It was another painfully close week at the Tshwane Open with Darren Fichardt being beaten into second by Dawie Van Der Walt- a player backed just 3 weeks ago! Can't complain too much as we all know how hard it is to pick winners and good to get an e/w place, but really feel Darren could have tried to put the pressure on a bit more against an unproven winner- he just seemed to play so safe!
We were also looking good with David Howell and Keith Horne at some points but they just didn't get birdies rolling in. Then there was Jeev... giving it large on Twitter how much he loved playing in South Africa and what a great 67 it was. Needless to say there have been no tweets from him since the second round! I do however think he's still one to look at in India in a couple of weeks, as it was just 3 bad holes that stunted his progress.
I'd also had a bit of a personal punt in the Honda Classic on Westwood as well as in an e/w double with Fichardt- I could have cried when seeing that ball plop in the water on 18, how selfish of him not knowing I only needed a safe par there! Oh, and I also had YE Yang!
On a serious note though, I can't see how Lee is going to be backable for a while now. As great a player as he is- he just doesn't seem to win often enough for the prices available and his short game is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.
On the note of these disappointments, I was delighted to read birdieclubtipster's post today- suffering the same frustrations as me, and I think it sums up the emotions perfectly. Read it here: http://www.birdieclubtipster.blogspot.co.uk/p/19th-hole.html. He also talks about the frustration of missing out on the e/w places, but that keeping them in there is vital to keep the bank roll ticking over. This is something I have actually been thinking about this week...
What I've been learning this week:
A few weeks ago I stumbled across Mike Miller's (@SmartGolfBets) amazing(!) spreadsheets that show recent and course form and are my absolute bread and butter at the moment for pre tourney research. He also puts his own prices in there to show value bets. Would love to know the basics of creating these prices- but that's one for another post at a less busy time!
What I did notice this week is that he has also written some really good editorials- one of which is about the 'back-to-lay' (trading) approach on Betfair and it got me thinking about whether this could be a better strategy for profiting on the golf.
See Mike's site here: https://sites.google.com/site/smartgolfbets/editorials/back-to-lay---a-beginners-guide
A number of the players that let us down this week- if backed on the exchange- would have been available to trade out at a profit at some point. The thing is, if they had won, we'd have lost a big chunk of our potential profit by trading out- but it would have been guaranteed profit. There is also the risk that one bad round means no trade will come and the stake is gone forever. Or that a player finishes in the top 5, but never threatens to win, which would mean e/w would have paid out but no trade would ever become available.
There are just so many factors, but I guess that is the point of trying to come up with a winning strategy- trying to find the right combination of these factors that creates profit. After experimenting with laying the favourites / leaders a bit, I am definitely going to look a bit more into trading over the next few weeks, and compare results to backing the same players e/w.
Would love to here any readers' thoughts on this- do you have a great trading strategy- or swear by the e/w approach?! Please let me know!
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