The Wells Fargo Championship Card Summary:
- This week the field of golfers is more competitive compared to what we saw last week in the Mexico Open in terms of recent PGA player finishes this year
- This week’s card for the Wells Fargo Championship will focus on Top 10 placements due to the competitive field providing a lot more variance in expected final standings
- The card features 11 player picks to finish in the Top 10 for a total of 10.5 Units wagered.
- The goal this week is to get at least 3 hits for a decent profit
*Final Card Results:
- At tournament end there were 4 players on the card that cashed in a top 10 position
- Wyndham Clark won the event at -19 strokes.
- Adam Scott and Tommy Fleetwood each tied for 5th at -11.
- Corey Conners ended up in a 6 way tie for 8th place. The Dead Heat Reduction resulted in a half payment of the final payout as slots 8,9, &10 made up half of the available places in competion here for these 6 players.
- Overall a very strong Golf Event as the card resulted in a net win of +13.0 units for a ROI of 123.8%.
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Recap:
- The Mexico Open last week was somewhat disappointing as we only had Eric Cole make the Top 5 and he was part of a 3 way Dead Heat Reduction.
- The overall result was -4.5 Units for -47.4% ROI
- I suggest taking a look at the results for the Zurich Classic to see what an ideal card victory should look like.
The science behind the Wells Fargo card:
I mentioned last week that the problem with Golf betting is the high vigorish that needs to be overcome. Here’s a review of the implied probabilities of all golfers for this week’s betting odds:
- Winner: Implied Probablities = 147%, Vigorish/Rake of 47%
- Top 5: Implied Probablities = 640%/ 5 Payouts = 128%, Vigorish/Rake of 28%
- Top 10: Implied Probablities = 1300%/ 10 Payouts = 130%, Vigorish/Rake of 30%
Can the vig be overcome? Well that’s what I’m trying to attempt week in and week out with my golf bets.
Based on the vigs I just presented it would make the most sense to target “Top 5” or “Top 10” bets this week. Also benefit of targeting Top 5 or Top 10 is that these places pay quite well and offer the chance of hitting more than our expected goal amount of players selected.
My strategy with the Wells Fargo 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 the right amound of players at the right odds or better.
- The first thing I did was review the vigorish of placements and decided immediately that bets on The Winner made no sense this week. Also Top 10 was closer to Top 5 bets in vigorish so it wouldn’t hurt to switch up my target list to Top 10 picks over Top 5s.
- Next I reviewed the field and noticed that 27/156 players this week were in my rankings under 25.
- I’ve provided a full list of my rankings profile this week to provide more insights, the majority of the top 10 players each week will typically be under this threshold ranking I’ve modeled.
- Due to the large field of competitive players I definitely want to provide myself more opportunities to cash as things are not so obvious as to who the Top 5 will end up being like last week where Finau and Rahm were assumed locks based on field competion. So this week I’ll be targeting Top 10 bets as the vig is not much different from Top 5s and provides me more opportunity.
- Again with 27/156 players I wanted a large net of players and knowing if I’m targeting Top 10s I’m likely going to want to target 2-3 hits as my main goal for number of players to cash. A target list of about 10 players should suffice as I was planning to bet about 10 units and 1 unit on each player would get me there.
- Knowing my target range of about 2.5 hits I determined that the minimum odds I was willing to accept was no less than +400 as 2.5 at those odds would guarantee I recover all 10 units
The final cut:
- The criteria above essentially filled out the card for me as there were only 11 players that I had modeled under my ranking threshold of 25 and had at least +400 odds for Top 10 placement.
- Then a review of the 11 I saw Tom Kim could be cut as he was ranked 18.2 in my model and right at +400 odds. He didn’t seem worthwhile to have on the card in that position.
- Alejandro Tosti would’ve been a cut as I had only 1 game record the past 6 months for him, which happend to be last week’s Mexico Open where he tied for a 10th place finish. However his odds at +2500 for a Top 10 placement were pretty decent for a small flier here and I could cut him down to a half unit bet and a hit on him alone this week will cover the card entirely on its own.
- Lastly I noticed Taylor Moore just missed the threshold at a ranking of 26 and odds of +650.
- I always say you should bet on yourself when giving the opportunity. So I added my namesake to the card for a full unit.
The end result is the card below with 11 picks all for 1 unit except Tosti at 0.5 units. Any combination of 2 hits is guaranteed a profit as my two lowest odds players are at +450 each.
It should be a fun weekend as we have an easy opportunity to cash here with only 2 needed and we have the opportunity to cash up to 10 slots for a handsome payday if that lottery scenario pans out. But anything above 3 hits this week I would consider incredible as my goal with each card is get around 50%-100% ROI each event.
Full model likely doesn’t display well as there are over 156 players.
Here are the players under the threshold of 40 rankings that I modeled for this week. This is how I would’ve ordered the players if the odds and vigorish were not a factor.
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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.
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