How To Use Stokastic PGA Sims To Win PGA DFS

If you build golf lineups for DraftKings 🎁 or FanDuel 🎁 and you are still hand-picking six names and hoping, you are leaving the hardest part of the work on the table. The PGA Sims inside Stokastic Sims do that work for you: they build a pool of lineups that looks like the field, play the tournament out tens of thousands of times hole by hole, and rank every lineup by how much it actually profited across all those runs. This is the exact workflow I use, start to finish, and below I will walk you through every screen so you can copy it for your next golf slate.

In Summary

• The PGA Sims live inside Stokastic Sims. They build your lineups, simulate the contest, and rank everything by Simulated ROI so you play the lineups that profited most across thousands of runs.
• Two stages: first build a lineup pool that mirrors what the field will play, then simulate the slate to score every lineup against that field.
• Match your settings to the contest you are actually entering: pool size, contest archetype, and percentage-to-first all change the math.
• Tune your exposures from the results page (ROI boosts, exposure caps, groups), not from the build step. Mixing those two up is the most common mistake golfers make.
• This is a tournament (GPP) tool. For cash games you want a single high-floor lineup off the projections, not a simulated pool.

Watch: How To Use The Stokastic PGA Sims

Prefer to follow along on screen? Here is the full walkthrough the steps below are based on.

Watch on YouTube

Set Up The Slate Before You Build Anything

Every accurate sim starts with the right inputs, so spend ten seconds on the drop-down menus before you touch the build button.

• League: make sure PGA is selected. Golfers who jump straight into a build forget this one constantly.
• Site: pick the book you are actually playing, DraftKings or FanDuel. The salaries and scoring differ, so this matters.
• Type: the Sims support both Classic and Showdown on DraftKings. If you are building a showdown card, switch to the showdown slate.
• Slate: there is a main slate plus individual by-round slates. Some round-one slates are not set up as showdown, so check the drop-down for the exact one you want.
• Pool Size: this is the one people skip, and it changes everything.

On pool size, you want the number that most closely matches the field of your contest. Firing into a huge-field GPP like a Milli Maker that can hold tens or hundreds of thousands of entries? Select 10,000, the largest pool. Playing a single-entry contest with a thousand entries? Select 1,000. The Max package lets you build up to 10,000 lineups and the Core package up to 2,000, so size the pool to the package you have and the contest you are entering.

Last, set the contest archetype to match your buy-in level:

Contest Archetype	What it fits
Marquee	Large-field GPPs and Milli Makers (think the $5, 150-max contests)
High Stakes	Contests with roughly $100+ buy-ins
Low Stakes	Small buy-ins, roughly under $3

There are settings in between marquee and high stakes, and between marquee and low stakes, if you want to get more granular. Once everything matches your contest, press generate lineups.

Build A Pool That Looks Like The Field

After the build runs (it takes about 60 seconds), you will see every golfer with three numbers that matter: their projected ownership, their pool exposure, and the difference between the two.

Pool exposure is the percentage of your built lineups a golfer actually showed up in. Build 10,000 lineups and you might see Jon Rahm at 23.1% pool exposure. You generally want pool exposure to sit close to projected ownership, and here is why that is not a bug: the whole point of this step is to build a set of lineups that resembles what you believe the field will play. The closer your pool is to the real field, the more accurate the simulation gets when you run it.

So you only touch the up and down arrows here if you genuinely disagree with a player's projected ownership. Think Jon Rahm will be less popular than we project? Give him a down arrow, or a few, regenerate the lineups, and you will see less of him in the next pool. If you agree with the ownership projections, change nothing and move on. When you are set, press simulate lineups.

Remember what these arrows do: they change a golfer's projected ownership so your pool better matches the field. They do not set how much of him you personally end up with. That dial lives later, on the results page.

