As a follow on to my third post in this series I thought it would be interesting to see just how much profit or loss I would make by dutching all the WTA singles matches from day 2 of the tournament using just the following criteria. Favourite starting odds of 1.20 or less £10.00 total stake Favourite to be backed at odds that would achieve a 10% profit margin
Dutching a Tennis match may seem a little bizarre as there are only 2 players but with the volatility of the market during in-play it is possible to trade in this way by backing the underdog at the outset at the same time as placing a back bet order into the market at odds higher than the current odds with the view that it will get matched at some point during the match. Some pre match research is essential when attempting this sort of trade so that you know roughly at what point your order is likely to be matched. This is done primarily with Bet Angels “Tennis Trader” tool. If you have read my previous posts on trading tennis you will know that this can be an invaluable way of predicting a feasible exit point for your trade and giving an insight to your potential risk to reward. It is a fact that in Tennis the WTA is the most prolific for having breaks of service, even with the most accomplished players and the fact that that players who are vastly overwhelmed by their opponents experience can overcome some of that prowess by playing in “overdrive” in the first set. This can mean that players who start the match at odds in the region of 1.05-1.2 can see their odds of winning the match increase to a point where this strategy can yield a 10% return on your stake. To illustrate this I have put a screenshot of the log I recorded yesterday of the match between Zidansek and Zheng. Zheng is seeded 19 and Zidansek is a qualifier.
As you can see Zheng started the match at odds of 1.16 but 10 minutes into the fist game her odds had risen to 1.34 before dropping back down to 1.18 and then back up to 1.3 and then back to 1.13. If we look at the actual game scores we can see that Zheng won the first two games breaking Zidansek’s serve in the second, but in the 3rd game Zidansek broke back to win the 3rd game and this is where these odds of 1.3 + would have occurred. This doesn’t mean that Zidansek was on to win the entire match it was just the market reacting to the in-play state of the match. Below is a screenshot of the first few games of the first set and as you can see Zidansek gave a fair account of herself.
So when we look at matches such as these “uncompetitive” matches as far as the starting odds would have it, there are some distinct possibilities that occur during the match and in particular in the first set that we can take advantage of. This is the essence of the trade I am going to outline in this post. If you have read my previous posts on tennis trading we are looking for the most reward against the least risk taken and to that end I am going to show you one match where there are two possible ways of making the same trade. For this I am going to turn to Bet Angel once again because it is the easiest way to place this trade into the market but this can easily be done manually as well by using a simple dutching calculator available for free on the internet. I will show this method later in the post. But first to Bet Angel. The screenshot below shows the Bet Angel dutching screen and the match loaded is between Vondrousova and Parks. Vondrousova is odds on to win with odds available to back at 1.10 Parks, the rank outsider is 10.00. We know that Vondrousova will 90 times out of 100 win this match, the odds tell us this so we would expect Parks odds to drift out to 1000 by the end of the match and we would be able to get any odds between 10.00 and 1000 matched at somepoint in the match so logic tells us that we should back Vondrousova at the start of the match and put an order into the market on Parks that is pretty certain to be matched at some point.
The Bet Angel Dutching tool enables us to select a margin of profit and total stakes If you look at the screen shot above the software is set to back Vondrousova for a stake of £9.99 and place an order into the market for a penny at odds of 1000 this, if it were possible, would net us 97p at the end of the match if Parks lost. The problem we have in this trade is that we would be risking £9.99 for a reward of 97p If we now switch this around so that we are backing Parks at the onset of the match and placing an order to be matched in play on Vondrousova the risk to reward has been turned upside down
This trade would now put an order into the market on Vondrousova at odds of 1.25 for £8.89 and place a bet that would be matched straight away on Parks for £1.11 at odds of 10.00. We now are risking just £1.11 for a reward of £1.09 – Even Money. So what are the chances of Vondrousovas back bet being matched in play? If we look at Tennis Trader (Screenshot below) We can see that it would only take a break of serve in Parks’ favour and for her to hold her serve until the 6th game for this bet to be matched.
It would not be advisable to blanket dutch all matches that have a favourite starting the match at odds of say 1.20 or less in this way as you would need to research the players to get some sort of feel that is the underdog capable of breaking the serve if he/she goes all out in the 1st set. But for the purposes of this post I will do just that on all of the WTA 1st round matches on day 2 in the French open today that have a favourite that starts at odds of 1.2 or less and post the results tomorrow.
