AI Golf Betting – Part 1 – Hero World Challenge 2024

This is Part 1 of my AI PGA Tour golf betting series. In this experiment I have started with a $100 bankroll and I plan to bet $5 each week using the Kelly Criteria to distribute the $5 most effectively across my picks. I have a prompt built to have AI do research on the tournament and pick 3 players to win. If my bankroll grows I will add $2.50 to my weekly bets for every $50 additional in my bankroll. However, if I run out of funds I will end this experiment so at worst I will have this for 20 events.

Results So Far:

A Glimpse into the 2024 Hero World Challenge

This is an unusual time to start betting on golf as it's the off-season for the PGA tour, but what can I say I'm excited to try this method of analysis and betting out. It will be our first glimpse into man vs machine when it comes to golf betting though I'd assume many experts are also using some type of machine learning algorithms to help place their bets.

This is a limited field capped at 20 of the world's best players, but also some of Tiger Woods best friends who may not truly deserve to be there. With such a small field there's fortunately no cut line to worry about, but this also likens to one player getting hot and running away with the tournament early on.

The course details:

Who The Experts Picked To Win?

<tr>

    <th>Source</th>

    <th>Writer</th>

    <th>Pick</th>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>Golf Week</td>

    <td>Riley Hamel</td>

    <td>Justin Thomas</td>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>Golf Week</td>

    <td>Riley Hamel</td>

    <td>Tom Kim</td>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>Golf Week</td>

    <td>Riley Hamel</td>

    <td>Robert McIntyre</td>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>Golf Monthly</td>

    <td>Elliot Heath</td>

    <td>Justin Thomas</td>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>Golf Monthly</td>

    <td>Barry Plummer</td>

    <td>Scottie Scheffler</td>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>Golf Monthly</td>

    <td>Matt Cradock</td>

    <td>Jason Day</td>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>Golf Monthly</td>

    <td>Jonny Leighfield</td>

    <td>Russell Henley</td>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>PGA Tour Golfbets</td>

    <td>Will Gray</td>

    <td>Sahith Theegala</td>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>PGA Tour Golfbets</td>

    <td>Ben Everill</td>

    <td>Justin Thomas</td>

</tr>

<tr>

    <td>PGA Tour Golfbets</td>

    <td>Chris Breece</td>

    <td>Russell Henley</td>

</tr>

Who I Picked To Win?

Based on the analysis, the AI determined the following players to win which is not surprising considering they have the best 3 odds.

The $5 was distributed across the players with Scottie Scheffler receiving $1.61, Ludvig Aberg receiving $1.31 and Justin Thomas receiving $2.08 with their associated payouts below.

Hero World Challenge 2024 Picks

Overall, Scottie Scheffler was the most obvious pick to win given his odds, but it seems that the experts and AI both had a general consensus of Justin Thomas winning this week. We'll see if he gets the new mythical new dad boost.

Hero World Challenge 2024 Results

My plan is to publish the results of the week in the most current week’s picks, however given the gap in tournaments I’m appending an edit to the end of this post to make it.

Week 1 of the AI golf betting experiment was a success correctly selecting Scottie Scheffler to win the tournament. At one point in the second round Scheffler, JT and Aberg were the top 3 on the leaderboard giving me a huge boost in confidence. While the net payout was only $0.23 it beats losing $5. This will likely be the easiest tournament for AI to select given it had a 15% chance of selecting the winner, whereas a typical PGA tour event would be closer to a 2% chance given the increased field size.

Now we have an extended break over the holidays while we wait for the The Sentry tournament in Hawaii starting on January 2nd.