PGA DFS: Study a Pro, Fantasy Golf with Bric75 (includes interview) (FREE)

As always, we’ve got you covered with the always prolific, Jason Rouslin and his roughly three-dozen articles analyzing the tourney, as well as an article from Jazzraz, grades and values from Alex Baker and projections from our keyboard jockey, DFS pros.

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Welcome to the first PGA edition of Study a Pro, just in time for the Masters. We’re going to take a look at the number one ranked PGA player on RotoGrinders, Bric75, and what he did with his 150 lineups in the massive $5 GPP on DraftKings last weekend for the Valero Texas Open.

Bric75 was nice enough to answer a few of my questions for this article about his process, the stats he values and some additional advice for new DFSers (you can find his thoughts below my article).

As you probably know, most pros use their own projection systems to generate their DFS plays for a given week and reverse engineering the nuances of a projection model is virtually impossible, so I’m grateful he was able to take the time to answer these questions. His insight shaped this article and allowed some clearer takeaways than I otherwise would have had.

Let’s dive in. Right below is a summary of Bric75s lineups and my attempt to analyze them. After that, a brief Q&A with his thoughts, followed by a spreadsheet with his actual lineups.

Player Pool

BriC75 used a 46-man player pool, that shrinks to 35 players if you don’t include those rostered under five times. His highest owned golfers were Tony Finau, Rickie Fowler, and Luke List (all at just over 33%), which was higher than the field in each instance.

Up top

Bric75 wasn’t afraid of the chalk at the top – of pivoting off ownership, or fading, say, Rickie Fowler because of his expensive price tag. His two most-owned players were the first and third most expensive players in the field (Fowler, Finau). He also had shares of the other high priced golfers in the field, at lower rates.

Down low

Bric75 steered clear of most of the landmines down below the 7k range, opting to pepper in a few cheaper plays like Corey Conners, Sam Ryder, Harold Varner III, Ryan Armour and Beau Hossler. For the most part, his exposure is lessened as the price point goes down – which makes sense on two levels. First, it’s far easier to get over the field on a low-priced golfer because they’re always lowered owned than high priced golfers. Second, because golf is so difficult to predict, you’re bankroll depends on some measure of risk aversion, or spread out risk when dealing with volatility at the bottom.

Ownership considerations

Last week my picks for The Approach went off the rails, when I attempted a new strategy (ignoring Alex Baker’s ranks) in order to recommend the overpriced Lucas Bjerregaard and Hao-Tong Li, based solely off the fact that they were A) good golfers with strong OWGR rankings and B) going under-owned because of relative high prices and low name recognition.

My argument was that, if Player-X is +500 to finish in the top-five of the tournament, but is 5% owned, and Player-Y is +450 to finish in the top-five, but is 25% owned, you go with Player-X and take the ownership leverage on the field. Two players, same odds, similar price points, vastly different ownership.

The logic of that argument is sound, and you can’t draw too many conclusions from a sample size of one, but the results might not be positive over the long haul, because there is some opportunity cost that comes along with taking a worse play, or a slightly more expensive play in order to gain leverage on the field.

Making matters worse: Bric75 had no shares of either player. I find it a little worrisome that the top player in the world likely isn’t employing this strategy. In the interview below, Bric75 talks about how sharp players are getting these days and how it’s getting more difficult to find an edge on the field, so I think what he’s saying is that these players are low-owned for a reason. Still, there’s variance in golf.

I think a strategy like this is acceptable if you’re going for the home run once a year, not steady profits over the long haul.

Vegas odds

Without going into too much detail, these are where the pros start their models and that’s where Bric75 starts his too. If Vegas isn’t sharp, they lose all the money.

One caveat: if you are looking for Vegas bargains, make sure you’re cognizant of the real Vegas odds and not what the public is doing. Jordan Spieth this week, probably shouldn’t be 18-1 to win the Masters. Tiger’s odds are always skewed too.

The most important stat

In an acronym: SG:T2G

That’s Stroke Gained: Tee to Green for you novices out there. Almost without failure, Bric75’s most owned players at Valero ranked near the top of SG:T2G over the last 25, 50, and 75 rounds.

Let’s take a look at the SG:T2G ranks in the Valero field and how much each player was owned by Bric75:

1) Byeong-Hun An: 38 shares

2) Corey Conners: 21 shares

3) Jason Kokrak: 41 shares

5) Luke List: 54 shares

6) Lucas Glover: 31 shares

7) Tony Finau: 56 shares

8) Joaquin Niemann: 32 shares

9) Abraham Ancer: 8 shares

10) JB Holmes: 37 shares

11) Matt Kuchar: 24 shares

12) Joel Dahmen: 36 shares

13) Rickie Fowler: 54 shares

The likes of Billy Horschel (3), Graeme McDowell (0) Jim Furyk (0) Aaron Baddeley (1), players not known for their T2G game, were generally faded. Of course, those players were all a little pricey as well, so it’s easy to draw the conclusion that they were faded for their lack of value.

SG: Putting

Curiously, the three best putters in the field – Beau Hossler, Brian Gay, and Rickie Fowler – were among Bric’s most owned players – but they were the exception, not the rule. I asked Bric75 about it below and his response was that his model just thought they were good values.

Course history

Not seeing much correlation here. Though Bric75 has a few of the top Valero Course Horses in his lineups, he also has a numbers of players who didn’t have great course history at Valero, including Hossler, Berger, Armour, Glover and Joel Dahmen.

