Golf value thread

[Faxy Fowler]

I've been thinking about golf a bit and wondered whether there is any money to be made from it. I've set up an Excel spreadsheet which allows me to simulate a golf tournament using a ratings set 10,000 or so times over and gives probabilities on all golfers to win, finish in the top five, top 10 or for that matter, miss the cut. I'm still playing around with it a bit but I have put together some selections for the two year opening events this year. I'm also laying some golfers to not finish in the top ten; it would seem like suicide to lay golfers not to win at high odds, even using a paper trail, which this very much is. Its also not based around who I necessarily think will win a tournament, but those who seem to have the most value and will probably toss in the odd outsider here and there as a result. All odds will be those available on Betfair at the time of posting. Week 1 US TOUR - Tournament of Champions 1pt win (my derived odds in brackets) Steve Stricker @ 17.00 (6.20) Matt Kuchar @ 20.00 (8.29) Ben Crane @ 48.00 (22.68) Heath Slocum @ 100 (48.54) 2pt lays not to finish in top 10 Geoff Ogilvy @ 2.00 (2.89) Stuart Appleby @ 3.6 (13.39) Notes: Ogilvy and Appleby seem to have come up as lays possibly because this is a tournament they have both won in the past and they are getting a lot of backing as a result. I haven't really got a tool for factoring that into the equation. EUROPEAN TOUR - Africa Open 2pt win Retief Goosen 6.40 (2.61) Charl Schwartzel 6.60 (4.50) 0.5pt win Peter Gustafson 390 (208.33) George Wilson 360.00 (250.00) 1pt lay not to finish in top 10 Jaco Van Zyl @ 4.4 (47.39) Notes: Louis Oosthuizen hasn't worked out as value in my book on his own, but my combined odds on he added to those chosen to win would be around 1.25, whereas Betfair run a "Big Three" Market enabling them to be backed at around 2.26. Those odds look insanely generous to me and if you look at the field as a whole, its difficult to imagine any winner outside of those three. I would add, I haven't really got a clue who Gustafson or Wilson are :lol but given in 10,000 runs of the event they combined for 88 wins they can't be complete duffers so at those odds I see no harm in putting a half point on each. As a final bit of fun, J.J. Senekal, Matthew Nixon and Ryan Hood failed to make a single cut in 30,000 attempts. So if the three of them qualify for the weekend, I'll probably emigrate or something. :rollin 14 pts staked in total - fingers crossed for the results.....

[Donkson]

Re: Golf value thread Sounds interesting, will definitely be following. Despite the fact I haven'e got the first clue about golf, good luck though.