A little off topic but I'm going to post my 'one that got away':
One of the majors was approaching - I believe the USPGA - and Will Hill had decided it appropriate to price up a few novelty markets, largely loosely based around players' names.
One was called "Cink to Sink" - Stewart Cink was priced at 7/1 to put his ball in the water at any point during the tournament.
Now, I know very little about golf, but this looked mahoosive. By my reckoning there were 4/18 holes where there was a realistic chance of a player hitting water (a couple of par
and a couple of over water approaches I believe), and Cink would play at least two rounds giving him 8 chances at it. He was around the 4/6 mark to make the cut, meaning 60% of the time he'd get another 8 'attempts'.
So....he would have an implied 12.8 shots at hitting the water.
Here, my pricing efforts ran out of steam, as I had no idea what chance there was of someone hitting said watery locations. 2% a time? 5%? 10%? By my reckoning it would have to be <c1% for the bet not to be value.
Discretion is however sometimes the better part of valour, so I e-mailed my mate for his thoughts. By the time he came back about an hour later, saying he, like me, made it more like even money than odds against, it was too late. The market had disappeared from t'internet, and the chap I got on the phone said "the market had been taken down due to heavy activity".
Oh dear, I had been onto a winner it would seem.
The outcome? Cink hit the water about 8 holes into his first round.
Marvellous.
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