Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Valspar Championship

Finally, a winning week for me! While it wasn’t anything to write home about, it was nice to see a positive return last week in classic, and it looked like our Discord had a good amount of success as well. It was nice to see some winners out there in both classic and R4 as always. We are so close to The Masters that we can almost taste the pimento cheese, but we still do have three more events left to go before we get to Augusta. We have one more tournament on the Florida swing before two events in Texas that honestly seem a bit misplaced, but whatever. As Discord member The Dealer said, as long as we get $200K to first, it’s a good tournament. And that’s something I agree with. Let’s take a look back at last week’s tournament before moving on to the Valspar.

The Players Championship – Recap

As I said, it was a good week, as I was able to pick up some Main Event tickets for The Masters while also cashing in the top 15 of the Driver. While it wasn’t a win by 40, it’s still money, and not all of us can be a legend like Dolesy. It was an interesting week to prepare for, as Rory McIlroy’s injury caused him to basically be unowned in all contests, as people were not willing to take on injury risk at that price point (and rightfully so). This caused more ownership to flow specifically to Collin Morikawa, who had his own back problem come up on the second hole of the day on Thursday to crush 40% of the field. What a turn of events that was.

It’s worth noting that these big events — The Players, the four majors, and usually the BMW or some of the other more well-known tournaments — often see a lot more casual play. The allure of a million dollars is quite enticing. It feels like, as more casuals enter, there is usually a shift to more reliance on projections, causing guys like Ludvig Aberg, Morikawa, and Jake Knapp to see increases in ownership. That’s something to keep in mind, especially as we think about The Masters in a few weeks. Let’s take a look at the winning lineup in the $25 Milly Maker:

• It was a truly balanced lineup that did NOT have any player over $9,000! It was an 8/8/8/8/7/7 build with many of those 8s on the high side, making this lineup an extremely unique build to win the million-dollar prize. While I rarely play truly balanced builds like this, it’s still incredible to see a weird roster construction win the whole thing.
• The lineup came in at a 96% cumulative ownership, much higher than the recommended 60-80% that I was going for and definitely higher than the 50-70% that I personally targeted. While the ownership was high, the build was unique, which points out the beauty of mixing in different types of builds in your MME set.

I can’t really be mad at the chalk hitting (specifically Aberg) because, based on the build, I likely would have never gotten to that winning lineup anyway. Hats off to the winner and the other winners of the week. 

Valspar Championship – Preview