Chalk Bomb Week 3

The case for not playing Dustin Johnson

As we outlined in the very first addition of the chalk bomb, we want to go where everyone else is afraid to go...those deep dark corners where we stand alone and think about things that no one else wants to think of. It's a fact of life that humans generally underestimate how often/severe really bad things can happen. Many a hedge fund & wall street traders have made vast fortunes betting on the unthinkable. One of my favorite authors & Wall Street traders, Nassim Taleb, gives a great example of just how random & crazy our little world can be. In his famous book 'The Black Swan' he discuses a Las Vegas casino that modeled their highest risks and focused on gambling events, makes sense right? BUT as it turned out, the highest risks in reality turned out to have absolutely nothing to do gambling! The 4 biggest loses the casino ever took was a tiger that killed his performer costing the casino millions in lost revenue, an attempted terrorist attack by a crazy former employee that almost blew the entire casino up, a kidnapping of a CEO's child, and messed up tax returns by an ignorant employee who forgot to submit tax bills over an extended period. All 4 events greatly outweighted the largest losing night on the casino floor, crazy right?The point being that crazy s%#t happens all the time that literally no one saw coming, thats what makes it a black swan. Now am I saying dont play DJ because he might 'slip in his socks' tomorrow morning, no (but of course that can & will happen, even if he didnt actually slip in his socks). Last year at this tournament DJ was generally owned at over 40% in major contest across the DFS landscape which for any player, at any price, in any form, is just crazy. At a price tag of $11900, DJ basically needs to AT MINIMUM finish inside the top 10 to return any kind of value for your lineups to be around the top of a gpp. So lets break down some history to see if it could possibly make sense to fade DJ. Dating back to the beginning of 2017, DJ has played in 23 tournaments worldwide, 11 times, or a nose hair under 50% of the time, he has finished outside the top 10. Great no doubt, but those 11 times that he finished outside the top 10, you literally had no shot at a high finish in a gpp, forget the ownership aspect. Twice last year DJ had ownership approaching 40% in two other tournaments where he missed the cut! So now lets talk about ownership...if you want to play DJ this week, go right ahead. I did last year.....I had 60% DJ compared to 42% against the field....& basically broke even. You can have all the DJ in the world, but when the ownership gets to the levels that it was last year, & in all likelihood will be again this year, you have to hit the rest of your team absolutely perfect with generally a couple sub 3% owned guys to sniff the top of a leader board. Even if DJ finishes in any position other than 1st, you can still make a profit fading him. So if you roster DJ this week at 40%+ ownership, its almost about 'loss prevention' than it is about winning. Yea if he wins & you dont have him, you'll probably lose money this week, but on the chance he fails....you just leapfrogged damn near half the field without lifting a finger. Speaking of chances.......

Looking at the odds that our friends at MyBookie.ag have posted on DJ, he's -250 to finish in the top ten. That translates to an implied probability of 71.43%, in laymens terms the books are pricing in that he will finish in the top 10 almost 3 out of 4 times. For a top 5 finish, your actually getting + money, meaning that over 50% of the time the sportsbooks expect DJ to NOT finish in the top 5. BTW if that sounds like a good bet, just click on the link below & use our promo code: 'TOURJUNKIES' to get a 50%!! deposit bonus. 

Chalk Bombs Away!

There are several guys this week that are being touted across the board that will have greatly inflated ownership that I can make nice anti-data arguments for. I certainly considered Chez Reavie in this spot....his course history at Riveria is MC, MC, MC, MC, 7th, MC....one of these is not like the other. He's also an almost perfect anti-course fit....Riviera is one of those really weird places where statistically accurate drivers have done fairly poorly on the whole & longer hitters have generally done well. Going right along with the DJ theme, our friends at Fansharesports.com are projecting one player to be paired with DJ more than any other to form the chalkest 1-2 punch on the block (no pun intended, you'll see).What if I told you that the chalk bomb this week more than doubled his strokes gained putting at this event last year compared to every other PGA tour event he played in, aka got really lucky with his putter. What if I also told you that even though this guy is a bomber, he gained almost zero strokes on the field last year off the tee. What if I told you that the only two times last year that this player had ownership above 20%....he missed the cut! We'll right now said player is projected to be between 20-25% owned, and he's coming off two tournaments in a row where he both putted & scrambled well, either of which he usually does. I love guys with great upside, but just like our boy Keegan, you want these guys when they are sub 10%-5% owned, not 20%+.  Your chalk bomb this week.....Thomas Pieters!

Stupid is as stupid does....learn this knowledge to be happy come Sunday!

1. Thomas Pieters did in fact win an NCAA tournament here at Riveria if you like that narrative street type of thing2. 5 guys with sneaky course history: 1. Keegan 2. KJ Choi 3. Sang-Moon Bae 4. Jimmy Walker 5. Cameron Tringale.....Adam Scott has great history here, I would consider it 2nd or 3rd behind DJ, but I wouldnt consider it 'sneaky'3. Top 5 guys in strokes gained putting at last years Genesis, aka guys that got lucky: 1. Scott Brown 2. Kevin Na 3. Scott Piercy 4. DJ 5. Jimmy Walker4. Last year this guy gained almost a FULL stroke per round T2G at the Genesis on DJ (& the rest of the field!) This man was Charlie Hoffman5. Kevin Chappell tweeted this week that he thinks Riveria suits his game more than any course on tour even though the results dont show it. 6. Beau Hossler once again is a top the leaderboard the first two day to crumble into the weekend, he's going to put 4 good rounds together at some point. 7. This is my weekly fact for Brandon Harkins that lets you know all he does is top 15 except when he puts 32 times a round. Hes a bomber that is a good putter, Koepka lite! side note, he lead the field in strokes gained approach last week*8.  Paul Casey gained a redic 4.13 strokes tee to green last week* (only 2 rounds were measured because #proam) but lost a full stroke putting per round....you know what to do.9. Spieth actually gained strokes putting last week* (abiet at his new baseline of about 0.2 strokes per round). Certainly better than losing 2 strokes per round!10. Tony Finau has terrible course history here, but man he putts about twice as well on Poa as he does any other surface. Guys that have taken big steps forward in their game that setup well but have bad history are usually nice ownership plays, JT is in the same boat.  

Thats it boys & girls!

Team TJ will be heading to the MIT Sloan sports conference next week so we hope to have all kinds of new info, strategy, interviews to up your knowledge in the coming weeks. It's an honor to write for you guys & I look forward to making everyone on team TJ a better DFS player! Holla