NINETOFIVESPORTS
HOW TO USE:
BASIC OVERVIEW
The membership is designed around you the DFS / Fantasy Sports player. Everything is designed to make your research process easier, and thus faster. It has been designed to tell you specifically who the best plays / bets are each week. The purpose is to give you the data and information you need to be successful. Meaning some things that may be used for content purposes that do not matter for that weeks tournament will not be mentioned. Straight forward information is the goal each week.
NAVIGATION
The navigation is one thing that you will have to learn. All the Curated Data for that weeks specific tournament can be found on the "Data Homepage". This includes: Cheat Sheet, Lineup Tool, Custom Models Tools, Ownership Leverage, Course/Tournament Details, Player Profile, Results, Matchups, and the Terminology Sheet. The PGA Lineup Builder is the lineup optimizer that can build lineups for each slate, and however many lineups you want. The Showdown/Leaderboard tool is designed for those people that want to make bets during the tournament, and for those that want to play Showdown Slates. This includes who is most likely to win heading into a specific round, who is most likely to play better for a specific round, who is projected the most points, and who is the top play for a specific round. Cutsweat "Beta" is a tool that can be used on events with a cut. You can view the 6/6, 5/6, 4/6, and 3/6 % for that weeks tournament. This is in beta because it currently only lets you look at the top single entry GPP, and top single entry Cash Contest. The Tournament Writeup is going to be your one stop shop article for the week. This has the Course/Tournament overview for what the expectations are and what the key stats will be, the best bets, the top picks, core plays, cash plays, player pool, and first look build. The Player Tournament Log is going to be where you can go to look for player specific data. This is not curated for that weeks tournament so it includes every player in the database. Golf Majors is designed for those people that like golf futures. You can please bets for the upcoming majors. The data is once again curated for that specific major. Betting tab is designed for betting purposes for that weeks tournament. DP Tour Cheat Sheet is just that a cheat sheet highlighting the top picks for that weeks tournament.
925 DATA:
925 sources all of the PGA Tour in house. This is what allows us to have some of the unique data available that others do not. This is also how we are able to come up with some unique PGA Stats that are available for 925 users only.
The 925 Golf Data is Curated data for you for each PGA tournament.
One thing to know is that the data is not based on "Rounds" rather "Date". Rounds are great to have every golfer graded against the same amount of data, but the biggest flaw in this is that "Rounds" in a data set could go back more than 4 years. In simple every year that goes by the data becomes less significant. By year 5 any data being pulled in is not relevant. Looking at "Rounds" will tend to favor Veteran players that are not playing well rather than favor golfers that are currently playing well. Looking at Rounds tends to lead towards slightly worse decisions than looking at Dates.
The data is all set to work on itself. This is why a tool like the "Showdown/Leaderboard" Tool is more predictive after each round, and why a 925 member has won a showdown slate at least once a month since this tool was made live on the website. This is another reason why if you just play bet a player rated top 12 or better in the 925 model that you would have an outright win in 75% of the events in 2022. If you were to use the 925 "Betting" sheet using the top 12 players most likely to have the first round lead during the month of January you would have hit the FRL in every round. Players that were rated top 12 in the 925 model have also finished top 10 31% of the time. In the PGA season 2021 925s betting card had a winner, runner up, or cash out opportunity (Player that was the favorite to win heading into the back 9 of the final round) in 50% of the events.
Common Mistake: A common mistake that people make in PGA is looking at the wrong data. The most common would be just looking at one data set and making decisions based off of that. Individually Recent Form, Stat Fit, and Course History is not all that predictive. It is when you combine the 3 that the data becomes predictive.
Common Misconception: "PGA DFS is the most "random" sport". Yes and no, there are weeks in which you can predict are going to be more random, but those are typically in weaker field events that are easy to score. This basically evens the playing field. But when you have the best players in the world going at it, it actually becomes easier to figure out who the top plays are. The random part of PGA DFS is determined by the field, tournament, and conditions. Also as more players get more rounds in during the season the less random their results become. You could make an argument that golf is easier to predict than other sports. It really just matters what you consider when looking at it. If you're trying to figure out who is going to make the cut among the top end plays not that hard. I say that because in NBA DFS, and NFL DFS you can typically pin point who is going to play well, and hit value. In those sports you have variables like fouls, defensive focus, play calling, and injuries that could effect how the player does. In golf the biggest difference between a made or miss cut can come down to one bad shot. If an NFL player, or NBA player has one bad play it typically doesn't hurt there fantasy day. When trying to figure out who is going to be the top play on an NFL DFS main slate it is basically the same thing for PGA DFS when trying to find a player to win.
