*Final Card Results: Updated 5/1/23
- Disappointing end to the tournament, but a small salvage with Eric Cole being tied in the final Top 5 slot with two other players.
- The Dead Heat Reduction divided the winnings by 3 as result of those players splitting the last slot of Top 5 payment.
- Net loss of -4.5 units for a ROI of -47.4% on the weekend.
- Overall can’t complain too much as out of a field of 144 players there were 10/11 players on this card that made The Cut to play the 2nd half of the weekend.
- The model correctly ranked Finau and Rahm as the top 2 players, although in reverse order to final.
- Wyndham Clark modeled 3rd in pre-tournament rankings, finished 24th which shows the volatitly in Golf Tournaments.
- Brandon Wu (+1200) was modeled at a 66.0 ranking.
- Akshay Bhatia (+1800) finshed 4th overall and just missed card inclusion, was modeled at a 51.8 ranking just behind the card’s lowest ranked pick of Aaron Baddely (+3000) at 51.4.
- The approach to the tournament final results looked on par with expectations. Just a bad shakeout in the end.
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I mentioned the other day in my post about My Journey into Golf Betting that I’d highlight my full Golf Betting strategy. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the time for that post before presenting the Betting Card for this weekend’s PGA Tournament, The Mexico Open at Vidanta. I’ll try to highlight my current card strategy here so that you may be able to read this before tee times kickoff tomorrow and the odds start shifting.
- I suggest taking a look at last week’s results for the Zurich Classic to see that I have proven results so far with Golf.
- This week’s field is pretty weak compared to recent tournaments like the Master’s and RBC, but I believe this is where the best opportunites at great odds can be found.
- This week’s card features a total of 9.25 units bet across 10 different players to place in the Top 5
The science behind the card:
Right away I bet a few things stand out if you’ve scrolled down to the card already. You are probably asking, “Where the heck is Jon Rahm or Tony Finau? Heck not even Wyndham Clark?”
Well the strategy I’ve developed in Golf Betting recently is to bypass these big name players.
The odds in a field like this where they tower over the competition is way too high for us to show consistent profits if we were to bet these players. When I get Part II of my story down you’ll hear about my card for The Masters where I cashed Jon Rahm on a “To Win” bet and my overall card only ended up showing a measly 3.3% ROI for my efforts.
.Another aspect I noticed after that Masters Card review (which I should’ve focused more on earlier in my golf betting endeavors) was that the vigorish on Golf Tournaments is insane. If you were to sum up the Breakeven ML odds probabilities of each player in an event they total over 140% for a 1st place finish bet, the Top 5 finish bets sum up to ~125% typically, and the Top 10 /Top 20 bets each sum up to a little over 130%. During March Madness the sum of the best BE probabilites I found for each team across books pre-tournament summed up to 123%. Golf handle is insane when it comes to the vig.
Can the vig be overcome? Well that’s what I’m trying to attempt week in and week out with my golf bets. Last week was quite successful with a new strategy adaptation so let’s see if we can make it work in Mexico.
Based on the vigs I just presented it would make the most sense to target “Top 5” bets over any other type. The second benefit is that these places pay quite well and I don’t have to overpay on one of the stud players in the field and still have a decent chance hitting one or more of the other players that I bet.
My strategy with the Mexico Open field:
A PGA tournament typically has 144 players outside the majors and other specialty type events. In order to be profitable on such a large field I have to make sure I’m at least spreading a wide enough net to capture a couple of Top 5 players and that I’m getting paid good odds on each player.
- The first thing I did was make a decision on roughly how many player I wanted to target and what were the minimum odds I wanted to accept on a player to bet to finish “Top 5”. Typically I go for around 7-8 players as that should capture a majority of the players in my model that are ranked at a sizable advantage to the rest of the field. I started today’s card off with that 7-8 target.
- WIth those 7-8 players I made a decision that I wanted to see almost all of my money returned on a hit of at least one player, a small loss is fine if a few of the top ranked picks of mine require it. But the overall goal of the card is to hope for at least two to hit and anything beyond that is Amaze-Balls.
- With that criteria it meant that the bare minium odds I was willing to accept for this tournament was about +600 on “Top 5” bets. As of this writing only 3 players fell under that amount.
- Jon Rahm -150 (modeled ranked at -0.5)
- Tony Finau +180 (model ranked at 11.8)
- Wyndham Clark +360 (model ranked at 19.9)
- Then after reviewing who was left in the top of my rankings I also removed any players where my tracking showed them participating in less than 7 events this past year.
- These players inclduded some top odds players like Nicolai Hojgaard +600 (2 events), Derek Lamely +20000 (1 event, although after writing this out I may stick a 0.25 unit on him due to model ranking of 42.5), and Lanto Griffin +1600 (5 events)
- Then as I moved down my remaining list based on rankings I selected each player as odds became more valuable. Some players were skipped over if a player under them could be grabbed at better odds.
The end result is the card below with 10 picks…soon to be 11 as I will add Lamely for little impact on the card. If Patrick Rodgers +600, my lowest odds player is the only one to hit Top 5 then I will get back 7 of my 9.5 units. Any combination of 2 hits is guaranteed a profit and some of the players provide decent overall profit on the card just by themselves.
This is such a wide card I’ve built here and I believe its unlikely I strikeout on every player here as I’m only cutting 4 of my top modeled ranked players with one of them having just 2 events under their belt. Also it’s very unlikely the top performers all fall in order as I have ranked on the card so the wide net here should be ready to pick up the slack if any of those top favorites get in a hole early.
This should be a very interesting event to follow with such a wide card like this and not many big names that need to be faded.
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Golf not your thing or looking for insights into other sports betting topics? Be sure to check out my latest MLB Bet Tracking.
I never bet golf, but I enjoyed your rationale and said “what the heck, let’s toss $9.50 down just for fun.
If multiple people are tied for 4th or 5th. How does that effect payout?
That’s a dead heat reduction. In regards to the bets here we will only be concerned if multiple people tie for the last slot of the Top 5 bets.
Currently I see 5 players tied for 4th, that means slots 4-8 are all right there. What you do in that situation is divide your main bet by the number of players tied for that last slot. In this case we have 5 total players. So assuming your bet was for 1 unit we divide it by 5. Then calculate how may of those slots they are vying for would be paid, in this case slots 4 + 5 only qualify, so 2 is our multiplier.. The Dead Heat Reduction results in your bet being adjusted by 40% (2 paying slots /5 tied players ).
As a resutt your main bet of 1 unit is considered to be equal to .4 units for the player in question and then the odds are applied to the bet as a winner. So assuming someone like Eric Cole is one of the players his +1400 odds payout on the bet is equal to .4 units * +1400 odds = 5.6 units won and you will also get the adjusted .4 units back as the return on the bet with your winnings for a total of 6 units paid back.
Thank you for that explanation, I understand completely now. Gonna be a close one tomorrow! Lets get it.