Sports · Arbitrage#172

Field-Wide Overround Lay in Golf & Tennis

In a 156-player golf field, every player's win probability must sum to exactly 100%. In practice the listed prices sum to well above that, because long shots are systematically overpriced by people buying lottery tickets. You sell a broad basket of the most overpriced long shots simultaneously, capturing the excess. It requires real capital and strict correlation limits, since one of your shorts winning is exactly the scenario that hurts.

What you need to run it

Full-field price capture with a running sum of implied probabilities
Capital to short many legs at once and margin for a long shot actually winning
Concentration limits so a single surprise winner cannot end the strategy

Where this applies

Markets on Polymarket where field-wide overround lay in golf & tennis is the natural play:

Will Scottie Scheffler win the 2027 Masters?
Will Carlos Alcaraz win the next Wimbledon title?
Will a first-time major winner take the 2027 PGA Championship?

Capabilities this demands

Significant capitalCustom code / APIRisk management

At a glance

CategoryArbitrage

MarketSports

Requirements3

CapabilitiesSignificant capital, Custom code / API, Risk management

VenuePolymarket (CLOB, Polygon)

Build it

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This is documentation, not advice. Poly Research & Robotics publishes how these strategies work because the method should be checkable — not as a recommendation to trade them. See the full strategy database (297 strategies) or the data resources directory.