Golf Betting, 2013

[doubleup]

Trying to work out the reason for my disatrous run on the 3 balls.  Do bookies get "inside" info about players that enable them to push out the price?  I put the players recent scores in a spreadsheet that provides odds based on these scores, so if a price is long I back it (as long as there isn't something obvious eg hates the course).

One of the three balls was Overton- (2.38)/Duke- (2.62)/Pride- (3.25).  I can't see any reason why Pride should be the dog in that group, yet he was and shot two stinkers.  

Anyone got any views?

How many scores do you put in?

Do you factor in course form?

What about outright price?

When I used to price up 3 balls, the outright price was overwhelmingly the determining factor as my odds.

course form is one of my "something obvious".  Haven't taken much notice of outright price as lots of the 3 balls contain no-hopers and recent form should be related to outright price anyway.  I had been using the last 20 scores. but maybe thats too far back.  One of the ones I thought was too short was Ishikawa and just comparing the last ten scores brings him more into line with the bookies odds.

Really I suppose if I see a price that is too good or too short , either someone knows something I don't or I've missed something obvious.

[The Camel]

Trying to work out the reason for my disatrous run on the 3 balls.  Do bookies get "inside" info about players that enable them to push out the price?  I put the players recent scores in a spreadsheet that provides odds based on these scores, so if a price is long I back it (as long as there isn't something obvious eg hates the course).

One of the three balls was Overton- (2.38)/Duke- (2.62)/Pride- (3.25).  I can't see any reason why Pride should be the dog in that group, yet he was and shot two stinkers.  

Anyone got any views?

How many scores do you put in?

Do you factor in course form?

What about outright price?

When I used to price up 3 balls, the outright price was overwhelmingly the determining factor as my odds.

course form is one of my "something obvious".  Haven't taken much notice of outright price as lots of the 3 balls contain no-hopers and recent form should be related to outright price anyway.  I had been using the last 20 scores. but maybe thats too far back.  One of the ones I thought was too short was Ishikawa and just comparing the last ten scores brings him more into line with the bookies odds.

Really I suppose if I see a price that is too good or too short , either someone knows something I don't or I've missed something obvious.

I would have thought course form is more important (or at least as important) than recent form for "no hopers".

[doubleup]

Trying to work out the reason for my disatrous run on the 3 balls.  Do bookies get "inside" info about players that enable them to push out the price?  I put the players recent scores in a spreadsheet that provides odds based on these scores, so if a price is long I back it (as long as there isn't something obvious eg hates the course).

One of the three balls was Overton- (2.38)/Duke- (2.62)/Pride- (3.25).  I can't see any reason why Pride should be the dog in that group, yet he was and shot two stinkers.  

Anyone got any views?

How many scores do you put in?

Do you factor in course form?

What about outright price?

When I used to price up 3 balls, the outright price was overwhelmingly the determining factor as my odds.

course form is one of my "something obvious".  Haven't taken much notice of outright price as lots of the 3 balls contain no-hopers and recent form should be related to outright price anyway.  I had been using the last 20 scores. but maybe thats too far back.  One of the ones I thought was too short was Ishikawa and just comparing the last ten scores brings him more into line with the bookies odds.

Really I suppose if I see a price that is too good or too short , either someone knows something I don't or I've missed something obvious.

I would have thought course form is more important (or at least as important) than recent form for "no hopers".

I look at course form, I was saying that that would be an obvious reason for a tweaking in the price.  It wasn't actually a factor in my two examples Ish had no course form and Pride was fine at the course.

 

[The Camel]

Trying to work out the reason for my disatrous run on the 3 balls.  Do bookies get "inside" info about players that enable them to push out the price?  I put the players recent scores in a spreadsheet that provides odds based on these scores, so if a price is long I back it (as long as there isn't something obvious eg hates the course).