PGA DFS STRATEGY:
Strategy in PGA DFS comes down to one main thing. BANK ROLL. Bank Roll will dictate what you can do, and how you can play. There is nothing wrong with knowing that you have to be financially smart, and vice versa there's nothing wrong with having the freedom to bet however you please. The big thing here is knowing what you can or can't do. Establish a weekly budget, and a season long budget. After that you want to establish a REASONABLE goal. For most this will be a dollar amount.
Smaller Bank Roll: If you're someone that is playing with a smaller bank roll don't worry about it because actually you will be able to make better lineups than people with a bigger bank roll. With a smaller bank roll you have to focus on lineups, and contest that will help you cash. First we look at Single Entry contests, whether that is in Cash or in GPP these are going to be the easiest to cash in. When you do cash in these contest they typically pay 2X. Another sneaky thing you can do is use that main lineup that you entered in single entry whatever the main "milli maker" contest is. When you focus on making a quality build it becomes easier to cash in contest where people are just focused on quantity. These contest basically operate like a cash contest because 60% of the lineup submitted are bad. Over the long term if you just focus on making one quality build each week this will lead you to cashing more frequently. This is a season long approach that you would do. Part of this strategy is focusing on full tournament field events where there is a big edge.
Big Bank Rolls: When you use the 925 player pool, and model you know that you're going to be on the right plays. What this boils down to is being on them at correct ownerships. So if you're someone that is max entering each week you are going to have an edge using the 925 data. Using the 925 Lineup Optimizer you can favor some players more or less based on what you're expecting. But overall you are going to be able to break even most weeks. When you have a bigger bank roll the focus is on capturing that one great week that will carry you for the next months to come. This player knows that not every week is going to be a great week but that the great weeks will eventually come. Now this does not mean be stupid with the players you're playing but it just means that eventually you will have a build that has the correct lineup path.
DATA HOMEPAGE
CHEAT SHEET
This is designed to be your one stop shop for that weeks tournament research. It gives you all the data you want and nothing more. It does this by highlighted the top players in Course History, Recent Form, Stat Fit, and Model. This will show you a players Projected Points, Projected Cut %.
COURSE HISTORY (CH RK): Course History is shown by H1, H2, H3, and H4. (History 1, History 2, History 3, History 4). This will be the most 4 recent years course history for that event. In most cases that will just be 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018. We do get some events in which we do not have course history as it takes place on a rotating course. Then this will be the best comparable (Comp) courses we have. Why don't we use Comp Courses every event? This only highlights if someone is a good fit for the expectations of that course. Which is something we already do with the Stat Fit data. This data is never as accurate as direct course history. Why is their only 4 years of course history data? The most two recent starts for course history is when the data is most significant. After that we see it really fall off. H1= 41% predictive, H2 = 33%, H3 = 17%, H4 = 11%, and if we were to go a little further it would be H5 = 7%. After year 5 it really does not matter. The expectation would be a player that has made 10 straight cuts and an event. Players like that are very rare, and would still get highlighted as players will strong course history play. *Note just because someone has won an event 8 years ago does not mean that they have good course history. The Course History Rank (CH) is the average finish of that golfer over the last 4 years compared to the field.
STAT FIT (ST RK): Stat Fits are determined by the course specific data in years past. This will tell us which stats have led to a player having a good or bad week at that specific course. The top 4 key stats will be highlighted in the cheat sheet for you to view by. This is nice because we can see if a player has weakness or strengths in their stats. This will help you to determine how risky or consistent a player is. Now there is some data that goes into the back end of this is proprietary data that is used to make the data more predictive. Stat Fit (ST) is the average of all the key stats for that week compared to the field.
RECENT FORM (RF RK): The recent form data is based on the last 10 starts on tour. When looking at recent form we are trying to highlight players that are currently playing the best golf. If we wanted to see how a golfer was doing long term we can do that by looking at their Stat Fit, because that is what the Stat Fit is telling us. Recent Form is trying to capture which players might be on the rise or a little bit sneakier compared to the field. We look at 10 weeks so that it is not to small of a sample size. If a golfer has not played in the last 10 weeks then they will not have a RF rank. Players that have not played in 3 months on average are less consistent of golfers as well. The last 4 weeks on tour will be highlighted on the cheat sheet specifically.
