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Can betting in PGA golf be profitable? An analysis of common wagering techniques applied to outright winner market prices
Conference paper   Peer reviewed

Can betting in PGA golf be profitable? An analysis of common wagering techniques applied to outright winner market prices

Bradley O'Bree and Anthony Bedford
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Mathematics in Sport, pp.139-143
MathSport International Conference, 2015 (Loughborough, United Kingdom, 29-Jun-2015–01-Jul-2015)
MathSport International
2015
url
http://www.mathsportinternational.com/MathSport2015Proceedings.pdfView
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Abstract

Human Movement and Sports Science
Golf is a difficult sport to master in the physical domain, and it is possibly even harder to accurately model tournament outcomes. Betting markets for golf contain the same variety of exotic outcome wagering seen in most sports, but one shouldn't focus on these sources of complexity when even the simplest outcome, who will win the tournament, is so tough to predict. The objective of this work was to demonstrate that making a profit is difficult and explain why this is the case. Using publicly available outright winner market prices from Bet365.com for seasons 2012, 2013 and 2014 of the US PGA tour, the analysis was separated into two parts. Initially the focus was exploratory, looking at the general aspects of the data to gain insight into how prices are set. Following this, two common wagering techniques, Kelly and fractional Kelly criterion systems, were examined to determine whether they can be used to make a profit. Further, regardless of the level of success of their application, determine why it was the case for each system. We report the metrics typically used to describe each system's effectiveness, such as Return on Investment and prediction strike rates, where relevant. Results indicated that the systems considered were not profitable for a variety of reasons. Rather consistently, the major problem existed in the poor win conversion for players within striking distance of the current leader.

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