How to hedge a golf bet

WHAT IS HEDGING A BET? How to hedge a golf bet betting is when you wager on both sides of a sports event to ensure you earn some sort of payout no matter the outcome. Consider. Generally, you want to bet the option where a tie results in refunded bets and not the one where the tie is its own bet. That's because the. If the golfer wins you win both the outright winner and the place: $ x + = $1, + $ x $ = $ = $1, total return = $1, The most common way to hedge a bet is to bet out the other side of a game. Sports bettors who are crafty can also hedge parlays and futures. Even if you're not.

How to hedge a bet

Not only has every golfer played the same number of holes but the natural break allows for you to really assess your options without having to make a split-second decision. Let me provide you with a recent, real-life leaderboard after the third round. If you wanted to hedge, how would you do it. There are multiple golfers who have a chance to win the event and placing a small wager on all of them would really dilute your potential winnings.

In fact, a golfer with a three-shot lead going into the final round only wins the tournament Less than half the time. The larger the lead, the more difficult it becomes to hedge in my opinion. If Reed does indeed come back to the field, he just gave an opportunity to a half dozen golfers to beat him. Meaning more golfers are live to win, making a hedge even more difficult.

Pre-Tournament Hedging — Seriously. The best way to hedge your longshot tickets is at the same time you make the bet, by also place a wager on their Top 5 or Top 10 number as well. Consider Your Matchup Options — Betting a final round matchup against one or two of the closest chasers is a fairly low risk way to hedge an outright ticket in golf.

Continuing with our example above, Patrick Reed will enter the final round with a three-shot lead over Justin Thomas. Additionally, you could win both wagers here — something that is quite rare in hedging. Reed could easily go out and shoot a 68 on Sunday while Thomas shoots a Thomas would win the matchup but Reed would still win the tournament.

The concept is generally used to guarantee profit at the price of minimizing the best-case scenario outcome. This works most frequently when a futures bet is involved, but it can also be done when live betting is involved. In recent years, one of the more famous futures bets is the Leicester City team that won the English Premier League in a shock result. The Foxes were 5, to win the Premier League before the season started.

As Leicester raced to the league lead, those 5, odds would have started to seem like a legitimate possibility. This works as insurance in case Leicester fell apart. How to hedge a golf bet While hitting a 5, futures bet can be life-changing, it may also have been unnerving to sit through those spring months, knowing it could turn to nothing.

While Leicester was a high-profile, high-value futures bet that offered multiple hedging opportunities, hedging is more straightforward in playoffs or an elimination tournament when there are binary outcomes. This bettor could hedge by betting against Baylor in the final to lock in profit.

This is adjustable depending on how much the bettor wants to lock in and how they feel about the final matchup, but this is the general concept of hedging. If you hedge by betting on Baylor, one of the two teams has to win, which means one of those bets has to win.

By betting on Gonzaga early in the season when the futures bet had many odds and having them get all the way to the final, you can artificially create a bet where both sides have plus odds. Guaranteed profit. In this example, there were four possible scenarios from the betting perspective based on two variables: which team won and whether or not a hedge was made.

By hedging, the best and worst scenarios are removed and profit is guaranteed. The amount bet on Baylor in the hedge is up to the person betting. You could match up the profits so that the result of the final is irrelevant. Gonzaga was heavily favored throughout the tournament.

You could hedge by taking moneyline bets against them in every tournament game, knowing that those would be big payouts to cover the original futures bet losing. However, this can be expensive over the course of multiple games and can really eat into potential profit. Parlays are a good example of hedging as well. If the first two legs of a three-leg parlay came in and the third would be for a big payout, hedge by betting against the third leg to guarantee some profit from the parlay.

The principle is the same as hedging against a futures bet that is close to coming in. You could hedge by betting the other side of the remaining bet to lock in profit, just like in the Gonzaga-Baylor example above. Get all-access to exclusive stories. Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs.

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