Golf betting sites

The bets themselves, from the outright to the matchup, are on how to bet on golf.

The outright board

A tournament field runs well past a hundred players, and the book prices every one of them. Add up what all those prices imply and you get far more than 100 percent, because the cut on a long futures board is much bigger than on a game. You can't see it on any single price, so the only way to fight it is to compare. The same player can be +4000 at one book and +3300 at another the same morning, and on a long shot that gap is most of the value. I'd never bet a golf outright at a book I hadn't compared with a second one.

Top finishes and the dead heat

Top 5, top 10 and top 20 bets are where most golf bettors should start, and they are where the dead heat rule bites. If your player ties for the last paying place, the book divides your stake among the players who share it. Put $10 on a player at +400 to finish top 5, and if he ties for fifth with two others, a third of your stake is paid at +400 and the rest is lost. You get $16.67 back, a profit of $6.67, where a clean fifth would have paid $40. Every book does some version of this; check that the book says how it does it.

Matchups and withdrawals

A matchup asks which of two players scores better, and it takes the field out of the bet. It is the most honest golf bet on the board. The rules that matter are what happens when a player withdraws, and whether the bet is over the whole tournament or one round, and whether a tie is a push or a third result. A good golf book states all three.

Live golf

A golf tournament runs for four days, and the live board prices every shot. The book's model knows the course and the leaderboard better than a bettor watching one group on television. I'd treat live golf the way I treat any live board: fine for a small bet on something you saw coming, expensive as a habit.

Reading the list below

The list shows the books we have reviewed that name golf on their own sports pages, A to Z, and leaves out any whose review doesn't say. Golf pays big when it pays, and loses quietly most weeks. Stake it like a long shot, small and steady, with a figure for the season you can lose without minding.