Now I said earlier that you can perform this trade without the aid of Bet Angel by using a simple Dutching Calculator. For this I will use OddsMonkeys very capable dutching calculator which is available to use for free (I will post a link below) In the sceenshot below I have populated the fields with all the relevant information Stake £10 Parks Odds 10.00 Vondrousovas Odds 1.10 Commision 2% for both bets I have set the stake to be split over all selections and for the individual stakes to be rounded to a penny.
As you can see we need to adjust the odds for Vondrousova to make the profit show our 10% target for this trade which is about a quid.
1.20 is not enough as it only produces a 66p profit over all
1.3 is too much as it gives a profit of £1.43
Bingo! we have our desired odds at which we will place our order on Vondrousova and what stakes to use AFTER we have placed our bet on Parks. There is just one thing to remember and it is vital. Once you have placed your Vondrousova order into the market you must set the bet to “KEEP” otherwise when the market goes in play your order would be cancelled and you would in effect have a quid on Parks to win only. One more thing to remember is that if you are doing this manually on betfair your minimum stake is £1.00 so you may need to adjust your total stake to bring that to that amount.
As a follow on to my first post in this series I thought it would be interesting to see just how much profit or loss I would make by Trading the first game of all the WTA singles matches throughout the tournament using just the following criteria. Favourite must be priced above 1.60 – 55 seconds before the start of the published start time. Stakes are to a £10 back bet on the favourite in this timeframe
If you missed this post or any posts in the series click the link below
Because I am using Bet Angel Automation for this study the trade will be hedged automatically when the score for game 2 is 0-0 at least 1 minute after the match has gone in-play. There are 20 ladies matches today (Sunday 28th May 2023) Five Matches started at around 10:00 am In the table below I have Nominated Player 1 as the Favourite
Day 1 WTA First Round Matches
Player 1
Serving
Player 2
Fav odds matched
Hedged odds
Profit/Loss
Diaz
No
Saunders
1.98
2.22
-£1.03
Podoroska
No
Ponchet
1.75
1.39
£2.59
Sabalenka
Kostyuk
<1.60
N/A
£0.00
Shymanovich
Udvardy
<1.60
N/A
£0.00
Frech
Zhang
<1.60
N/A
£0.00
Rakhimova
Yes
Bejlek
1.89
1.70
£1.10
Frenandez
No
Linette
1.96
2.02
-30p
Sakkari
No
Muchova
1.97
1.38
£4.27
Tauson
No
Sasnovich
1.67
1.54
83p
Mertens
No
Hruncakova
<1.60
N/A
£0.00
Giorgi
Cornet
<1.60
N/A
£0.00
Birrel
Yes
Jeanjean
1.87
1.6
£1.69
Zheng
Zidansek
<1.6
N/A
£0.00
Potapova
Townsend
<1.6
N/A
£0.00
Begu
Bondar
<1.6
N/A
£0.00
Pegula
Collins
<1.6
N/A
£0.00
Teichmann
Errani
<1.6
N/A
£0.00
Kasatkina
Niemeier
<1.6
N/A
£0.00
Samsonova
Volynets
<1.6
N/A
£0.00
Sherif
Brengal
<1.6
N/A
£0.00
Total P/L Today £9.15
Day 2 WTA First Round Matches
Player 1
Serving
Player 2
Fav odds matched
Hedged odds
Profit/Loss
Serrano
Bogdon
1.68
1.45
£1.40
Pera
Kontveit
1.83
1.68
86p
Pliskova
Stephens
1.91
2.14
-£1.07
Svitolina
Trevisan
1.76
1.64
72p
Kvitova
Cocciaretto
1.84
1.60
-£1.47
Mandlik
Waltert
1.91
2.18
-£1.24
Total P/L Today -80p
I have only listed the matches in day 2 that fit the criteria outlined in the post and as you can see I made a small loss from the 6 matches. So far with this trade I have a profit of £8.35 in this WTA French Open
Yesterday I looked at trading a tennis match on just the first game of the first set in a tennis match. Today I will look at the risk to reward of a trade where, when the conditions are right, we can lay the favourite if he/she is serving for the 9th game and the scores are 4 games each in the first set. As I explained in the first post in this series we get the biggest movement of odds when a break of serve occurs in a set or match. If we look at a more critical stage of a match such as the later stages of the first set where the scores are level after the 8th game then if the favourite is serving the 9th game and his/her opponent can break the serve then they would be serving to win the set in the next game. I will use Bet Angels Tennis Trader feature to demonstrate this a little more clearly than just quoting numbers. In the screenshot below I have manually set the score to 4-4 in the first set of the first round match of the French Open between Nadia Podoroska and Jessika Ponchet. Podoroska is the favourite to win this match and will probably start the match at odds of somewhere around 1.75. If the first set reaches 4 games all then Tennis Trader project her odds to be around 1.78 (the figure ringed in the set matrix)
