I genuinely can’t remember when I put the bet on Edwards Tip’s Daniel Hiller to win the British Masters last week, but after scoring Eagle-Birdie-Eagle to win by two shots, I could see from the new balance in my Smarkets account there’d been a boost, and I had to check each bet to find the 150.0 I’d taken.
This all sounds a bit flippant. “Oh, I had a big win on Sunday from a bet I couldn’t remember placing”, makes me sound to me like I’m a bit of an arse. To be honest, I probably am, but not because of that. There’s all sorts of reasons people might think I’m an arse. Just ask my wife!
Anyway, it was good to get another win and things continue to push forward (figures update on Wednesday).
Meanwhile, I enjoyed listening the the SBC’s very own Big Cheese Pete on the latest Bookie Bashing “BashCast” talking to Tom Brownlee about his win-only strategy for backing golfers on the Exchanges. Pete’s approach is, as it happens, very similar to my own, the only real difference being that he tends to cover 20-25% of the field if he can whilst I haven been covering more like 15%.
I’m tempted to go this way too. If you’re confident you’ve taking +EV bets, then volume should be a good thing, and by covering a larger percentage of the field in terms of win probability then the losing runs ought, logically, to be shorter. That’s not to say there won’t still be testing times. There will. You can’t be backing golfers at big prices to win tournaments and expect to be visiting the online counter to “pick up” winnings frequently. Pete was saying himself that earlier this year he went 14 tournaments with only one success, and after some analysis conducted by Tom on the BB win-only stats, there was a period of a year and three months that the P&L ran below the previous high point. I guess the lesson here is no matter what, patience really is a must when it comes to golf betting!