Verdict: It’s reasonable to assume Bric75 didn’t place a great emphasis on course history, though perhaps it was a small part of their model.

Takeaways

  • Bric75 is not all that worried about ownership. He took strong positions on players that projected well, and wasn’t afraid to outright fade those that didn’t.
  • Bric 75 didn’t worry too about ownership pivots or fading chalkier players – he simply relied trusted his projections and went with them. He did end up manually lowering two players because his relative ownership was so much higher than the field (see below).
  • If you’re already an Awesemo member, trust the projections. You can tailor your process, but by in large, trust them. Tinker with ownership, exposure and weight relative to the field – not the projections themselves.

Getting a projection model

Creating a projection model isn’t easy, but I’ve got some good news for you: offering access to pro projections is exactly what we do here at Awesemo.com (shameless plug). Alex Baker himself is ranked just two spots behind Bric75 in the RotoGrinders PGA rankings (along with first in the overall rankings) and he literally shares the same projections he uses to build his lineups.

It’s hard to compete these days without access to a cutting-edge model, so if you’re going to play DFS with any regularity, signing up is a worthwhile investment. You can use promo code “THEAPPROACH” for half off your first month.

The Masters. A prognostication (guess)

All this is nice, but you’re probably asking: where is the best PGA DFSer on RotoGrinders going to go on DraftKings for the Masters?

As I’ve said, it’s difficult to extrapolate too much off 150 lineups from one tournament and, as I’m sure you’ve heard all week, course history indexes higher at Augusta than any other course on tour – making this prognostication all the more difficult.

A million caveat’s later, here are my guesses:

If we’re targeting value plays with elite T2G games, who can also make birdies, I’d wager the likes of Hideki Matsuyama, Gary Woodland, and Patrick Cantlay will feature on Bric75s lineups this week.

Again, just guesses — we’ll just have to wait and find out.

An interview with Bric75

1) Can you talk to us a little bit about your process – how you start the week? do you do research? listen to podcasts? Spend hours on Fantasy National (like me)?

I do my “research” by trying to improve my models every day. (not including injury news) I basically do no research on what everyone else is thinking or look for hot takes. I will watch a few PGA podcasts if I have time – just in case there is something obvious I missed, like a hurt player or weather concerns but I do not adjust my model based on anyone else’s opinions.

2) How much do you weigh course history? Do you vary your approach based on the tournament (say, the Masters indexes a little more towards course history than other tournaments)?

You can read from multiple sources that projecting course history into your model offers no predictive benefits (Data Golf has an article up on this topic and you can google others). Having said that, I use Vegas data and I believe course history is baked into those numbers a bit.

3) How much do you weigh ownership projections? Looking at Valero, you didn’t seem too worried about taking strong stances on some highly owned players. You weren’t pivoting to lower owned plays, just to gain leverage, correct?

I generally do not adjust for ownership projections because I see the clear game theory implications that can help you win but I don’t think most people are using the information based on proven mathematical theory. I cut back the ownership on a few guys who are projected low owned and my model has them having me own then at like 20%. Last week I cut down on my Corey Conners and Wyndham Clark ownership — which was a mistake it turns out.

My basic line of thinking on ownership is by the start of the event – whatever the ownership turns out to be is pretty much correct – the market is getting pretty sharp. So fading or X timing ownership (manually adjusting despite your model) is similar to just arbitrarily flipping a coin. IF the market is incorrect, then that should show up in your model and you should not have to adjust anyways (or you have a shit model).

4) What stats do you value? I noticed a strong correlation between your plays at Valero and SG:T2G. Would you say that’s the most predictive stat, or the stat you value most?

Birdies, Bogies and Vegas information. Along the same lines of the answer to question 2, it is extremely difficult to project Golfers accurately – there is just so much variance. I do not use SG:T2G information in my model (although that might not be correct)

5) Conversely, at Valero, you also had high ownership on Brian Gay and Beau Hossler – the two best putters in the field. That seemed to run contrary to what you were doing with the rest of your plays. What did you see there?

I think an important distinction from the way I think and what I read on the forums is you can’t predict when a player will go off (win or score the highest points), basically you can only predict when a player is (most likely) worth more than his price. So to answer any question on a individual player would be – my FC constraints combined with my model projected these players (unless I edit due to ownership concerns). FC spit out these players and that must mean they are under-priced.

6) What are some common mistakes that new DFS players, or novice PGA DFSers make?

I think lots of players think they can project what a player will do more than is reasonably possible. So maybe be a little more flexible in your opinions and not too proud when one of them hits. Also, variance in DFS is crazy high – unlike poker, so protect your bankroll at all costs.

7) What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in your years playing PGA DFS?

Once you find a reliable model – make only small changes to help improve its accuracy.

Starting to try and beat DFS my initial strategy was to reverse engineer the Vegas line down to the player level. And if you have tried to do this you will see that this is difficult to accomplish. What I have had to do, especially in golf, is use a mix of my own projections (think standard/advanced stats etc) combined with Vegas information to come up with a model. But at the core of it all – at least currently – is still to reverse engineer that accurate Vegas data. Having said that, I am then basically a slave to my model and whatever it spits out I go with. 

8) What am I missing? What is your average DFSer not thinking about that YOU are thinking about?

My advice would be to create your own model and play all sports not named NBA or NFL. So to answer the question in the DM – I think about improving my model constantly (and any other game theory changes I can make) while, at least it appears to me, causal DFS players focuses more on “plays” like who will go off that day or who should I fade. Which makes sense if you do not have a model but in my opinion that is essentially flipping coins in a casino.

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