One of the three balls was Overton- (2.38)/Duke- (2.62)/Pride- (3.25).  I can't see any reason why Pride should be the dog in that group, yet he was and shot two stinkers.  

Anyone got any views?

How many scores do you put in?

Do you factor in course form?

What about outright price?

When I used to price up 3 balls, the outright price was overwhelmingly the determining factor as my odds.

course form is one of my "something obvious".  Haven't taken much notice of outright price as lots of the 3 balls contain no-hopers and recent form should be related to outright price anyway.  I had been using the last 20 scores. but maybe thats too far back.  One of the ones I thought was too short was Ishikawa and just comparing the last ten scores brings him more into line with the bookies odds.

Really I suppose if I see a price that is too good or too short , either someone knows something I don't or I've missed something obvious.

I would have thought course form is more important (or at least as important) than recent form for "no hopers".

I look at course form, I was saying that that would be an obvious reason for a tweaking in the price.  It wasn't actually a factor in my two examples Ish had no course form and Pride was fine at the course.

 

Things might have changed a lot, but bookies do not have inside knowledge.

Occasionally I would tweak my odds a little if a shrewd punter wanted to be on a particular player, but on the whole the overround takes care of any mistakes.

[T_Mar]

knowing how the books come up with their price initially must be essential in terms of finding flaws in what they come up with i would think?

bobby might be able to tell you exactly what they use as primary factors these days?

[doubleup]

Things might have changed a lot, but bookies do not have inside knowledge.

probably clumsy phraselogy on my part - what I really meant was to what extent do they bother researching more than the obvious eg player X was hopeless in a practice round.

[Karabiner]

Things might have changed a lot, but bookies do not have inside knowledge.

probably clumsy phraselogy on my part - what I really meant was to what extent do they bother researching more than the obvious eg player X was hopeless in a practice round.

I would seriously doubt as to whether that would be factored in tbh.

I reckon they're just going on very similar info to what you have.

[bobby1]

Trying to work out the reason for my disatrous run on the 3 balls.  Do bookies get "inside" info about players that enable them to push out the price?  I put the players recent scores in a spreadsheet that provides odds based on these scores, so if a price is long I back it (as long as there isn't something obvious eg hates the course).

One of the three balls was Overton- (2.38)/Duke- (2.62)/Pride- (3.25).  I can't see any reason why Pride should be the dog in that group, yet he was and shot two stinkers.  

Anyone got any views?

How many scores do you put in?

Do you factor in course form?

What about outright price?

When I used to price up 3 balls, the outright price was overwhelmingly the determining factor as my odds.

course form is one of my "something obvious".  Haven't taken much notice of outright price as lots of the 3 balls contain no-hopers and recent form should be related to outright price anyway.  I had been using the last 20 scores. but maybe thats too far back.  One of the ones I thought was too short was Ishikawa and just comparing the last ten scores brings him more into line with the bookies odds.

Really I suppose if I see a price that is too good or too short , either someone knows something I don't or I've missed something obvious.

Hi Double, its a little bit like how long is a piece of string but I hope this is useful.

As Keith mentioned the method for compiling basic 3 ball prices is related to the outright prices pre tourney so you have to start there. The current form, course form etc is already taken into account when those prices are compiled. So just a couple of basic examples of converting the outright prices to a 3 ball at 109-110% which is roughly how much juice the books take is

Player A is 50/1 outright, player B is 66/1 and player C is 80/1, so the basic prices (to be elaborated on) would be about
11/8 player A 7/4 player B and 9/4 player C

If the outright prices were 25/1, 33/1 and 40/1 then you could almost use the same prices for that three ball as the previous example tho you might be nearer
6/4, 7/4 2/1 ish.

So the outright prices dictate the gaps between the players in the 3 balls. To elaborate on those tho,if you are doing it properly you might see that the weather is set to be windy when these players are on course so might tinker with them if say Player A likes a bit of wind and player C doesn't. Then thru each round your initial starting point is still the pre game outright prices because the individual scores they put up in the rounds is just a tiny snapshot of what they are capable of. You would then tinker with them a little to allow for the scores they have shot.

