With Wimbledon just around the corner I thought it might be interesting to explore the possibility of dutching the set betting market for the WTA as there is only 4 possible outcomes and using betangel’s dutching tool I can place orders into the market to ensure a 20% or better return on a £10 total stake. The french Open is currently at the 4th round stage in the WTA competition and there are just 4 matches today (Sunday 4th June 2023) The risk to reward on this is quite high depending on the odds offered. anything from a 50% risk up to a mighty 80% risk. In this exercise I will be placing the margin stake onto the favourites 2-0 score Match 1 Pavlyuchenkova v Mertens This is an evenly matched match where both players are at around even money to win the match. The screen shot below shows the bets placed
As you can see I have put the margin stake onto Mertens 2-0 scoreline at odds of 11 This is a massive risk to reward scenario as I am risking nearly 89% of my £10.00 stake for a 25% return. One of the factors that has helped me make this decision is that I have downloaded all the results from the previous 3 WTA French Opens into a spreadsheet and filtered the results into following criteria. 1. Winners price at the start of the match is between 1.90 and 2.10 2. 2-0 set result 3. 4th round matches only Having filtered these factors the resulting percentage of matches that ended 2-0 are just 3 from a total of 24 4th round matches – just 12.5% If we drill this down even further to include ALL matches that ended 2-0 where the winners odds were between 1.9 and 2.1 we find that from 381 WTA French Open matches that have been played in the previous 3 years there was just 20 that is just over 5% What we also have to remember is that we are only interested in the odds selected for movement only need to move so far in order to be matched. In close matches such as this a first set score of 5-5 could be enough to convince the market that the match could go to 3 sets.
As I said there are four 4th round matches today and the next one is between Muchiva and El Avanesyan Muchova is odds on favourite to win at odds of 1.27
In this dutching trade I am risking 53% of my stake for a 25% return While the risk to reward is much less than the previous match if we look at the spreadsheet and input the same figures in relation to this match ie where the Winning favourite was between 1.25 and 1.3 there was just 1 (one) match in the fourth round that ended 2-0 and just 21 out of all 381 French Open Matches from the previous 3 years.
The 3rd match of the day is between Svitolina and Kasatkina. Kasatkina is favourite at odds of 1.66 to win the match
The final match today is Stephens v Sabalenka where Sabalenka is 1.25 to win the match
With all dutch trades in place I will post the logs and final tally tomorrow My Maximum loss for these four trades should they all lose is £27.39 out of £40.00 My Maximum Profit is £10.17 This signifies a 37% reward to risk factor but considering the very basic research I explored I am hopeful for a 75% strike rate
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.
Betornot 