The Bet I Wish I Made...

I have to admit I was tilted Monday morning…

I missed one of the biggest sports betting spots of the year, which would be understandable…unless it was in Golf, the sport I specialize in!

But if I am not going to make money immediately on the situation, you bet I am going to make future money by learning from it. So let’s break down the golf betting spot of the year in this week’s Risk Takers Digest

The Situation

The PGA Tour played at Pebble Beach last week - arguably the most iconic American golf course; situated on the Pacific Ocean. Being directly on the coast, it is sometimes subject to extreme weather only seen on the UK links courses.

(Here is a video of Tony Finau hitting driver on the 100-yard 7th hole at Pebble…)
https://youtube.com/shorts/5PaejVH5Wtg?si=wyuyss3PQIpIjBNZ

The weather for the first three rounds was relatively mild. Winds hovered around 10 mph each day. (Wind makes golf very hard btw). The projected weather for Sunday however was comical.

When wind and rain get to certain apocalyptic levels, it becomes impossible to play golf (balls start rolling around without having been hit). Everyone who was following closely agreed that there wasn’t going to be play on Sunday - but the PGA Tour said they would try to finish on Monday if possible.

While the weather on Monday wasn’t that bad, the course was already wet - and there was a looming possibility that rain Sunday would make it hard to play Monday.

Sunday afternoon the PGA Tour makes it official that they won’t play Sunday, and are hoping to play Monday. If they can’t finish Monday then it becomes a 54 hole event.

The Bet

Shortened events on the PGA Tour are really rare (I believe the last one was the Zurich Classic in 2016). That should send alarm bells off for us as bettors - weird/outlier events often present epic value.

So how can we make some money?

First Thought

Wyndham Clark to win at +200

After Round 3, Wyndham Clark was in the lead. If

But remember, what are we actually betting on? We are trying to bet on Round 4 getting canceled.

If Round 4 gets canceled, then Wyndham Clark does win - and we win a +200 bet. But is that the best way to monetize a Round 4 cancelation?

No

One of the best monetization strategies I saw of a Round 4 cancelation was by the bettor @Kante_Bets. His play is below:

This is genius. Because remember - what are we betting on? We aren’t betting on who wins the golf tournament; we are betting on the golf tournament being shortened to 54-holes. 

If the golf tournament is shortened to 54 holes, Wyndham Clark wins. By betting Wyndham Clark to win, we are getting +200 on the tournament to be shortened (plus a big insurance policy on it not being shortened, b/c Wyndham still very likely to win if they play)

But the insurance policy of Clark blinds us to the REAL bet. The REAL bet is what Kante made - he parlayed the players currently in the top-20 to be top-20.

If the tournament plays a fourth round, this is very unlikely to win.

BUT

If the tournament is shortened to 54 holes, this is guaranteed (yes actually guaranteed) to win. So Kante has created a +4930 payout on a yes/no round 4 to be played bet.

Absolutely genius

Just to highlight how good this bet is, the tournament only needs to be shortened to 54 holes 2% of the time for this bet to breakeven.

At the time this bet was placed people were quoting their fairs in the 25%-75% range. CRAZY. But this isn’t even the main reason this bet was genius. Many others made similar bets and had them voided. Enter the villain of this story…

The House Rules!

DraftKings House Rules:

FanDuel House Rules:

TLDR: If you make a bet after the last shot of the tournament is hit, the bet is void. 

In the Pebble Beach Scenario, if you placed a bet after the last shot in Round 3 was hit, your bet would be void. I did this.

And to make matters worse….it was a Clark outright! So bad.

The reason Kante and some other very smart people won their bets is they placed them right before the last shot of round 3 was hit. This was the real differentiator here - knowing the house rules.

Knowing the rules of the markets you are playing is so boring, yet so important. I didn’t know the rules and it could have cost me $1 million in this situation.

What can we learn about “big spots”?

If you take just one thing away from this - it’s how important big spots are. If I had figured out the rules and the proper way to execute on this situation - my entire year would be completely different.

Open your mind to the reality that your year can be made by one situation a year. It’s scary, because 1 is very close to 0. But if you pay attention you will find a few each year that make up the majority of your P&L.

The other takeaway is how much do we bet? On one hand, you want to get paid - I learned this lesson the hard way w/ the DFS site “Units”. I won $35,000 on a big spot - but they didn’t pay because it was likely too much money for them and they are not regulated so they don’t have gaming on their ass.

DraftKings or FanDuel? Worth a big shot - they incur big headaches if they don’t pay out customers.

1. They are very well known - so the press would be all over it
2. They are overseen by regulatory bodies

And….they have fat bankrolls. So they can take the loss and not have it shut them down.

You’re always doing some calculus in these situations. My advice on regulated books is shoot for the moon - try and win almost as big of a number as you can.

If you need to hire a lawyer/ go to gaming, it will be much more worth it for a big number.

Thank you everyone for reading! As many of you know, I am launching a sports betting education community in the upcoming weeks!

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