SPECIALIST RANK: (SPEC): Each tournament has certain key characteristics that make it unique. This is a data rank based on those key characteristics for that weeks tournament. Typical Key Characteristics: Course Designer, Green Grass Type, Course Length, Weather, Scoring, Etc. Each of those stats will be individual stats that are combined to make a ranking. The ranking is what you will see. Each individual stat that goes into this is filter so that we have a proper data size sample. NOTE this is the least important of ST RK, CH RK, and RF Rank. This data is the most misused data in fantasy golf so I just want you to use this correctly.
MODEL RANK: (MDL RK): This is simply a ranking of the top plays for that week. *Note this data is based on all of the data previously stated.
PROJECT PTS: This is the projected fantasy points for the player that week. This is determined by how a player is expected to play that week, by how they are expected to play based on their price point, and based on their average fantasy points scored.
PROJECT CUT %: Projected Cut % is based on how a player is expected to do that week, how other players in their price point range are projected to do, and that players cut % over the past year.
PROJECTED OWNERSHIP (PROJ WON): This is the players projected ownership for that weeks tournament. This is typically updated on Tuesday afternoon.
DATA Sliders: The sliders above the data sheet can be used to filter to see specific data on that sheet.
LINEUP TOOL:
This is a tool that is best used for people that are not making a lot of builds. For those users that are focused on Quality over Quantity. Instead of making a build in Draftkings or Fanduel and guessing how it looks. You can use this tool to see exactly how it looks. *Note a good 6/6 percent is anything over 69%.
Custom Model Tool (C.M.)
This is designed so that you're still looking at all the correct data points for that week. It already has the Course History, and Recent Form for that weeks event pulled up. This can be selected out if wanted.. Then you can select which key stats you want to use for that week. This gives you the ability to look at the data in a curated way still.
SPECIALIST:
Sortable data based on specific data points that you want to look at. Including: Course Style, Event Type, Greens, Scoring, Length, Course Designer, Location, Course, Player Ties, Course Par, and Date.
CUSTOM MODEL SPECIALIST: (C.M. SPEC)
This is the custom model specialist page. A page that combines the aspects of both pages. But is unique in its own. You can select the specific data that you want to bring into your model. You can then sort it by the specific specialist data points you want. *Note the more you Specialist Data points you pull in the smaller the sample size will get.
COURSE DATA
The course data sheet is where you can go to see everything for that tournament in the past. You can view Course, Location, Season, Course Style, Event Type, Weather, Cut, Scoring, Par, Yardage, Length, Past Winners, Designer, Fairway Type, Fairway Length, Greens, Green Sizes, Green Speeds, Rough Acers, Rough Length, Bunkers, and Hazards. These Data Points can all be filtered by as well. (Which you would only use when it is an event with a new course).
The Key Stats that are listed are the ones that week in and week out provide us the most predictability. There are more data points that are in the 925 Database that are not shown. Things like scoring based on a certain yardage have not been included because they are not predictive data points. Rather we just look at 200+, and Wedge. This will tell us if it was an Iron, or Wedge fest. Other than that we have the main PGA DFS Key Stats.
You can view which ones were the most important in terms of making the cut, and then in terms of finishing top 10, and winning. How I like to use this is to look at did Driving Distance or Good Drive % matter more. Was one more important than the other. You can do this with the Scoring Stats: B2B, BOB, Par 4, and Par 5 scoring. Then with the SG Data. Since Strokes Gained Total is a combination of all the SG Stats, and SGT2G is a combo of SG AP, SG OT, and SG PUTT we do not have to use those two. Instead focus on if SG OT, SG ARG, SG AP, or SG SP was more important. From there we can see which were the key stats for that week.
Ownership Leverage (LEV):
Staying on point with Curating Data, and doing the work for you is the Ownership Leverage tool. It's great to have the projected ownership, but what is even better is knowing how to apply that knowledge. Well that is what this tool does. You can find which players are being over, under, and properly owned that week. Just because someone is high owned doesn't mean you have to fade them, and just because someone is low owned doesn't mean you have to play them. Bad plays will still be bad plays even if they are low owned.
