Welcome back everyone! BIG Week at Shinnecock for the US Open in store for us. With another Major comes more shots at the Milly Maker, so wanted to add some toughts around strategizing or mentality when playing these mega GPPs.
Winning a Milly Maker is seemingly every DFS player's dream. There is no higher mountain in Daily Fantasy than throwing in $10 to $20 and having $1,000,000 credited to your DraftKings account on Sunday night.
So how do you do it?
Maxing out these contests help but similar to lottos your odds aren't grossly higher with 150 entries vs 10 or 20 entries. Strategy is really the key for maximizing your EV no matter how many lineups you play. So let's talk through some simple strategies to implement this week for US OPEN.
Lineup Correlation
While there is traditionally no correlation between golfers (all are independent outcomes) there is correlation in waves, especially with questionable weather...which is what we see this week. If you are looking to maximize your 0.001% outcomes, stacking waves will give you an edge. Wave stacks correlate quite often, so maximizing the number of players in a single lineup is a big advantage. How often do you see even in seemingly good weather, the AM wave plays 1 to 2 shots better than the PM wave.
This is easily done in LineupIQ, but even if you're building by hand, the additional correlation in the event that a drastic wave advantage does occur is a huge edge. Most likely you have a player pool consisting of players in both waves, so simply taking the extra effort to pair up players based on wave is an undervalued strategy, especially this week. You can even set it to stack both waves randomly, or choose 2 to 6 players to stack and add some variety in your lineups. Think of it like this, if you had one lineup, all of your eggs are literally in one basket so might as well get them all in same wave, assuming your player pool is set. As you increase your lineups, you can venture into normal 3/3 stacks, but still have some for 6/0, 5/1, 4/2.
Ownership
We all know ownership is important but how do you quantify "good" vs "bad" ownership. You can use a simple ownership cap of 72% (average of 12% per player) or a more advanced approach is using GeoMean. GeoMean under 10% is a strategy all of the top players implement. Many times our sims will push these to the top anyways, but it is an important strategy to understand and be able to use. What does GeoMean do that Sum Ownership doesn't? GeoMean weighs single players uniqueness. You can have a lineup with one or 2 players over 20% while still having a lower GeoMean than simply having 6 players between 10-15%. Be aggressive in the Milly Maker, you are entering into an extremely large pool of lineups, and contrarian plays are extremely valuable.
The benefit of GeoMean is it mathematically shows which lineups are more unique/lesser owned, but the twist is you can have chalk players, even multiple over 20% and have a very unique lineup just by adding a couple under 5% and maybe one under 2%. It is really a great metric for lineup value, and LineupIQ pushes these up for you as a result of the sims.
Rules
Setting rules also applies to the prior strategy of ownership. You can set an aggregate rule for GeoMean cap of 10%, or you could set a rule to use AT LEAST 2 players under 5% or AT LEAST 1 player under 3%, as an example. These low owned plays provide massive leverage when trying to separate from the field. LineupIQ also offers IF THEN rules, so you could theoretically say that if a player over 18% is used then you must use at least 1 player under 5%. This will help you avoid too much overlap with the field. Even if your lineup is unique, you could have 3 or 4 player combos that are played by upwards of 20% of the field which makes those low owned plays your difference maker.
Projections & Sims
Projections are very important. Even with massive Standard Deviations for players, the mean projection is what drives player exposures. How do Sims play a role? As you know, in Milly Makers we are trying to capture the top 1% outcomes (or higher) from every player in your lineup. Other DFS simulations fall short where they treat all players as equal, where their distributions are based around their mean and fluctuate 35 points above or below that mean in every simulation. But we know golf scores are more complex than that, especially with the cut. LineupIQ simulations run full bimodal simulations so that a player with a 25% chance to make the cut still shows the same upside as Rory McIlrory or Collin Morikawa, but obviously much lower frequency. Using StdDev instead of bimodal distribution could lead to a player like Lee Hodges never showing enough upside to win a GPP, but we know his outcomes can reach those top % outcomes.
Diversity
Just a couple quick thoughts on diversity. I actually think this depends a lot on the number of lineups you are playing. If you're playing 10 lineups, it is totally fine to diversify less, especially on top players where you concentrate your exposures, but as your pool grows you should look to spread out your ownerships a bit more to ensure more lineups have "outs".
Strategies that involve player skills or attributes is fine but harder to quantify. An example of this could be bombers at the US Open, even in bad form. Or perhaps a focus on Driving Accuracy. These player profiles could be played out in the course of 4 rounds, so it is similar to the correlation tip but not something I implement often.
Be comfortable getting uncomfortable. Outside of Augusta where you can be much more chalky (mainly due to fewer players), if you're going for first place, lean into the variance that is in golf and be willing to click or allow for some ugly names in your lineups. After all, the US Open is the Major with the highest % of non-favorite winners:
Weather Talk
Things are shifting almost every hour...I wouldn't get stuck on one wave advantage just yet. Here is a look at Thursday and Friday. Potentially could be delays on Thursday if the gusts and sustained winds converge a bit more...balls might not be able to come to rest on some of these greens.
Friday looks pretty good honestly, but I am sure we will see some forecast updates throughout Wednesday afternoon.