Say player A in the first example shot 73, player B shot 71 and player C shot 70 you might make the next round 13/8 player A 13/8 player B and 19/10 player C. So even tho player C won the 3 ball he is still the outsider because your pre game prices are a much better indicator of their ability than an 18 hole score. Where it gets tricky is when a player shoots himself out of the tournament and is the type to toss it off a little when out of contention so if those scores above were 78 71 and 70 then player A would be the outsider because in a lot of cases there would be a motivation squiggle by his name for the next round.

[bobby1]

Using a determined number of past scores is probably going to lead to trouble because the players might have played different events. If player A last two events were at The Honda classic and this week at the  Arnold Palmer event and Player B had played the Puerto Rico Open and the WGC at Doral then player A is going to have much worse scores even tho he could have played those courses really well as the scoring in those two events was very tough and in player B's events it was pretty easy.

Players also have stronger averages in certain rounds, take someone like Michael Thompson who does put in some good first round scores and then usually fades away( tho he didn't at The Honda classic) and the opposite of that could be Mickelson who doesn't play so well in round 4 when out of contention. There are lots of players that play better early on in events and then less so when it gets pressurised in the later rounds, say John Senden who never looks like winning on the US tour but has lots of nice stats, mainly made up when the pressure is off so their scores in round one could be better than round four. The nut worst toss it off merchant when out of contention was Calcavechia, I think late season one year he ranked 220th out of about 222 players for 4th round scores when he was still competitive on the main tour.

Going deeper, fast players could be inconvenienced by slow players and that might affect the price, if Sabbatini was drawn with Ben Crane for example then Sabba might be a slightly bigger price because he lets himself get affected by slow play.

Rickie Fowler has put up some really poor scores when playing in the same group as Tiger Woods  (he did again today), so that will be taken into account when they are paired together again even if Fowler is playing really well at the time.

So just using str8 score comparison isn't going to work too well.

[bobby1]

In the Overton, Duke, Pride example you used Pride is deffo the weakest player of the 3. Their pre game prices were about 150, 200 and 250 ish so that leads to the three ball prices you quoted above of 11/8 13/8 and 9/4.


As an example of why just using scores isn't going to help could be found this week. Ed Molinari has been almost lost since last season after having a minor surgery and losing his swing, he has missed loads of cuts. He sacked his coach a few weeks ago and hired the same coach that Tiger is using, Sean Foley. After a few weeks of new coaching he made his first cut of the year last weekend in Malaysia when he ran second.

Just by using X amount of previous scores he is going to be a vastly different price using your method than the bookmakers who have priced him up at around 28/1 4th favourite for this weeks event because he is a quality player that has had a rough time and his improvement last week can be linked to his new swing. So the outright price will give you the guide as to his 3 ball price where previous scores would show a totally different price.

I hope a bit of that might have been a help mate.

cheers

[bobby1]

One last thing is 3 balls imo are a really bad betting medium because they are 3 runner events bet to around 110% which is pretty grim these days. Even on BF outside the major groups they can be 106/107%. There are also 7 different permutations of results for a 3 ball and as punters we get one of those for a full return. I would much prefer to lay a player in a three ball and have all the other permutations to avoid a full payout going for me.

Quite a few firms quote 18 hole head to heads these days so it might be easier to find a winner in a match up instead of a three ball, Pinnacle bet them to pretty fair % and you are betting tie no bet too.

[tikay]

Wow, what a great learning exercise that was Phil, thank you. Worth reading a few times to thoroughly absorb.

PS - where do you find a stat like this?......

"....one year he ranked 220th out of about 222 players for 4th round scores...."

[doubleup]

Thanks very much for that Bobby. 

I had been looking at a few of these things eg I counted PeurtoRico Open as half a stroke weaker than Doral and was about to analyze the player "best round". 

