This season I will be providing tips for Betfair - a name which has become synonymous with betting exchanges. There are of course other betting exchanges, but Betfair has the vast majority of the liquidity - certainly for golf markets - so it will be the source of prices used in the tips here.
 
 Betting exchanges allow us the opportunity to ‘lay' or oppose players, and that is primarily the form the tips on this page will take.
 
 The staking plan is based on a 200pt starting bank, and initially at least I will be looking to risk no more than 10% of the bank in any one week. I believe that in the early weeks of the year the natural enthusiasm for the new season needs to be tempered with some restraint as results can be somewhat unpredictable until form patterns have settled down.
 
 I intend to post tips before the start of the week's event either on the Wednesday or Thursday. Then where the opportunity presents itself there may be further tips to follow between the rounds during the event.

Sony Open:  Final Result: -11.82pts

LAY Jim Furyk to lose 20pts @9  (i.e. stake 2.5pts)
LAY Vijay Singh to lose 20pts @11  (i.e. stake 2pts)
LAY Stephen Ames to lose 20pts @24  (i.e. stake 0.87pts)
LAY K.J. Choi to lose 20pts @26  (i.e. stake 0.8pts)
LAY Charles Howell to lose 20pts @29  (i.e. stake 0.71pts)
LAY Angel Cabrera to lose 20pts @44  (i.e. stake 0.47pts)
LAY Chad Campbell to lose 20pts @46  (i.e. stake 0.44pts)
LAY Daniel Chopra to lose 20pts @50  (i.e. stake 0.41pts)
LAY Robert Allenby to lose 20pts @55  (i.e. stake 0.37pts)
LAY Boo Weekley to lose 20pts @50  (i.e. stake 0.41pts)

Taking on a number of the 'fancied' players. I guess positive arguments could be made for the chances of most on that list (except Cabrera - no idea what people see in him..) but it comes down to price in the end, and at these prices I'm happy to open up lay positions on them all.

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Update after round 1:

No plays to add today.

But I will take the opportunity to answer a question sent in by William:

Hi,

Am I correct in thinking that I would have to deposit about £1000 in a betfair account if I was to place all the lays suggested in the Sony Open ?

William,

The actual monetary value of the deposit required of course depends on how many pounds you are staking per point, which will vary widely from person to person.

However, before talking in terms of money, I should make the point that the liabilities on the above bets are not cumulative.
The ten bets this week each laying to lose 20pts, do not carry a combined liability of 200pts, in fact the total liability (or worst case scenario) is a loss of 13.52pts - which corresponds to a J Furyk win.

20pts would be lost on the lay of Furyk, but the combined 6.48pts staked on the other players would be recouped, giving the overall loss stated above. The Betfair system recognises this so the total amount required to be deposited is not as high as it may at first seem.


I stated before that while the staking is based on a bank of 200pts, that I would initially look to keep the liability for any one week to only 10% of that - so in fact only 20pts need to be deposited with Betfair. The other 180pts in the bank is not immediately required but, in keeping with the general idea of betting banks, acts as a buffer by being there in the long term if it is needed.


So moving on to a specific example with money - if you were to say stake £10 per point, then you would have a nominal betting bank of £2000, and would need to deposit £200 of that in Betfair to cover the week's lays.

I chose £10 as this is probably the minimum amount required to not fall foul of Betfair's £2 minimum stake requirement [although it should be noted that it is possible to circumvent that - a search on google for 'Betfair minimum stake' should provide ample explanation - so these tips can theoretically be followed even with a starting bank as low as £20].



Having said all that I appreciate that this style of betting is still not to everyone's taste. It does require an initial amount of upfront capital that is relatively high and is also unlikely to produce any one-off spectacularly big wins so patience and discipline are important. These things in themselves are probably an advantage to those who do it however, as if a disproportionate number of participants are limited by these requirements to being backers only it suggests a possible inbuilt bias in prices in favour of laying may exist in the market.