With the Madrid open starting this weekend I watched a couple of YouTube videos on trading tennis and was astonished to learn that Betfairs’ tennis markets regularly trade in 5 or 6 figure turnovers. One of the contributing factors of this is the fact that because the game can swing dramatically from one player to the other the odds swing with the markets can move considerately. For instance a lay bet of £20.00 on the favourite who’s odds are perhaps 1.35 at the start of the set will only have a liability of £7.00. If the other player then serves first and wins the first game then the odds of the favourite could well swing up to 1.5 and a back bet of £18.00 at those odds would see you making a profit of around £2.00 – a better than 25% return on your investment. If on the other hand the game goes the other way and the favourite wins the first game then the odds might swing down to perhaps 1.25. A back bet of £17.00 at 1.25 would only leave you with a loss of £2.95 if the favourite went on to win but a £2.94 profit if he/she was to go on to lose.
With this in mind I placed a lay bet of £20.00 this morning on Aslan Karatsev at odds of 1.36 giving me a liability of £7.20.
With an hour to go before the first serve I can already trade out for 14p
20 minutes later the odds have reverted back to 1.36 and £20,000 more have been matched. I feel that I have perhaps jumped into this too soon as I dont know who will serve first So will cash out for no loss or profit and wait until they come out on court.
I have to admit to knowing absolutley nothing about tennis and even less about these two players but just some prelimianary research shows that Ugo Humbert is ranked 32nd in the ATP singles rankings and Aslan Karatsev 27th. The void in-between these two players odds, considering their closeness in the rankings suggests that Karatsev is on fire at the present time and a look at his form shows that he won 3 of his last 4 games in Belgrade kncking out Djokovic 2 sets to one.
The match is now underway and Humbert served first winning the first game to 15 giving me a cashout of about 90p
Betornot 