The "deeper" info point was really what I was driving at as I was quite often backing when one firm was longer than the rest and I suppose it is more likely to be for a specific reason rather than carelessness in their part.

[bobby1]

Wow, what a great learning exercise that was Phil, thank you. Worth reading a few times to thoroughly absorb.

PS - where do you find a stat like this?......

"....one year he ranked 220th out of about 222 players for 4th round scores...."

hi mate,

You can find all those stats for this and previous years here.

http://www.pgatour.com/content/pgatour/stats/categories.RSCR_INQ.html

You can get all kinds of info from there

As I mentioned Calcavecchia  above I went to the year I had in mind for an example of different round averages, it was 2006.

Average scores per round that year

1st 71.38.... ranked 122
2nd 70.88.... ranked 78
3rd 72.76 ....ranked 187
4th 73.43 ....ranked 189

So that year he averaged over 2 shots worse in the 4th round as he did in the 1st round and 2 1/2 shots worse in the 4th round than he did in the 2nd round. I think you have to have played a certain amount of rounds to get a final ranking so there will have been players removed from the end of year list because they only played a few times on the tour. I do remember him being 220th of 222 for 4th round avs at one stage late in the season, probably before the non qualifiers were removed.

One other small thing that came to mind re three balls is it can pay to look thru the actual hole scores at the end of a round to see if anyone had one really bad hole as say.

Player A shoots 70 with 18 pars
Player B shoots 70 with 2 birdies and 2 bogeys and 14 pars
Player C shoots 70 with 4 birdies one bogey and a 7 on a par 4 for a triple bogey and 12 pars.

They shot the same score but Player C was a better round as he gave away 3 shots on one bad mistake(s) hole.

Rickie Fowlers triple on 16 yesterday which turned a 2 under par round into a 1 over par round is a good example. He was about 10 feet from being on the par 5 green in 2 and ended up taking an 8.

cheers

[The Camel]

Wow, what a great learning exercise that was Phil, thank you. Worth reading a few times to thoroughly absorb.

PS - where do you find a stat like this?......

"....one year he ranked 220th out of about 222 players for 4th round scores...."

hi mate,

You can find all those stats for this and previous years here.

http://www.pgatour.com/content/pgatour/stats/categories.RSCR_INQ.html

You can get all kinds of info from there

As I mentioned Calcavecchia  above I went to the year I had in mind for an example of different round averages, it was 2006.

Average scores per round that year

1st 71.38.... ranked 122
2nd 70.88.... ranked 78
3rd 72.76 ....ranked 187
4th 73.43 ....ranked 189

So that year he averaged over 2 shots worse in the 4th round as he did in the 1st round and 2 1/2 shots worse in the 4th round than he did in the 2nd round. I think you have to have played a certain amount of rounds to get a final ranking so there will have been players removed from the end of year list because they only played a few times on the tour. I do remember him being 220th of 222 for 4th round avs at one stage late in the season, probably before the non qualifiers were removed.

One other small thing that came to mind re three balls is it can pay to look thru the actual hole scores at the end of a round to see if anyone had one really bad hole as say.

Player A shoots 70 with 18 pars
Player B shoots 70 with 2 birdies and 2 bogeys and 14 pars
Player C shoots 70 with 4 birdies one bogey and a 7 on a par 4 for a triple bogey and 12 pars.

They shot the same score but Player C was a better round as he gave away 3 shots on one bad mistake(s) hole.

Rickie Fowlers triple on 16 yesterday which turned a 2 under par round into a 1 over par round is a good example. He was about 10 feet from being on the par 5 green in 2 and ended up taking an 8.

cheers

This was a method I used way back in the pre internet days, when I used to go to tournaments at Wentworth or Sunningdale.

Spent ages studying the big scoreboard looking for players who had a decent round spoilt by one 8 or 9.

Still think the overround takes care of any edge this provides however.