New balls please!

No I haven’t incurred the wrath of my girlfriend by hogging the TV to watch Wimbledon and the World Cup – I am of course referring to the tennis.

You should focus on these major tennis tournaments: they open up a whole world of betting/trading opportunities…

Why? Firstly, in the men’s matches, it is the best of five sets, so you could be a Rafa Nadal for example: a set down and a 4-2 down in the second set, and, well, end up winning the match (against Lukas Rosol, yesterday).

Do watch out for this. It happens a lot more often than you think. Check out this screenshot, just from yesterday’s men’s matches at Wimbledon.

Let’s go from the top to the bottom shall we?

22nd seed Philipp Kohlschreiber won the first set, but lost the next two sets. What do you do? As this is the best of five sets, you keep faith in this 22nd seed and back him 2-1 sets down, or lay his opponent Simone Bolelli two sets to one up. Kohlschreiber won the next set. And that is all you need to profit as a trader (note he lost the match).

24th seed Gael Monfils lost the first two sets against Jiri Vesely. But what do we do? We remember that this is the best of five sets and have faith in that 24th seed. He then goes on to win the next two sets. If you had backed Gael Monfils two sets down at better odds than you’d have got pre-match, or layed Vesely two sets up, you’d have made a great trading profit.

Note the emphasis, because as a straight bet, you would have lost as Monfils would have lost the match, but from two sets to love down, equalised the match at two sets all. This produced a great swing in the odds.

14th seed Tsonga was two sets to one down to Sam Querrey. So what do you do? He must be 14th seed for a reason? Keep faith and lay Querrey at short odds or back Tsonga at bigger odds. He ended up winning.

How can we profit from the fact that men’s tennis is a best of five sets in the major tournaments?

• Lay the player with the shortest odds in the Set Betting market, to win 3-0. Out of 15 matches played on 25 June, 11 of the matches finished without a 3-0 sets win to the shortest-priced player. (Do some basic research perhaps to hone in on matches where both players are likely to win a set. For example, Bernard Tomic and Thomas Berdych played each other at Wimbledon last year, and the first two sets were 7-6 and 6-7 – both players shared the first two very tight sets. Surely there is a reasonable argument for both players to win a set when they met in 2014’s Wimbledon.)

• Wait for a seeded player to find himself one or two sets down at a critical time in the match. In the examples above, Monfils was two sets to nil down. This is a critical time. IF he does not win the next set he is out of Wimbledon. Similarly, if Rafael Nadal is a set and a break of serve down, he needs to fix this as he will then be two sets down and having to win the next three sets to survive.

Ladies’ tennis is better for laying the first set winner, when the first set winner is not the short priced favourite.

There is a real urgency in ladies’ tennis as it is a match which is the first to two sets. If a short-priced favourite (Azarenka above at odds of 1.17) loses the first set, she (and other short priced favourites) will generally win the second set.

You can profit by laying Jovanovski a set up, or back Azarenka a set down, and trade out when she wins the second set (for more information on trading and Betfair, go to http://learning.betfair.com/en/)

How to profit from big mug-punter accumulators!

Take a look at these beauties…

One is a winning 14-player accumulator, the other a winning 17-player accumulator.

Only attempt these kinds of accumulators in first and second-round major tennis tournaments, as the big boys and girls will be playing much lower-ranked players.

The first accumulator paid out about 4/1 and the second accumulator about 5/1. The odds generally were painfully low and yes, I will be called a mug punter, but at no real stage was I in trouble in either accumulator.

Notice too that with the ridiculously short-priced players (Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, Sharapova, Federer), I added a set betting win to nil to my accumulator.

The secret to success? Research. And in tennis, research can be a cinch! Simply go to http://www.atpworldtour.com and use the head-to-head facility for the men’s tour and wtatennis.com for the women’s tour.

Enter the two players you are thinking of including in your accumulator. Look at the example below:

What do I want to see? Firstly I want to see a big gap in the rankings. Here we have 11th v 76th. Do note that top 10 players are a class apart generally (ask Heather Watson yesterday playing 7th in the world).

Secondly, to add cream to the strawberries, we want to see comprehensive head-to-heads. Here Ivanovic has comprehensively beaten her opponent on each occasion.

This ensures the mug punter accumulator is perhaps not such as mug punter accumulator after all!

You can go more in-depth by looking at:

• Head-to-head history more in-depth. Does one player win without conceding a set in head-to-heads?

• Players’ performances historically on today’s surface only.

http://form.tennis.betfair.com/tennis is another free resource you can use.

I’m off now to eat the shoulder of an Italian defender, washed down with some Pimms and Robinson’s Barley Water.

Have a great weekend.

Oh, and if you want some free World Cup research, check out www.whatreallywinsmoney.co.uk where I’m providing statistical research for free!