Last week we looked at how the break of serve can create an opportunity to profit from tennis. This week we can look at an example, with a twist.
On Thursday, we were treated to an entertaining semi-final on the clay of the French Open, between unseeded Latvian Jelena Ostapenko and seasoned campaigner Timea Bacsinszky.
Match set up
Referring to previous articles we identified that the best type of match to trade was a women's match on clay. Our strong preference was for a competitive match where both players were evenly matched. A short cut for this, was that they both had similar odds.
The competitive nature of the match, would make the match close and therefore the odds were likely to move for or against players frequently. The fact it was a women's match on clay, meant that the chance of a break of serve was also at its highest.
Entry point
If a lower ranked player comes up against a much stronger player in a match, especially best of three sets women's match. Their best chance of winning will generally come from gaining momentum by winning the first set. Ostapenko pushed hard and got to a 4-3 lead with a break.
The shortening odds on Ostapenko provided us with an opportunity to get into the match. Nearer the end of a set a player who is behind a break will step up their game to try and win back the break at a critical moment. Checking Bet Angel's Tennis trader tool told us that Ostapenko's odds wouldn't move that much if she went on to win the set. The risk of a trading loss was lower and we knew that her opponent would need to break her serve. A medical timeout for her opponent also probably broke her concentration, so this was a good moment to get involved.
Exit point
Our trade setup was to get a break of serve on Ostapenko. Picking a point that was optimal for that to occur has been described above and if the break occurs then we exit our position. That's exactly what happened in the next game. We were able to lay the server at 1.548/15 and exit at 2.0621/20. Our £512 trading stake netted us a £266.24 profit. If we chose to fully hedge this profit it would be £128 on each player. Choosing the hedge or not in a match depends on whether you would like to risk some of that profit for a better trade, which is generally recommended.
On this occasion, we got the break of serve quickly, but typically this isn't the case. You must create a window of opportunity where they break will occur and trade that for better or worse. On entry, you may say that if the break hasn't occurred by the end of the set you would close your position for a loss.
How you would profit form this strategy long term is to pick points in the market when a break is more likely. You will get some right and some wrong. But it's that balance of right against wrong that will allow you to profit in the long term.
Variability
One key factor in Tennis, is that it is highly variable. Therefore, your window of opportunity may be quite large. Over the course of a competitive match the odds may swing back and forth very frequently.
Because we chose well, in this particular match there were 16 breaks of serve in 31 games and the price on Ostapenko criss-crossed our entry and exit point many times during the match. This provided us with more than one opportunity to exit our trade profitably. Of course, the perfect scenario would be to trade in and out of each of these opportunities to increase our profit. But we must be pragmatic and understand that calling it right each time is unrealistic.
Whether you choose to nip in and out or wait for your position to eventually get matched at a future point in the match. Hopefully you can see a clearly defined trade here. The wider your window of opportunity the more chance you have of getting the trade right as a player tries to come back into the match.
Summary
This type of trade is something that can be performed easily using a tool like Bet Angel. With live scores to hand and the ability to see future odds using Tennis trader. You can judge optimal points to enter and exit the market in a controlled and well-defined manner.
All you need to do now is watch some Tennis matches and wait for the right moment to enter the trade. The entry doesn't need to be as narrow as laid out here, but a lot of matches will provide similar opportunities.
Download a free trial of Bet Angel and try it's specialist Tennis features