Two years ago, I introduced the Vegas Bargain Rating (VBR) metric to identify discrepancies between DraftKings PGA salaries and odds to win a tournament. Such a metric is valuable because DraftKings weighs player odds heavily in its pricing. Take a look at the correlation between salaries and odds for the 2018 Masters.
The r-squared value of 0.89 is very high and suggests that DraftKings prices players largely by their odds to win. That’s useful information because it’s not a perfect 1.0 correlation. There are outliers, and identifying those can help us find value in our quest to roster the winner of the tournament. And that’s useful because daily fantasy golf guaranteed prize pools (GPPs) are massive. If you want to take down a top-heavy GPP, you almost always have to roster the tournament’s winner. The VBR metric can help you find golfers who are cheap relative to their odds of winning.
To calculate VBR, I find a line of best fit (shown above), “predict” what a player’s salary would be if there were perfect correlation, calculate the difference between predicted salary and real salary, and then reset everything to an easy-to-understand 0-to-100 scale.
We can do the same exercise for golfers on FanDuel. The r-squared value is lower than on DraftKings, but FanDuel VBR is still useful.
I did this same exercise last week, as DraftKings and FanDuel always release pricing early for majors. However, odds change based on the betting market and incoming money, so I’ve updated the VBRs now, the day before the tournament, so we can see which players are gained steam. Since ownership so often highly correlates with odds per salary dollar, players who jump (or fall) in odds to win — and thus VBR — will likely experience a similar movement in their ownership rates in guaranteed prize pools. So without further ado, here are the data from last week and the updated odds. I put in a “Difference” column that shows the difference between each player’s odds today and last week.
Let’s start from a bird’s-eye view: What do the players with the heaviest line movement have in common? They’re all players with strong top-end history at Augusta National. Of the golfers whose odds have moved the most positively — Bubba Watson (+2.1%), Jordan Spieth (+1.4%), Phil Mickelson (+1.1%), Paul Casey (+0.9%), and Matt Kuchar (+0.8%) — the first three already have green jackets, and they other two have recent top-10 history. It seems that bettors are strongly valuing course history, and perhaps they just started doing their research on that front this week.
It’s likely no surprise that Bubba leads the field in positive line movement. He was around 100-1 just a couple months ago. However, after switching from the pink Volvik ball back to the old, steady ProV1, he’s gone on a tear. He won the Genesis Open in mid-February, got ninth in his next tournament at the Mexico Championship, and then lapped the field in the WGC Match Play event a couple weeks ago. He’s playing like a top-10 golfer right now, he already owns two green jackets (2012 and 2014), and he’s priced below his value at just $8,700. He uses his ball to shape his shots more than any player perhaps ever on tour, and he’s a lefty: That’s a perfect combination for the layout at Augusta. Again, it’s no surprise that Bubba’s odds are jumping this week, but beware — his ownership will jump just as much, if not more.
Spieth’s movement is likely due to a strong showing at last week’s Houston Open — he finished third — and his elite history at Augusta: In his four visits over the past four years, he’s finished 11th, second, first, and second. He’s the best putter in the world, and he knows the Augusta greens like the back of his hand. He was in shaky form prior to last week, but bettors and DFS players needed only one positive sign to jump back on the Spieth train. Last week he hit 80.6% of his Greens in Regulation and dominated the Par 5s. Those are important metrics, and we know he already has the short-stick game, so he seems to be geared up for Thursday. His positive line movement will likely mean higher ownership, which will in turn lower the ownership for the top-salaried guys in Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas. With the way the market is shaping up, you can likely get the two best players in the world right now — DJ and JT – at the lowest ownership of the top studs.
Among guys with the strongest negative line movement, DJ (-1.7%) stands out, although you might be surprised to see names like Tiger Woods (-2.4%), Jon Rahm (-1.5%), and Rickie Fowler (-1.0%) on that list as well. My theory on Tiger is that his lower odds are just a market correct: I was in Vegas the other week for some March Madness action, and I saw him as high as 7-1 or 9-1 at different books. Rahm and Fowler are likely losing ground thanks to guys around them picking up steam, notably Spieth, Casey, and Rose. This tournament is definitely setting up to be very chalky, which means it could really pay off to be contrarian in the DraftKings Milionaire Maker.
Good luck, and please join us at 8 pm ET tonight for our live show. We’ll discuss line movement, tee times, and weather and answer a ton of user questions. Oh yeah, and it’s FREE.
Pictured above: Bubba Watson
Photo credit: Erich Schlegel-USA TODAY Sports
