As the Florida leg of the PGA Tour opened Thursday with the Honda Classic, tipsters named Floridians Brooks Koepka and Daniel Berger as favorites due to their proximity to the event.
Joaquin Niemann, who won last week in Los Angeles, and hot-starting Sungjae Im also caught the eye of pundits.
But professional sports bettor Rufus Peabody analyzed his simulated data and remained silent.
“I keep my head down,” Peabody told USA Today Sports+ this week. “People who speak publicly, sell their choices, I don’t pay attention to that. Think about it. Why would you sell your picks? »
Peabody, a professional player since 2009, designed a quantitative model that runs 250,000 simulations on the Honda Classic, taking into account a host of conditions such as weather and player skill, as well as hole and course difficulty.
With these results, he set about betting as solidly as possible on domestic and foreign sportsbooks. When Peabody acts, it often results in a large adjustment in global ratings.
In addition to betting on international golf events, he targets around 12 players in US tournaments, focusing on his favorite golfers in head-to-head matchups, which most online shops offer.
To help hedge the risk on certain longshot players, Peabody is betting on them as an “each way” proposition that allows up to 1/4 returns for those posting a top five.
“If I have an advantage, I look to go down as much as possible,” Peabody said.
This is the beautiful duality of golf.
Gentleman and distinguished on the surface, wild and full of risk once the punches start to fly.
The four major sports attract much more betting traffic on online sports betting. But the smaller, but growing, crowd of shrewd, deep-pocketed sports bettors are embracing golf as their betting sport of choice.
“I used to bet on baseball and football, but as the markets became more efficient, it became clear that I needed to specialize more,” Peabody said. “I could still make a little profit from baseball, but considering everything I’ve invested in (research), it’s almost not worth the time. »
Golf has provided him with much richer returns.
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