Chalk Bomb

What up Junkies? Get ready to scratch that itch, because we're about to start bringing you the sauce right to your inbox every week!

Hey Guys, welcome to the Chalk Bomb! Just want to take a moment to introduce myself & go over what you can expect from this new weekly segment. My name is Ben & I'm a fellow addict...I read white pages & statistical research papers on golf for fun. I play both real golf & fake golf (fantasy) & have a unique background from the high frequency trading world that gives me an edge in how I view & analyze the data in this crazy volatile game. A couple things you can expect from me:1. This will be unique.....we want to give you a different view than every other fantasy golf site. In the trading & trading systems world, I built systems by figuring out what is NOT profitable. You would be amazed how many times the data would go directly against what was though of as common wisdom. 2. In being unique, we will look at NEGATIVE data more often than positive data...this week provides a great example at the top of the salary chart. We can sit here & talk about how great Rahm, Speith, & Hideki are, thats easy, but whats harder & much more interesting is to talk about why you SHOULDNT play those guys. 3. We will focus on the process & not the results. 4. There will be 'Office' references....often....deal with it. #ScrutedIt5. I want this to be fun, engaging, easy to consume, & responsive. Let me know what you like & dont like, see value in or dont. We want to help you make better decisions, & in doing so we'll try to be bold in our stands. Golf is the most variable game out there, we will be wrong frequently, but we will let the data guide us in how to be wrong less than everyone else. 

-Bome

For this segment we'll try to nail down one guy every week that will have significant ownership and is primed to blow up DFS lineups, aka the Chalk Bomb! Obviously we'll be going strongly against the grain in these spots, but by finding the heavily owned guys with a higher likelihood to fail, we give ourselves great leverage against the field every week. 

Now there are certain levels of 'failure' that needs to be discussed. Failure for a guy that is going for 11k on Draftkings (or 17k on FantasyDraft) is basically any finish outside the top 15-20, depending on the rest of the pricing. Failure for a guy that is 7k on Draftkings (or 11.5k on FantasyDraft) is basically just missing the cut, any made cut is guaranteed profit. I think a lot of times people forget that we have to operate inside the format of this salary based game, hence we need to be extremely price sensitive. At the top this week (above 9k on DK, 15k on Draft) we have 9 guys that are all really bleeping good at golf. When everyone is good you really have to nitpick on whats going to separate these guys. All of these guys are going to carry ownership this week, so we'll break down this top tier to ID our bomb. So jumping right into our different approach of looking at negative data, we'll look at the key stats that we've already backtested as the most important this week, & rank our top 9 guys against each other....someones gotta finish last! Our main stats this week are GIR/Approach, Birdies or Better, Par 4 scoring, Par 5 scoring, last 6 events of putting, Bogey or worse, & course GIR.So think of this more as an 'anti-course fit' analysis this week. We got 7 categories total, and one of these guys is in the bottom 3 of the group in six of the seven key stats this week. This guy actually has 'good' course history as hes 3 for 3 in cuts made here, but as far as stacking up on paper with the other top 9 guys this week.....he just stands out as clearly overvalued for his price. Below are the times that a guy was in the bottom 3 of the key stats this week:Spieth: 0Hideki: 1Rahm: 1Finau: 2Fowler: 2JT: 3Noren: 4Leishman: 5Mr. Daniel 'Chalk Bomb' Berger: 6! In all likelyhood I will have zero or very little of Berger, Leishman, & Noren. I would like to make one point on the G.O.A.T of Scottsdale Hideki.....Tee to Green last week he gained a mere 3.4 strokes the entire tournament, whereas he gained over 8 strokes putting which is not exactly what he is known for, so that T-12 he had last week is quite misleading....just saying!Late Wednesday add: Keegan Bradley is now projected to be over 20% owned. He's always great tee to green, but he's such a bad putter that he should basically be an auto-fade at that high a ownership. You want Keegan when he's sub 5%, not over 20%, even with his very attractive price point.  

10 Things you need to know so you dont look like an idiot this week

1. JB Holmes averaged 3.49 strokes gained putting per round last week....that aint happening two weeks in a row.2. The next closest guy in strokes gained putting per round last week that actually made the cut, yep, the G.O.A.T of Scottsdale. (Its our theory that Hideki had his lasik in Scottsdale & thats why he plays so well here, for reference please see the TJ twitter feed)3. 5 guys with really bad putting splits on Bermuda vs other grass: Rahm, Noren*, Hadwin, X*, Swafford, Grillo, Hossler* (* denotes small sample size)4. 5 guys with really good putting splits on Bermuda vs other grass: Spaun*, Goosen, Molinari, Uihlein*, Na5. 7 guys that made the cut last week but lost strokes putting (in order of strokes lost putting, basically just looking at guys that hit the ball great but just couldnt get the putts to drop): 1.Haas 2.Rahm 3.Knox 4.Garrigus 5.Steele 6.Hadwin 7.Molinari 6. 6 guys with sneaky good course history (weighting missed cuts heavily). Kevin Na, Harris English, Squirtin McGirtin, Ryan Moore, ZJ (I dont think his is 'sneaky' but its very, very good). This group has a combined zero missed cuts in their last 30 tries here. 7. He's not playing this week, but Tom Hoge lost 1.4 strokes putting PER round last week* and still finished T-12, dude was hitting it. (only 3 of 4 rounds were measured last week)8. Brandon Harkins has finished 8th & 12th the last two weeks, & hes 400 cheaper than he was a week ago. 9. 5 guys that have finished progressively higher the last 3 tournaments they have played: Piercy, Bradley, Goosen, Kokrak, Palmer, English 10. Top 5 guys in the field in my favorite stat this week, long term GIR (last year of play). 1. Cook* 2. Hadley* 3. Lowry 4. Stanley 5. Glover 6. Woodland 7. Spieth 8. Noren 9. Hideki 10. Finau.....Cook & Hadley are a little juiced from web.com events

Leverage

With the pricing the way it is, & Spieth, Rahm, Hideki soaking up a lot of the ownership, its going to create other very 'chalky' pockets, I'm seeing the range of high 7k guys being where many DFSers will look for value. A couple guys that will likely be under 5% owned (or close) that make for nice pivot options.Harry English-last year was a lost year, but he looks to be finally regaining some form. Hes 6 for 6 here w/ 3 top 15's.Ryan Palmer- 'ditto'....lots of folks will skip these two to go right under them at Steele, ZJ, Chappell, Kizzire, StanleyJJ Spaun- fits the course really nice & played well here last yearNick Watney- blown up the last two Sundays, but has nice history & putts much better on bermuda, will likely be sub 2%3 chalky guys I'm ok eating: Steele, Molinari, ZJFrom a game theory perspective I think it makes a lot of sense to have at least 10% of your lineups without any of the top 3 guys. They are going to soak up at least 20% a piece.....so on the small chance that all 3 finish outside the top 10, you'll be way ahead of an absolutely huge portion of the field!

Thats its for this week boys & girls, its an honor to be on team TJ, & we'll try to bring the heat every single week. This format will change frequently these first couple of months, and thats just because we want to make it a better & better tool every week for you. Good luck, & may your screens be green!

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