Auto club cup

Frequent readers know I focus most of my comments on cash games -- the 50/50s and double-up type games. This is one of those bad weekends for cash games because we have numerous "chalk" options starting further back in the field that will be highly owned in all cash games. Specifically, we've got three Joe Gibbs cars starting 38th (Truex), 29th (Jones) and 28th (Hamlin). Truex should be near 100% ownership in cash games and I'd expect the others to be 75% or more. That's bad enough.

But it gets even worse because we have three other guys on quality teams starting outside the Top 20 that also make good/obvious cash game plays -- Byron (21st), A. Dillon (25th) and Chastain (27th). If you add all six salaries together, it fits the Draft Kings salary cap perfectly with $0 left over. I would expect to see this lineup (or something very close to it) all over cash games. So we're likely to see huge trains of this lineup in every contest and may have large ties at the cash line splitting the money all different ways. You either follow the crowd and split things 87 ways or differentiate and hope to outscore the masses.

When we have chalk days like today, it takes away our NASCAR knowledge advantage. We want a situation where the competition is forced to make a choice on 4 or 5 or even 6 of the drivers for their squad. When that many choices need to be made, we'll make better choices more often and give ourselves a better chance to win. When the lineup virtually makes itself -- even for a NASCAR novice -- our edge is gone.

So I'm pretty much out on my cash games today. I'll do a few just to see what happens and whether ownership falls as heavily on the chalk as I expect. But save the rest for the long season ahead.