MATCHUPS:
The Matchups tab is for you to get an easy view of why a player might be a better play or better than another player in the field. This is a great tool to use for 50/50 decisions, and for matchup bets.
Other Tools
Leaderboard/Showdown
This tool is separated by 4 rounds because that is how this tool should be used. It is a tool you can use for betting, dfs or just for your cut sweats.
Round 1: Round 1 will not have that much data to use. If you're playing round 1 showdown use the plays you were already planning on for the week. This is going to be your most accurate data for the week up to that point. All data after that specific round will be most accurate up to that point in the tournament.
RANK: Is a rank that tells you who is most likely to be the best play that round.
Regression: Tells you which player is most likely to regress back to their norm whether that is positive or negative regression. In simple the players this tells you who is most likely to play better than they did in the rounds up to that point. It also tells you the opposite of that.
Win Rank: Probably the most unique part of this tool is the win rank. Prior to round one a player that was ranked top 12 in the 925 model has won in 77% of the tournaments. After round one that number increases to 88% when looking at the win rank. After round 3 95%, and after round 4 100%. So a good way to use this tool can be to hedge your bets.
PGA LINEUP BUILDER
Available for all Fantasy Golf slates on Draftkings. That includes PGA, DP Tour, KFT, and LPGA Tour.
The lineup builder makes lineups optimized based on a players fantasy projections. So if you want more or less of a player you can increase or decrease their fantasy projections manually. You can manually set the max exposures that you want for a specific player. Or you can set the max exposure for the sample.
Tournament Writeup:
Comes out two days before lineup lock in the afternoon. So basically for most tournaments this will be Tuesday afternoon.
This is a curated writeup that includes everything you will need for that weeks slates, all while limiting fluff that doesn't matter. With that this writeup will highlight what makes a player a good play, and then explains which players are the best plays. From there we are able to establish the player pool, and thus a good main build. It is a step by step process in the week. Each week the player pool is about including all the top plays at the correct ownership levels. The player pool is always very accurate in terms of who will do well. The issue is typically figuring out the correct exposures. (Especially early in the season). So a suggestion would be not to deviate from the player pool too much. (The most common compliments are about players missing the cut that were not in the player pool)
*Note if a player is ranked well but is not in the playerpool that simply means that there were better plays in their price point range. Including too many similar plays in a certain price point range will over extend your play pool. Other than that if they are not in the player pool they most liekly are not a good play.
CUT SWEAT BETA*:
The one tool that is fluff with 925 is the Cut Sweat Beta tool. This is just something fun to look at Thursday and Friday during the tournament so you can know who to cheer for or cheer against. This tool highlights the highest owned players on the slate that are in risk of missing the cut. Then it shows you the amount of 6/6, 5/6, 4/6, and 3/6 builds.
*Note players like Harold Varner III (due to his unique characters of III) may not be included in this data which is why it is currently in beta.
PLAYER TOURNAMENT LOG:
This is none curated data that you can use for general purposes. It shows the amount of Starts, Wins, Missed Cuts, Made Cuts, Top 25s, Top 10s, and Average Finish over a certain time period. You can see their specific tournament results in that time period as well. You set the time period based on a date slider. You can select the "Specialist" data that you want to view for that play. You can also see their SG: Total, AP, ARG, T2G, and PUTTING, and Ball Striking, and Total Driving.
GOLF MAJORS:
Curated data for that specific data. All Course History is Event History. The thought behind this is that all the majors try to make their event play the same each year regardless of course. As it sits right now without know the course specs this is the best data to go off of.
You can use this tool to make some future bets.
BETTING:
Betting tool is a little bit of a unique betting tool as it pulls in different ways of looking at Win, and Top 10 %.
ODDS: Vegas Odds for that weeks tournament.
Win % / Top 10 %: This is the players win and top 10 percent over the past 4 years.
Vegas Win / Top 10 %: How "Vegas" is viewing a players likelihood to win or top 10.
925 Win %: Based on the players top win percent, Vegas odds, compared to the data's likelihood of a golfer winning.
WIN (Top 10) DIF: This basically tells you who is being valued to least / most based on their likelihood of winning. This is basically a leverage rank but with your money. *This is not a tool telling who is going to win / top 10.
FRL Rank = First Round Leader: Tells you who is most likely to have the first round lead.