British Open - Recap
Okay, let get right to it. My picks were shambolic1 and as I say often the most important thing you can do in gambling is understand why you win and why you lose and frankly the reason we lost this past week was me.
Yup, me.
You might think that is an easy answer as it seems like a “thank Capt. Obvious” moment, but let me explain a little bit more about where I failed you and me (I include me here as I bet every single bit of action I suggest):
My calculations included a view of how guys will play on a specific course (aka course fit), and I should have taken the Scottish Open as a warning sign that my view on course fit for links courses were incorrect. That leads to bad estimates on what true value should be
Now once I have my valuations I compare them to what is out there and then I start to narrow down my card - this is where I made my next round of mistakes. There are some guys who showed some value but I just didn’t like the play so I selected others. For example, Cam Young had as much excess value T10 as Seamus Power did, but I ended up picking Jordan Smith as my 4th T10 slot because he played well last week and missed my T20 bet by bogeying his last hole. Dumb move.
This is a nice transition into the next way I screwed the pooch which was my own analysis. Obviously I covered some of it above, also I saw all the talk that the winner was going to be a big gun to be over stated which meant there was more value down the board (wrong) and it wasn’t limited to that. Hell, I did a long tweet as to why I loved that Tiger to make the cut bet so much. I was dead wrong and it wasn’t close.
Last but not least, my greatest sin this week and the one I really owe an apology for is / was bankroll management or lack there of. I preach and preach and preach bankroll management and I ignored my own lessons. As I have said in the past, I have standards for betting these tournaments and I went outside them and took excess risk that was irresponsible. Honestly, that should have been a warning sign to me that I was getting over confident, which would have gotten me to go the other way and tone down the risk rather than amp it up.
I won’t belabor the point further, but given a performance like it is important to me to always be transparent and make sure you all know that I know why it happened as that is the only chance of of not doing it again.
Please note the ROI calculations have been updated to make them more accurate. If interested the follow footnote will tell you what changed2
3M Open
The PGA tour comes back stateside and immediately goes to the Midwest! The 3M Open is a relatively new tournament as this is only the 4th playing of it at TPC Twin Cities. This Arnold Palmer and Tim Lehman designed course will play to a Par 71 across about 7,400 yards this week. The last 3 times this championship was contested the winning scores have been -21, -19 and -15 so expect the scoring to continue to be low.
As you have heard / read me say in the past, the tournaments after a major can be a little unpredictable and that is going to be true this week. Many of the Tour’s top players are taking this week off as we only are scheduled to have 53 of the top 50 in the OWGR and the field is going to only be 144.
So what does that mean for us? Well that means we are going to pull back on the amount of units we are putting at risk (especially after last week’s disaster) and we are going to pick our spots to see if we can get some juicy odds to hit for us.
Let’s get to this week’s dance card (7.75u of risk):
Outright (0.25u on each):
Matthew NeSmith +6000
Tom Hoge +7000
Doug Ghim +8000
Tyler Duncan +10000
T10 (0.25u on each):
Hideki Matsuyama +230
Matthew NeSmith +500
Jason Day +500
Doug Ghim +800
T20
0.5u on Sungjae Im +100
0.5u on Doug Ghim +350
0.25u on Matthew NeSmith +215
0.25u on CT Pan +275
0.25u on Tyler Duncan +345
0.25u on Nate Lashley +390
Match ups
1.55u on Matthew NeSmith over Chris Gotterup -155
1.1u on Jason Day over Rickie Fowler -110
0.575u on Stewart Cink over Danny Willett -115
0.275u on Adam Long over Chez Reavie -110
0.25u on JT Poston over Sahith Theegala +100
As always, I am using BetOnline and Bovada to pull these odds. I bet them as I write this so they are live within the 30 min or so of publication.
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2023 Futures
Masters - 0.5u on Cam Young +5000
PGA Championship - 0.5u on Cam Young +4000
Okay, I know this is crazy early to be doing this and I agree I might be jumping the gun but I want to lock this in right now for a few reasons:
I am only tying up 1u of capital so it is really not that much to lock in for 9 - 10 months
I was WILDLY impressed with how he played this week, especially on Sunday. I know this is going to sound silly given he shot a 7 under 65 on the Sunday of a major, but he seemed to have left 3 or 4 shots out there
Let’s talk about the two tournaments
There is definitely positive correlation between St Andrews and Augusta National so I expect that he will play well there even if he MC’d his first time around there this past year as a rookie
He came in T3 in this year’s PGA Championship and next year’s will be at Oak Hill. Young is a NY kid having grown up in Westchester and going to high school in the Bronx. Yes, this Western NY course is close to 5 hours away from where he grew up, but as a native of the area and having spent years living in the snow swept lands of WNY I can tell you that this will feel like a home game for him and this course should fit his game and eye.
I expect that we will see him win at least 1 if not multiple tournaments in this wrap around season4 and if he doesn’t win, do not be surprised to see a bunch of T10’s. If that happens, this number is going to drop and drop quickly.
During golf tournaments I am actively chatting over at the Winners Row Discord server. There is both a free and a VIP portion to it.
I am not involved in the VIP side, but you can find me there chatting about how I think the tournament is going, giving updates on our action and answering questions. You may also find early release of some picks….. If you want to come hang out come to:
Come chat with us during the tournament!!!
Daily Fantasy
Last week was a disaster. I am going to take a shot, but only for about $50 of risk (0.5u for my bankroll).
McNealy 9,300
Long 8,600
Poston 8,500
Steele 8,300
NeSmith 7,500
Ghim 7,300
Remaining Budget $500
Good luck in all your action!
Yes, I watch too many European sports, but felt like the right term given it was the British open and my picks were shite (sorry had to do it).
So this is something I just realized that is different for how I do golf vs how I do NBA and NFL. Prior to this update the calculations always assumed that the “wager amount” was the amount risked and while that is true for many of my wagers and is true for all NBA and NFL wagers, it is not true for almost all of the head-to-head action I place and some of the T20/T40 action so I have updated my calculations to account for this. Essentially if we are laying -125 odds and bet 1.25u to win 1u and win that bet. Then that wager will show up on the $100 line, but the ROI will take into account that we risked $125 so when we won it was 80% ROI. Similarly if we have the same wager and lose we will see -$125 loss and a 0% ROI, but that will be on the $100 line. Hopefully this makes sense. This is a one time update so these new calcs will persist from here on out.
Hideki, Finau, Im, Hoge, and Tringale. Do not be surprised if we see Hideki pull out of this. There is clearly tons of smoke about his leaving for LIV and we have seen the MO has been to register for these tournaments and WD last minute.
For those who are new the the current PGA Tour calendar - The PGA tour season starts mid to late September and runs through the TOUR Championship at the end of August. It is called the “wrap around” because it runs across calendar years. This will be changed in the future as they move to more of a calendar based schedule.