Check The Projections, Then Set Percentage-to-First

The next screen loads our Stokastic projections by default: fantasy-point projection, points per dollar, ownership, and the randomness inputs (standard deviation plus each golfer's ceiling and floor). You do not have to change a thing here to run the Sims.

If you want to, you can:

• Edit A Single Projection. Think Scottie Scheffler should project for 85 fantasy points? Type 85. Use the rollback arrow to undo one change, or reset to clear everything.
• Upload Your Own Full Set. Make a CSV with three columns, player name, projection, and ownership, upload it, and every number on the screen updates to your projections.

The one input I always set here is percentage-to-first: match it to your contest's payout shape. If a contest pays $100,000 to first out of a $400,000 prize pool, that is 25% to first. Super top-heavy contests can pay 35% to 40% to first. Pick the one closest to your contest, because it directly changes which lineup shapes the Sims reward. (Curious how fresh the numbers are? The timestamps on this screen show when projections and ownership were last updated.) When you are done, press simulate the slate.

Read The Simulated ROI, And Trust It

This is where the engine does its thing. Every lineup you built now plays against every other lineup tens of thousands of times, on a hole-by-hole basis, with all the golfers playing the tournament out over and over. Each lineup is then graded on how profitable it was across all those runs, using the percentage-to-first payout you set.

The result is the Simulated ROI column on the left, sorted highest to lowest. Those top sim-ROI lineups are the ones I play. You will also see projected fantasy points, total ownership, how often the lineup won a simulated contest, how often it hit the top 10%, how often it min-cashed, and dupes.

The part most people get wrong: do not over-index on those side columns. Win rate, top-10%, min-cash, and dupes are already baked into the Simulated ROI. Dupes are a good example. They matter more in no-cut events, where the field can shrink to 30 to 50 golfers and identical lineups become far more likely. If a lineup wins a GPP but it is heavily duped, it makes less money, and the sim ROI already accounts for that. So let the ROI number be your sort, and skim the rest for context.

New to why a simulation that ranks your pool beats just playing your highest-projected lineup? Our DFS strategy guide covers why simulating the contest beats a single projected score.

Favorite Your Lineups (And Go Easy On Uniques)

Once the lineups are ranked, favorite the ones you want. You can favorite a custom amount, exactly the number you are entering, whether that is 20, 27, 37, or 150.

Uniques let you differentiate that set. Set three uniques and every favorited lineup has to differ from your previously favorited lineups by at least three golfers, so you will see some lineups get skipped. You do not have to use uniques at all; set it to zero if you want pure sim-ROI order. But be careful turning the dial too high. Push it to four uniques on a thin golf slate and you will start favoriting negative sim-ROI lineups, because you have forced so much differentiation that the Sims are reaching for builds they do not actually like.

Your portfolio stats at the bottom are the tell. They show the min, average, and max Simulated ROI across everything you favorited. If your min sim ROI has gone negative, you got too aggressive with uniques. Back it off until your whole portfolio is in the green.

Tune Exposures Here, Not In The Build Step

This is the single most important habit, and the mistake the host called out by name: people try to get more or less of a golfer with the up and down arrows back in the build step. That only moves projected ownership. To actually change your exposure, you do it on the results page, on the players tab. Each control lives in a specific spot:

What You Want	Where to do it
Change A Golfer's Projected Ownership (SO The Pool Matches The Field)	Up/down arrows in the build step
Get More Or Less Of A Golfer In Your Lineups	ROI boost on the results page (players tab)
Set A Hard Ceiling On A Golfer	Exposure cap on the results page
Cap Every Golfer At One Number	Global max exposure

The mechanics are simple once you are in the right place:

• Less Of A Golfer: say you have 50% Jon Rahm and want less. Give him a negative 10% ROI boost and every lineup containing him loses 10% of ROI, so when you re-adjust favorites you end up with fewer of him. In the walkthrough, Rahm dropped from 50% to 32%.
• A Hard Cap: sitting on 41% Bryson DeChambeau and want no more than 35%? Set a 35% exposure cap, adjust favorites, and you land at exactly 35%.
• More Of A Golfer: like Ben Griffin at 11%? Give him a +10% ROI boost, adjust favorites, and he climbs to 16.67%.
• Global Cap: do not want more than 30% of anyone? Set a 30% global max exposure and no single golfer can exceed it.

