Did that guys automated betting back only or lay and back
Outrights, place markets, and near the end was doing matchups as well. His margin was not that small, but you are taxed very heavily by Betfair once you reach a certain level of profitability. The closing line at the exchange is presumably pretty accurate, but in the days leading up to that there seem to be plenty of inefficiencies. Our model has done well betting T5/T20s at bookmakers (or at least we were doing well until books started opening a lot closer to our numbers), and you can almost always find a better price on the exchange.
When you say ‘beat closing exchange price’, do you mean to be profitable betting against the closing number? Or do you mean to place your bet at odds better than the closing price (I assume the latter, given you said you are treating the exchange price as ‘truth’).
Mainly backing. He had certain (rare) cases where he would lay a player he had previously backed.
In theory backing/laying should work equally well, although I would probably be more comfortable backing. If you are laying you will likely need a more sophisticated bet sizing strategy, as in golf you can have big liabilities if you are laying Longshots (which pretty much every golfer is in the outright markets).
FYI, TradeSports avoided this problem by having 30-40 listed golfers and a “field” selection. The markets were linked which means that you could short multiple golfers and the amount frozen in your account would be worst case loss. That means once you shorted a golfer, you freed up more cash in your account by shorting more golfers.
Win markets are great once you start shorting 10-20 golfers and trade positions like crazy. Since you make your prices you get to feel what it’s like to be a book. (Spoiler alert: it’s awesome)
As for Betfair i don’t know why they increase the tax the more profitable you are. I’m guessing this is because it’s not a true “exchange” and Betfair employees are using beards to create markets. In general you want to provide incentives to increase volume.
I meant I now aim to get the bet on at better odds than the closing price.
But I am starting to think it might be possible to be profitable betting against the closing number on the exchange too if its someone less fashionable and the smart money can get on what it wants without ever pushing the price down as low as ‘true’.
Betfair is the exchange, so much so that if it goes down in the UK other exchanges and even some books struggle to function.
They know the strength of their position so want a cut from the successful traders, hence their ‘premium charge’. This is still fairer than some of the other exchanges imo and because of the volumes available the big traders will stick with betfair more often than not
Amusing to me that datagolf’s +EV Open bets are basically all North American PGA Tour players with no success at previous Opens.
Literally, the top seventeen golfers on bet365 don’t have a single top ten at a prior Open Championship. Cink at 18th is the first one to do so.
I think next week’s going to be the hardest one of the year to bet on, to be honest. To use a tennis analogy, it’s a clay court specialist playing at Wimbledon. Of course some of them are going to adapt, but there are so many top class players who can’t.
You can’t really account for that in the numbers, but honestly it’d be a week where blindly following DG would probably get you in trouble.
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are you trying to say you don’t think Chuck Hoffman will play well next week? 
Weeks like this on the European Tour are one of the frustrating things about having a fairly rigid, automated model. It’s hard for us to adjust things on a weekly basis, even when it’s pretty clear something needs to be adjusted. Hopefully we will be able to make some tweaks before next week. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if our numbers on those experience-less Americans are at least directionally correct relative to the market (whether it’s enough to be truly +EV, is another question). Maybe just reduce the Kelly fraction…
Actually you don’t need to make adjustments, just give us a heads up on the weekly thread.
Of those seventeen players, Hoffman’s top 20 finish in 2017 and 2018 makes him one of the better prospects. I was mentioning it as a note of caution for people intent on going mad on the exchange prices.
Majors (apart from the Masters) are amongst the hardest weeks of the year because the markets are sculpted to within an inch of their life by the start of the week, and it’s getting increasingly hard for non-fancied players to win them. For a largely unknown winner, you’d need to go back to Keegan Bradley in 2011.
I’d much prefer a bog standard week featuring a rubbish European Tour event in Oman or Kenya and a PGA event where someone like Hoffman is the 18/1 favourite over a major.
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I love how poorly this comment aged and is a real reason not to make assumptions about players based on gut feelings.
What happened in the Open Championship was that the course was set up like a typical PGA Tour stop and the weather cooperated. Hence the PGA Tour dominated leaderboard.
You usually have the best chance to make money in a weak field PGA Tour event on an easy golf course. That’s when the longshots come in and you get several +500 cashes in the Top 20 market.
You get lots of extra props and matchups in the majors though so you do get a lot of moneymaking opportunities.
Logic seems a bit circular; I’m guessing that (in part) the fact that PGA Tour players did well makes you think it was set up like a PGA Tour course? I think the weather played a role, but it was still set up to play like a British Open course. If it wasn’t, then why didn’t the markets price it like a normal PGA Tour event beforehand?
I saw the footage and it was normal target golf with soft fairways and greens
You are too confident in your answers Daniel.
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I remember Datagolf’s projections treated it like a regular PGA Tour stop, I bet it accordingly and I had a great week
The opposite field event the same week was where Datagolf really made hay though
As for the tournament it was target practice with dart after dart
We were high on a lot of PGA Tour guys, but we did still make adjustments for Open experience and history.
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I’m only seeing this now because I don’t bother too much with the forums now, but I’d like to say that pointing out a player has a poor history at the Open Championship is absolutely not a “gut feeling”, and digging out a seven month old post seems somewhat unnecessary.
If you look at the results for that tournament, of the top seventeen players I pointed out only Berger finished in the top ten. and Streelman and Harman scraped T19th. You would have lost money blindly backing them to win or to place top 20.
Across the week, Datagolf had more bets than any other tournament in all of 2021, which shows that Open experience (or lack thereof) was a significant factor in how books priced it up compared to the data. In the event, they made 11 units, one of the best weeks of the year, due to strong performances in 3 balls and match-ups.
In 2019, however, the most bets Datagolf had in a tournament was also the Open at Portrush, and the results that year were -25.75 units, which is the worst week Datagolf has ever had in three years of documented results.
I’m going to predict that for many years to come the discrepancy between how the books and datagolf price up PGA Tour professionals in the Open Championship will be on average greater than any other tournament.
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FYI in my experience the best possible wagers you can make is on no-hope human interest stories to miss the cut. They often go off like -500 to miss the cut and they miss the cut like religion
Nationality props can be great too. You often get -2 or -3 SG golfers going up against someone who is a 0 and the chalk isn’t priced heavy enough
Hopefully your crystal ball is right this time my friend!