Mito Pereira’s PGA collapse turned big bets into big losses, and some big wins

Sharp bettors don’t always win. They just win more than the rest of us. Usually. Rufus Peabody is one of those folks who makes a living off sports betting, but it’s not easy.

All the savvy mathematics and insights went up in smoke on Sunday when Mito Pereira, up by one stroke heading to the final hole of the PGA Championship, inexplicably opted for a driver. He promptly put his tee shot in the water, shot a double-bogey and finished tied for third.

Peabody, who stood to win $300,000 if Pereira had played it smart and simply found the fairway on 18 with a lesser club, could manage just three words on Twitter: “Well, that hurt.”

Pereira was ranked 100th in the world and playing in a major on Sunday for the first time in his career. He simply caved under the pressure. It’s impossible to handicap such things.

“I thought I was nervous the first day,” Pereira said afterward. “Then I thought I was nervous the second day. Then I thought I was nervous on the third day … but the fourth day was terrible.”

Peabody’s $300k wasn’t the only carnage from Pereira’s collapse. A bettor with BetMGM had more than $6,000 on Pereira before the tournament at 150-1 and stood to win $912,900. That also hurts.

But it wasn’t all catastrophic. Late in Sunday’s final round, BetMGM’s John Ewing pointed out that “20 minutes ago, Justin Thomas was +5000 to win [the] PGA Championship. JT [is] now +900.”

Thomas became the first player in 44 years to win the PGA Championship despite trailing by seven strokes during the final round. He beat Will Zalatoris in the three-hole playoff for his second career major victory.

Thomas was still well back of Pereira when someone laid $200 on him at odds of 250-1 at PointsBet. That paid off a cool $50,000. What a day.

“I was asked early in the week what lead is safe and I said, ‘No lead,’ ” Thomas said, stunning even himself. “I can’t believe I found myself in a playoff.”

It certainly wasn’t the worst beat ever for Peabody, who told VSIN’s Gill Alexander that hedging his action with a wager against Pereira wasn’t mathematically prudent. Peabody is a co-founder of Unabated.com, which this week unveiled a free hedge-betting calculator to help others when the situation undoubtedly comes up again.

Hedges work only when there are only two options for a wager to settle, which makes it difficult in golf with multiple players in contention. So the way to hedge against Pereira would be if there was a yes/no prop on him to win the tournament, which is not offered everywhere. In Peabody’s case, it was. At Circa in Vegas, the “no” was -175, and those odds didn’t justify the risk.

“When I get asked if someone should hedge something, the corresponding question is whether it’s life-changing money to you,” said Unabated’s Jack Andrews. “That’s a very ambiguous question to ask somebody. But when you know what your bankroll size is, then you can let the math decide if it’s life-changing money. Is it more important to grow your bankroll? Or is it more important to take the profit from the situation?”

The season’s third major is the U.S. Open on June 16-19 at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. Westgate’s SuperBook in Las Vegas opened Thomas, defending champion Jon Rahm, and Scottie Scheffler each at 14-1. Zalatoris is among a pack of players at 25-1. Scheffler is still comfortably ahead at No. 1 in the world rankings despite missing the cut last weekend.

The Open Championship, the final major, is July 14-17 at venerable St. Andrew’s.

DraftKings opened lines for all 17 Eagles games this week. The Birds were favored in 11 games, underdogs in three and pick’em in the other three. The largest number they were favored by is 6.5 when Jacksonville visits in Week 4. The three games they were underdogs were at Arizona (+2) in Week 5, at Indianapolis (+3) in Week 11, and at Dallas (+3.5) in Week 16.

NHL: The Blues were as high as +2500 when they were down 3-0 in the second period in Wednesday’s elimination game in Colorado. St. Louis won it in overtime to force Friday’s Game 6. PointsBet has the Blues at +600 to continue rallying long enough to win the series.

NBA: BetMGM took a $56,000 play on Miami to win the title when they were at 11-2 odds. At stake is $308,000. Following Wednesday’s loss, which put Miami in a 3-2 hole to the Celtics, they are now 22-1. FWIW, that same $56,000 bet would pay $1.23 million at the new odds.

WOW: And then there was the bettor who picked up $1,219,068.25 on four separate parlay cards at FanDuel in the Live casino in South Philly on Tuesday. The wagers ranged from $5,000-$10,000 and there were two four-leg parlays, one with six plays and another with seven plays. The action was mostly baseball with some hockey sprinkled in. Three of the four cards were placed in-game. One card was worth $439,142.75, the highest single parlay payout at that location. The $1.2 million also is a FanDuel/South Philly record.

Dave Sharapan, a longtime Vegas oddsmaker, has a pretty funny feed on Twitter as the “SportsBook Consigliere.” He had this gem the other day.

Got a tip on a horse today with a great name.

“Wegottaguy.”

Belmont. Race 9.

Get to the ‘book and see a horse guy. Says he has a shot. Put him in the exotics.

That’s code for nobody knows [anything].

Horse runs 5th.