Golf Betting and E/W Dead Heats

I've just added a Betting Calculator to the site.  Why add another online calculator when there's plenty of others around?  First of all I wanted a more user-friendly returns checker but more importantly one which could take into account the place dead heat rule in Golf outrights.  Dead heats are relatively unique to Golf but also relatively common.

Pouring over the books to work out the place dead heat returns!

I'd guess most people who've had a Golf bet, have early on, been confused by not getting the returns they expect from an Each way bet.  It's probably not surprising that most bookmaker help glossary's have a page on it (here's Paddy Power's).  The bookmaker arbitration service, IBAS has a case study to clear things up here.

For those not familiar with the place dead heat rule, it's a way of settling a bet when there are more players in the places than are available.  It's confusing if you have a finish in the places but don't get the return you expected.  If there's more finishers than places, bookmakers have to reduce returns to limit their liability.

An Each Way bet is two bets, a Win bet and a Place bet.  For a tournament outright bet, the Win bet return is obviously fairly straightforward, based on the Odds and the Stake (playoffs mean dead heat wins shouldn't happen).  The Place return is determined by the number of places offered and the fraction of the win odds.  For the most part UK bookmakers will offer Five places and a Quarter the odds for most tournaments.  But because of the closeness in scores of strokeplay events, there will often be ties for the places and therefore place dead heats.

Here's how I explained it on the Golf Bet Calculator page.

Place Dead Heats in Golf
Bookmakers only pay the advertised number of places for an Each Way bet, so if there are more players in the places, stakes are divided accordingly.  The players above a dead-heat (if there is one) will place return to the normal stake.
For example the 2013 Deutsche Bank Champs final result (1/4 odds, 5 places) -

Pos.	To Par	Player	Places
1st	-22	Henrik Stenson	1
2nd	-20	Steve Stricker	2
3rd	-18	Graham DeLaet	3
4th	-17	Jordan Spieth	4
=	-17	Matt Kuchar	5
=	-17	Kevin Stadler
=	-17	Sergio Garcia

On the calculator this would be D/H Place =2, D/H Total = 4.

 Stenson, Stricker & DeLaet pay to the normal Each Way place return.  Spieth, Kuchar, Stadler and Garcia share the remaining two places.  So the place part of the Each Way bet is the two places divided by the four tied players or 1/2 the stake. (2/4)

 For example a £10 Each Way bet on Kuchar at odds of 28/1.  The Stake is halved (2/4), so becomes a £5 place bet at place odds of 28/4.  Giving a return of £40.

Hopefully I've made things a bit clearer.  Keep an eye on whether there is a tie for your player's score and check the Golf Bet Calculator!

Also check out the latest offers to use on golf tournaments at Bookie Radar.