studying Vegas implied odds in daily fantasy golf for a while. 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.
2016 PGA Championship
Throughout the exploration of my Vegas Bargain Rating metric, I’ve mostly focused on the top players — the ones who have the biggest discrepancies between their DraftKings salaries and Vegas implied odds to win the tournament. And while that’s probably the most useful way to use VBRs, I do think that it’s informative to look at the guys at the very bottom of the list — those who are overpriced relative to their Vegas odds.
Here are the VBRs for the 2016 PGA Championship:
Exploring the Bad Bargains
At the very bottom of this table sits Hideki Matsuyama, who is priced at $8,800 yet boasts only 1.5 percent odds to win the tournament. For reference, Brandt Snedeker has implied odds of 1.8 percent to win but costs only $7,500 this week. According to the ‘line of best fit’ formula this week, a player with 1.5 odds should be priced at $7,600. Thus Matsuyama’s about $1,200 ‘overpriced’ according to his Vegas odds.
He’s likely just overpriced in general: He was $8,300 last week for The Open Championship and finished with only 16 DK points, missing the cut badly. He has missed the cut in three of his last four events. Although his Long-Term Adjusted Round Score (LT Adj Rd Score) is still very solid — his mark of 68.7 is tied for ninth in the field — his Recent Adj Rd Score is truly atrocious. His mark of 71.2 ranks 138th in the field out of 155 golfers. He’s in very poor form right now, and unless you’re banking on him suddenly becoming the golfer he was earlier in the year then his $8,800 price tag is much too high.
However, it’s not all drastic at the bottom of our table. For example, Adam Scott has very solid LT and Recent Adj Rd Scores. He hasn’t missed a cut this year and had a top-10 finish just two weeks ago at the Bridgestone Invitational. However, Vegas really dislikes his chances of winning the PGA Championship. He has nine Pro Trends currently — behind only Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Bubba Watson, and Jason Day. You’ll need to take a stance with him: Either trust Vegas and fade his $9,600 price tag and 2.9 percent odds to win — or take the contrarian player.
Buying Jordan Spieth
On the upper end of the chart, the Big 3 of Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, and Jason Day all have excellent VBRs of 80 or higher and Jordan Spieth is a distant fourth, although this may not be entirely fair to him. Let me defend Spieth for a moment . . .
Jordan boasts the second-best LT Adj Rd Score — tied with Henrik Stenson and behind only Jason Day. He has ‘only’ the 11th-best Recent Adj Rd Score in the field at 67.8, tied with Rory McIlroy. Those Big 3 players have certainly had much higher highs than Jordan, yet the data shows that Jordan probably deserves to have better odds than 6.7 — almost half the odds of the players above him. I’m not entirely sure why those golfers have had higher highs despite having similar or even inferior Adj Rd Scores.
Maybe it’s just variance — but the point is that his data, odds, and pricing don’t match up. I’m high on Jordan this week as a tournament option, his struggles with his irons notwithstanding.
Good luck this week, and look out for our upcoming PGA Flex podcast and PGA Live show on Wednesday night!
