First, I wanted to say that I’m excited to be partnering with DraftKings for Reignmakers PGA. Fantasy golf has been a hobby of mine for the last several years and it’s time to take it up a notch!
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Let’s start with some important reminders:
1. Fantasy sports are meant to be fun!
2. A personal belief: it is paramount to play within your means otherwise the “fun” can quickly dissipate.
3. Variance in the sport of golf is very high on a week to week basis. It is part of what makes the game fun. That doesn’t mean that you can’t make informed, educated decisions based on data and analytics.
I plan to play and cover Reignmakers PGA on a weekly basis. Here’s what you can look forward to:
⁃ Monday: LIVE SHOW: Tournament, contest, lineup, and marketplace review
⁃ Tuesday: Strategy and Preview Article
⁃ Wednesday: LIVE SHOW: Upcoming Tournament Preview
On occasion I’ll be trying out a few different types of content including a Thursday “Live Before Lock Coffee Grind” and Friday Playback Cut Sweat watch parties.
How I’m Planning to Play Reignmakers PGA
Playing this game within your means is very important. That said I’m going to be sticking to a max budget of $1,500-$2,000 to play RM PGA. In RM PGA there will be 5 tiers of contests:
⁃ CORE
⁃ RARE
⁃ ELITE
⁃ LEGENDARY
⁃ REIGNMAKER
Based on my budget I plan to play contests in the CORE, RARE, and possibly ELITE tiers. I won’t have enough money to compete in the LEGENDARY or REIGNMAKERS tiers so I’ll be leaving those to the whales out there. That said, we will still plan to highlight those contests and results to see what we can learn. Important to note, in this game, like most, it is better to be a big fish in a small pond. Those that deploy more capital at each tier to acquire the “best” cards are likely to perform better on a week in, week out basis. While that’s the name of the game, that doesn’t mean that its the only way to play. One great pack pull or some advanced planning can make all the difference.
Here are my estimated guesses on what it will cost to compete and enjoy playing at each tier:
⁃ CORE: $100-200
⁃ RARE: $250-500
⁃ ELITE: $500-1,000
⁃ LEGENDARY: $2,000+
⁃ REIGNMAKER: A LOT
These are some of my early educated guesses. I’d love to hear what you think, so let me know. I may certainly be wrong, but I think having an initial understanding of a rough range for each tier is helpful. I’ll continue to update these ranges as we get more data.
Contest Requirements by Tier
Let me start by saying there is some conflicting information coming from DraftKings here. I’m working to get more info. Here is the graphic that was initially posted in their Discord:
It appears the FAQs however seem to indicate some differing levels of card requirements by tier for the Classic Contests (screenshot from the FAQs below):
I’m sure we will get some clarifying information for this weeks’ contests. More on contest selection in the future. Note – in these contests your golfers will score points according to the normal DraftKings fantasy golf scoring. You can find all of these details on DraftKings app, but here is a quick summary:
- Par: 0.5 points
- Birdie: 3 points
- Eagle: 8 points
- Double Eagle+: 13 points
- Bogey: -0.5 points
- Double Bogey or Worse: -1 point
- Streak of 3+ Birdies or Better in a round: 3 points
- Bogey Free Round: 3 points
- Hole in One: 5 points
- All Rounds Under 70 Stokes Bonus: 5 points
- Finishing Position Bonus (see below)
The Genesis Pack Drop
Genesis Packs come in two tiers/price points and drop to the public on Monday March 6th at 5pm ET. If you have a Greens Pass you can buy a pack starting at 12PM ET ahead of the public sale.
Genesis Birdie Packs
⁃ Price: $199.99
⁃ Contains 5 cards that are all either RARE or ELITE tier. Guaranteed at least 1 ELITE.
Quick Analysis: It appears that the ELITE tier cards for Group 1, Group 2, and Group 3 are limited to 35 of the 75 total for each player. This leaves 40 ELITE cards per player to be used in the EAGLE packs. For Group 4 however, all 75 cards for each player are included in this drop. This ends up giving you a 68% chance of getting a Group 4 ELITE card in your Birdie pack. You can see this breakdown below. My thought here is that these Birdie Packs can help to jumpstart your RARE collection to compete in RARE tier contests. The single ELITE card guarantee in these packs may be best used in the marketplace, or based on pack luck, will provide you with a decision point on if you want to buy more packs or try to use the marketplace to bolster your portfolio. Either way, the $199 price point is a lot easier to swallow than $1,999.
Genesis Eagle Packs:
⁃ Price: $1,999.99
⁃ Contains 5 cards that are all REIGNMAKER, LEGENDARY, or ELITE tier. Guaranteed to have 2 LEGENDARY cards.
Quick Analysis: While these packs are expensive, they offer a great value to jumpstart your collection if you plan to collect up through the LEGENDARY tier. You’ll also have a SLIGHT chance to pull a REIGNMAKER card as there is 1 RM card per golfer (209 REIGNMAKERS) in the pack. The other REIGNMAKER cards for each golfer will be available via auction. REIGNMAKER tier scarcity is 2 for each golfer, 1 in the EAGLE packs and 1 available for auction.
Golfer Card Scarcity by Tier
Scarcity matters, and here is what DraftKings has committed to surrounding scarcity by tier:
What cards/players should I expect to get in the Genesis Packs?
There are 209 golfers in Genesis Packs across 4 groupings. Groups 1-4 correspond to the finishing position on the PGA Tour last season.
⁃ Group 1: Top 30 of FedEx Cup*
⁃ Group 2: Golfers not in group 1 and in the top 75 of the FedEx Cup
⁃ Group 3: Golfers not in G1 or G2 and in the top 125 of the FedEx Cup
⁃ Group 4: All remaining golfers
*Note – each PGA Tour player had to opt into allowing DraftKings to create golfers cards for them in the Reignmakers game. The notable players missing from Reignmakers are Jordan Spieth and Justin Rose.
My Top 3 Golfers by Grouping
Group 1
1. Jon Rahm
2. Scottie Scheffler
3. Rory McIlroy – my heart wanted to say Max Homa here, but we’ll lean with the brain at least to start!
Group 2
1. Tommy Fleetwood
2. Keegan Bradley
3. Tom Kim
Group 3 – there are a lot of golfers that could go in these 3 spots
1. Jason Day
2. Aaron Rai
3. Joel Dahmen (Yes, the Netflix effect is real)
Group 4
1. Joseph Bramlett
2. Thomas Detry
3. Garrick Higgo
Oh and some guy named TIGER WOODS. Heard he is pretty good, but probably won’t play very much.
Important to note, there are golfers in Group 4 that simply do not have PGA Tour status and therefore do not play a lot of PGA Tour events. It goes without saying that you’re hoping none of these players end up in your packs. Life is certainly a gamble. I wish you all nothing but the best of pack luck.
Thanks for reading and look forward to more content like this as we move forward with DraftKings Reignmakers PGA the rest of the season!