If Podoroska wins this service game then her odds would move in to 1.66, a movement of 12 ticks. If however Ponchet can break the serve at this critical stage of the set then she would then be serving for the set in game 10 and Podoroskas odds would move significantly the other way to somewhere around 2.88. This is a movement of around 65 ticks. We can now determine a trading strategy based on these two outcomes of the 9th game and place a trade accordingly knowing our potential loss or profit. Because the biggest movement in these two scenarios are upwards in terms of ticks then we would be looking to LAY Podoroska just before the start of the game. As we are putting our trade into the market during in-play we have to take account of the fact that betfair imposes a 3 second delay from when we place the lay bet to when it actually enters the market. While this shouldnt be a problem with high volume markets it could be a problem with markets that have low liquidity so this is one of the factors we should address when we are framing the trade – if there is low liquidity we may not getour lay bet matched. This aside we can work out our risk to reward in the following way. If we LAY Podoroska at odds of 1.78 for a stake of £10 then our Liability would be £7.80 If Podoroska goes on to win the game then we would have to trade out of the match by backing her at odds of 1.66 for a stake of 10.72 so our loss on this trade if podoroska wins the game would be in the region of 72p If Ponchet breaks Podoroska’s serve then with the same lay bet in place we would, at the end of the game , be able to place a back bet on Podoroska at odds of 2.88 for a stake of £6.18 giving us a profit of around £3.74 so our risk to reward would be 72p loss or £3.74 profit. These figures might be a bit bewildering and you might wonder how I came by them. The answer is simple I used a lay bet calculator freely available across the internet in particular I used the free hedging calculator on https://www.goalprofits.com/hedging-calculator/
I looked at 188 matches last week and set betangel to automatically trade a match where this scenario met the conditions above ie The favourite must be serving for the 9th game The game scores must be 4-4 I also added another condition that the odds of the favourite at the start of the 9th game must be between 1.5 and 1.9 Of the 188 matches only 5 met the criteria and 2 of these trades saw the favorite’s serve broken. If you want to learn more about automating trades such as these using bet angel you can download a trial copy by clicking this link
Yesterday saw the first post of a new series of posts highlighting the risk to reward options of various tennis trades. In this post I outlined 4 possible trades that were available to us on the very first game of the fist set. To visit this post click on this link.
The image below is a screenshot of the flashscore site showing the result of the first game and how it was won.
As you can see Bronzetti won this game breaking Grabhers service after 2 break points. The image below is the set matrix shown in yesterdays post and I have ringed the end of set odds.
There is another feature of Bet Angel that can help us analyse our trades and this is an ability to log each players odds at whatever intervals you wish throughout the match. This enables you to see the way the odds moved as each point is won or lost. I have provided a screenshot of the 1st 6 1/2 minutes of the 1st game below.
The time elemnts of this spreadsheet are actual time ie 12:24:11 pm and if you follow the odds for Bronzetti which in this case are logged every 30 seconds you can see that her odds in the first game after 6 minutes play (12:30:14) they bottomed out at 1.39. In the next screen shot I have added the scores and you can see that when Bronzetti won a point her odds dropped and when Grabher served her 2 points that she won the odds rose slightly
Yesterday I outlined 4 different trades that we could have done on this first game in the match and Trade 2 had the best risk to reward option for us. The odds for Bronzetti to win the match at the time of writing yesterdays post was 1.74 however this was at 7 am – 5 hours before the start of the match. When the match finally started at 12:24 pm her odds had dropped to 1.69. Tennis Trader predicted that if Bronzetti won the game then her odds would be around 1.44 they actually reached 1.39.
In this case our best trade option won out and we profited by it Please subscribe to my blog if this has peaked an interest in trading tennis as I will be sharing lots more opportunities for making educated decisions on trading tennis matches and its more exciting than laying the draw in a football match.
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