One gotcha: clear boost only clears your ROI boosts, not your exposure caps. Those are separate dials, so if you set a cap you have to change that one on its own.

New to building golf at volume? The free Sims let you run this exact process on an upcoming slate at no cost: tools.stokastic.com/dfs-sims-for-free. When you are ready for full pool sizes and unlimited builds, code PGASIMS10 takes 10% off your first Stokastic Sims payment: start here.

Use Leverage And Groups For Golf's Version Of Correlation

Two more tools turn a good build into a sharp one.

The leverage column shows how far your exposure sits from the pool's ownership, so you can see at a glance which golfers you are most overweight and underweight relative to the field. That tells you who you are rooting for and who you are quietly rooting against. If leverage and ownership are new ideas, our guide to ownership and leverage breaks down why being different from the field is how you win a tournament.

Groups are how you express correlation in golf, since there are no batting-order stacks to lean on like there are in baseball. If you care about weather and tee-time waves, build a group, say Nicolai Højgaard and J.J. Spaun, then give that group an ROI boost and adjust favorites. In the walkthrough, lineups containing both climbed from 6% to 10.7%. Make as many groups as you want for early wave, late wave, and weather patterns, and delete them to re-roll any changes. Golf has fewer knobs than baseball, but waves and weather are the ones worth pulling.

Keep The Sims Scoped To Tournaments

One scope note before you fire. This whole workflow, the pool that mirrors the field, percentage-to-first, simulated ROI, and the exposure tuning, is built for tournaments (GPPs), where you need a spread of differentiated, high-ceiling lineups. For cash games (double-ups and 50/50s) you are trying to beat about half the field, so you want a single high-floor lineup built straight off the projections, not a simulated tournament pool. Use the Sims for your GPP entries and keep your cash build separate.

Prefer to tail a proven card instead of building your own? The value-first habit above still applies; you just outsource the legwork. DFSnDonuts Picks on Tails is a DFS-native expert (#8 on the MLB Hot Streak leaderboard as of July 16) whose plays come with the receipt every Tails expert carries: a full graded track record you can check before you tail. Start with the free expert picks feed, where free picks post every day.

FAQ

What are the Stokastic PGA Sims? They are the simulation tools inside Stokastic Sims that build a pool of golf lineups resembling the field, simulate the contest tens of thousands of times hole by hole, and rank every lineup by Simulated ROI so you play the most profitable builds.

How many lineups can I build? The Core package builds up to 2,000 lineups and the Max package up to 10,000. Match your pool size to the field of the contest you are entering.

Should I change the projections or ownership? You do not have to. The Sims load Stokastic projections and ownership by default. Only edit a projection if you have a strong disagreement, or upload your own CSV if you run a full custom set.

How do I get more or less of a specific golfer? On the results page, use an ROI boost (positive for more, negative for less) or an exposure cap. Do not use the build-step arrows for this; those only change projected ownership, not your exposure.

Can I use the PGA Sims for cash games? This simulated-pool workflow is a tournament tool. For cash, build a single high-floor lineup from the projections instead.

Start Building Smarter Golf Lineups

The Sims do the heavy lifting that used to take hours: they construct your pool, simulate the entire tournament, and hand you a ranked list of the lineups that actually profited. Your job shrinks to setting the contest correctly and tuning a few exposures. You can run the whole process free on an upcoming slate at tools.stokastic.com/dfs-sims-for-free, and when you want full pool sizes and unlimited builds across every golf slate, code PGASIMS10 takes 10% off your first Stokastic Sims payment: grab Stokastic Sims here.