With the end of 2017 PGA season approaching and the start of the 2018 season just around the corner, we here at DFS Army thought it was important to give VIP Members an in-depth breakdown of cash game strategies. In this article, I will review my results from last year, outline the basic strategy being employed throughout the PGA DFS world and break down ways that I believe I have found an edge on the competition.
First things first, I actually started writing on Rotogrinders with a weekly article giving out my cash lineup and the rationale behind each pick. With that lineup I was entering a $5 double up on DraftKings and recording my results. When I started writing for DFS Army I kept my initial challenge going. I missed the odd week due to lack of research, no DraftKings event or simply being away on vacation but for the most part, I kept up with my initial challenge and here were the results.
Although the sample is small I believe I have shown enough in this PGA season to believe that I can consistently win in these double-up contests. Before I get into some of the things I do when constructing PGA double-up lineups I think it is important to go over some basics of PGA cash game strategy.
Basic Primer
The basic goal in cash is to be in the top half of players, there is no bonus for coming first and there is no reason to build a lineup that is going to give you the opportunity to finish first. In golf every player comes with a risk, world number 1 Dustin Johnson has missed 3 cuts this year. On three separate occasions, the best player in the world has been a complete dud (and that’s not even counting his late withdrawal from the Masters.)
With that being said this has changed the way DFS Players create their cash game line-ups. Because every player is volatile it does not necessarily make sense to lock in the top guy like Dustin Johnson (except sometimes it does, I’ll get to that later) when you can go cheaper week to week and get a guy like Matt Kuchar for less, and perhaps more stability (Kuchar only missed 2 cuts this season).
As a result, we often see DFS Players jumping on guys with good course history, good recent form (a string of made cuts) and guys that are a value as a result of their price tag. This has created tougher contests over the short lifespan of DFS PGA but every week there are different variables that we can exploit. In the next section, I will go over different fundamentals that are necessary to be a winning PGA cash game player.
Identifying Chalk
Every week the first (and perhaps most important) thing I try to do is identify who will be chalk in cash game contests. I feel as if this is crucial for a few reasons.
- As mentioned earlier, people have gotten better as PGA DFS has evolved. Most people are at minimum listening to a podcast or reading an article and taking those player picks into account when creating a line-up. By knowing who will be popular, and how popular they will be we are able to understand how others are creating their rosters.
- With a 6 man roster on DraftKings and 8 on FanDuel if a player is going to be extremely popular (as in guaranteed to be over 50% owned) it makes sense to own them as well. If they miss the cut, oh well they missed the cut for half of the field you can recover from that, if they win the tournament and over half of the field has them though you’re basically screwed.
It can be tough to figure out who will be chalky and who won’t be. I have found the more I have played the better I have become at it but there are still surprises each and every week. I also find using Fansharesports each week as a good way to quickly see which players are being talked up and down and get a relative understanding of how the effects ownerships. Finally, any player who is either in good form or has great course history but a reasonable price tag is almost certain to garner some attention.
Building your line-up
Now that you have identified some chalky plays for the week it is time to build your lineup. To me, it seems people start locking in their studs or cheap plays for the week and I think that is a bit of a mistake. If there is a guy who is looking to be well over 50% owned I usually start by locking them in but if there are no clear standouts for the week then I think the best way to start building lineups is narrow down your potential players before locking anyone in. I think by locking in two value plays you limit the rest of your choices before actually making any definite decisions.
I prefer to get myself down to 15-20 players with options in every price range and see how ownership is playing out throughout the week before making any final lineup decisions.
#TheProcess
Instead of continuing to write out my thoughts I think showing a lineup that worked and breaking it down is a better way to explain myself. The image below was my double-up strategy lineup for the PGA Championship.
The first and only player I had as an immediate lock was Paul Casey. Casey had 15 straight made cuts, nine straight finishes 26th or better and had a ridiculously low price tag of $7800. All of this would make Casey a lock for me anyway but I knew his ownership would also result in him being a must own.
My next player, I locked in on was Hideki. The week prior he won the WGC event and he came in at $10,500 which was much lower than the other elite players of the game. As the talk around Hideki was that he is the best in the world you could guess ownership would be way up there and due to soft pricing that always happens during majors he was easily rosterable.
Next for me was Charley Hoffman, great form and good price tag ($7600) made me think he would be above 50% and a must play but even at 41.5%, he was still close.
After this is where the decisions got a bit more difficult, I still had 24,000 (8,000 a player) in salary and had a few directions I could have went. On my short list of players included Rickie Fowler, Brooks Koepka, Matt Kuchar, Adam Scott, Tommy Fleetwood, Louis Oosthuizen, Kevin Chappell, Kevin Kisner, Zach Johnson. I think having all of the players in front of you really helps in creating the best possible combination once you have already confirmed a few spots. I decided upon Brooks Koepka, Tommy Fleetwood, and Zach Johnson as I felt it was the best option possible given the salaries I had already decided upon.
Ultimately it worked out as I got 6/6 golfers thru and made it within the money line by 44.5 points.
There are a few other variables week to week that I want to go over that weren’t necessarily expressed in my lineup breakdown but are essential knowledge week to week.
Expected winning score/cut line
I believe every event should result in a different cash game strategy employed and I think the expected winning score and expected cut line should play a big role in your thought process throughout the week. For example, the John Deere Classic (a very easy tournament) and the U.S. Open (a very hard tournament) should have different strategies. The first thing you want to do with any cash lineup is get 6/6 of your golfers through to the weekend. In an event like the John Deere with a cut line of -1 and a winning score of -18 you need the players to get through as they all amass plenty of points on the weekend. On the other end of the spectrum there is the U.S. Open (I am using 2016 leaderboard because 2017 was stupid) with a winning score of -4, only 4 players under par for the whole tournament and a cut line at +7 (with only 23 players above that number once the tournament was finished) you really did not need 6/6 or even 5/6 players to make it through the cut to cash. Instead, you needed to build a lineup more like you would for a GPP, getting the winner (Dustin Johnson) was much more crucial than getting guys who racked up 15 DK Points over the weekend. These are two extreme examples but they show how each week is unique and the PGA course should impact the way you create lineups.
No cut events
Finally, we have no cut events. These events involve every player playing throughout the week and are often scoffed at by the PGA DFS community as they take away the importance and strategy of getting 6/6 players through. I was in this group for quite a while and thought that these contests take away the skill of the game. However, instead of complaining about them and not playing PGA DFS for the week I decided to employ a new strategy. In DraftKings scoring format is two players finish a tournament at -5 and player A has way more birdies and bogeys he will have more points than player B. That is why we often target players with a higher birdie% as they rack up the points. In no cut events, this makes birdie makers a no brainer. Well, I still think there is importance on nailing the chalk plays and going through the lineup creation process I think finding the balance in no cut events is important.
In the last no cut event (WGC Bridgestone-Invitational) I took my new theory and tested it out making a team of guys with good form surely to be highly owned while tossing in some of the tour’s leaders in birdie or better%.
The lineup I came up with can be seen above and was clear of the cash line by 70.5 points. I found value in the week in Kisner, Fleetwood, and Scott and went after birdie makers in Thomas, Pieters and Matsuyama.
Conclusion
As the average DFS player improves the keys to success within PGA cash games will be staying ahead of the curve. Well, most players have figured out a solid cash game strategy and there is room to grow and tweak your own strategy every week as a new course is played. With a solid foundation of understanding, a sound thought process when creating lineups and the ability to tweak strategy depending on the event any player can turn into a cash game winner.