Announcement/things to note
HELLLLLLLLO Everyone!!!
Wanted to start today with a few things that are worth noting:
NFL Picks will be back this fall! Here is what to expect!
This weekend is UFC 291 Poirer vs Gaethje 2 and we will be lucky enough to have our guest poster back with his card for this event so be on the lookout for that on Friday!
This newsletter is going to be one of the ones where those who financially support this Substack get part of the card before everyone else1. If you want to unlock those picks (including early bets for the 2024 majors) upgrade your subscription for as low as $5 / month
Recap - The Open and Barracuda
We bet the runaway winner to The Open……now if only I was smart enough to have bet him for things other than just T40!! LOL! All in all, not a bad week really. We had 2 guys come in tied for 2nd with Day (125-1) and Tom Kim (60-1), which is always a nice reminder that the process is working even if we did not directly hit the winner.
Also, when you consider last year’s DISASTER of -12.5u at the Old Course, I will accept a tiny profit at The Open! While outright bets were a big kick in the nuts the rest of the card performed nicely! The highlights were obviously Day giving us a lovely +650 Top 10 cash and the hometown kid Matthew Jordan cashing +600 Top 20.
As I have said repeatedly, I use the placement bets to finance the outright bets and this week was a perfect example as it is always nice to see big numbers like 76.5% ROI for Top 20 bets and 84% ROI on Top 40s. Head-to-head’s continued to struggle, but with 2 holes to go that looked like it was going to be a winner and then Cantlay went bogey-bogey to lose his match-up.
Thankfully we also had Barracuda action and my guy Akshay Bhatia made us sweat before cashing a lovely 33-1 ticket for our 8th (!!!!) outright of the year! On top of Akshay winning and T20 winning ticket we also had Hubbard and Hossler coming in Top 20 to let us have profit all over Lake Tahoe!
3M Open
The PGA tour comes back stateside and immediately goes to the Midwest! The 3M Open is a relatively new version (this is the 5ht playing) of the 3M Championship. Similar to its predecessor tournament, this open takes place 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. While this course is in the Midwest it looks like a Florida course as it is surrounded by houses and has water all over the place. As always, Ron Klos has a fantastic breakdown of the course that is work checking out.
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 as you are also only getting a few of the top players in the world making the trip, but given poor form for some folks (looks at Thomas, Justin) some of these guys need a good result to even make the playoffs!
The 2022 Open saw favorite Tony Finau (14-1 odds) capture his 3rd PGA Tour title and first in back-to-back weeks when he shot -17 to beat 2nd-favorite Sungjae Im (16-1) and Emiliano Grillo (60-1) by 3 strokes. The 2021 edition saw Cameron Champ (125-1 odds) shoot -15 to capture his most recent Tour win when he topped Louis Oosthuizen (16-1), Charl Schwartzel (60-1), and Jhonattan Vegas (50-1) by 2 strokes, and 2020 saw Michael Thompson (-19) win as a 125-1 shot when he topped Adam Long (150-1) by 2 strokes.
The last 4 times this championship was contested the winning scores have been -17, -21, -19, and -15 so expect the scoring to continue to be in that range. The course record of 60 was shot by Paul Goydos in 2017 during the 3M Championship.
Last year, we had a 3.5u loss at the 3M Open for a -44.8% ROI so hopefully this year we will find some better results. I am taking some shots but going to be strategic with only 5.5u of risk:
Outright2:
0.5u on Adam Hadwin +4000
0.25u on Aaron Rai +4000
0.25u on Gary Woodland +4000
0.25u on Lucas Glover +5000
0.25u on Taylor Pendrith +5500
0.25u on Garrick Higgo +8000
T10 (0.25u each)
Aaron Rai +250
Emiliano Grillo +300
Gary Woodland +400
T203:
1.05u on Sungjae Im -105
0.5u on Aaron Rai +125
0.5u on Adam Hadwin +200
0.25u on Cam Davis +190
0.25u on Garrick Higgo +300
0.25u on Kevin Yu +330
0.25u on Carson Young +550
Matchups - UPDATE 10:30 pm ET 7/25: here are the matchups I am betting - as these were not part of the original card they will not be tracked (for better or worse), but I wanted to release them should anyone be interested:
0.775u Chez Reavie over Peter Kuest -155
0.775u Hideki Matsuyama over Justin Thomas -155
0.75u Matthew Nesmith over Sam Bennett -150
0.3125u Ben Griffin over Billy Horschel -125
0.25u Beau Hossler over Ben Griffin +102
0.25u Ryan Fox over Mark Hubbard +105
As always, I am using BetOnline and Bovada to pull these odds.
Gamblers Paradise Discord
I know I talk about joining the Gamblers Paradise discord every week, but if you want to be there with us watching, getting picks from others on MLB and UFC, and hanging out with a great group!
Oh yes, you really need to hit this button to come to join us so you do NOT miss me when I call outright winners a month before they happen:
Open and New Futures
After the majors are wrapped up I ALWAYS like to take a few shots at longer odds for the next year’s majors where not only do I think we will have a guy in contention, but I believe we will get a ton of value! We already locked in Willy Z for the Masters so I am going to add 5 more bets!
2023 Ryder Cup
0.5u on Europe to win +175
88th Masters
0.25u on Will Zalatoris +4000 (From July 3rd) ← already down to +3300
0.5u on Cam Young +3300
106th PGA Championship4
0.5u Rickie Fowler +4000
124th US Open5
0.5u on Rickie Fowler +4000
152nd Open6
0.5u on Tony Finau +5000
Daily Fantasy
For those unfamiliar with Daily Fantasy, this is a game you can play (I use Draft Kings) where they give you a budget and use allocate that budget to golfers and use their scoring criteria to try and win money. The dollar values below are the “salaries” for each golfer I select. You can mirror what I do, do your own thing, or do some combo and as always I am just showing what I am doing, and is good for me.
Let’s take a very small swag:
Woodland $9,200
Hadwin $8,900
Hubbard $8,300
Rai $7,900
N. Hojgaard $7,900
Cole $7,800
Good luck with all your action!
I did not want to do this during the FedEx Cup playoffs so chose to do it this week instead.
For my parlays this week, I am going to try to add some action on Cole, Grillo, and Straka. Grillo’s odds have fallen like a stone and I expect that everyone and their mother is going to be on him so I need to move his odds to make it worthwhile. I was able to get Cole +8290 with a Degen parlay on gamblers paradise discord earlier today!
Two names I was looking at but could not find odds for were Brice Garnett and Hank Lebioda
I wanted to include Rory here but the odds are already pretty low and I do not expect them to get much lower from here
I realllllly wanted to add DJ here but was hoping the numbers would be 40-1 and they are 30-1. Without knowing if and how the LIV guys will be playing next year it is hard for me to justify that, but if we get a clear indication of him playing on the tour then I would jump on that immediately
I debated adding Hatton here, but he is already 25-1 and I do not see that getting much lower and he will likely be a public darling like he was last week