Australian Open 2023: Why Grand Slam tennis is perfect for Exchange trading

• Learn how to trade on tennis for Australian Open

• How to profit from uneven match-ups

• Win even when backing Swiatek to lose

• Cash out for in-play profit

The tennis season is in full swing again and the first Grand Slam of the year is upon us, the Australian Open.

Grand Slam tournaments are seeded which means the world's highest ranked players can play qualifiers. That leads to some very uncompetitive matches in the early rounds.

Should you back to win?

If you want to make money betting, you want to bet on something that is going to win.

I'm going to provide an example, where I managed to make a profit betting against Iga Swiatek even though she won.

I bet on Swiatek to lose, placed a lay bet on her with £3333.33, at odds of 1.031/33. This meant if she lost, I would win over £3000, but if she went on to won, I would lose £100.

As I've said, Swiatek won the match. But I still made a good profit. How was that possible?

Trading offers more chances to profit

One of the great things about tennis is that it can be highly variable and that makes it perfect for trading.

When betting you must work out which player is going to win. When trading, you don't need to do that, as the way the odds move will present you with many chances to cash out for a profit in-play.

The essence of trading is not whether the price is efficient at the start or during the match. It's that variability that you see during the match.

I struck while Swiatek backers sweated

During the match, Swiatek's opponent served first, broke the Swiatek serve early in the set and raced into a 4-2 lead.

Despite starting as the heavy odds-on favourite, Swiatek's odds moved from 1.021/50 to 1.152/13.

This meant that, for a £100 risk, we netted a profit just short of £400 if Swiatek went on to win, or we could hedge that result to scoop roughly £340 whatever the result.

We won despite betting on Swiatek to lose!

How do we know when to exit a trade?

If you are a Bet Angel user it's easy to know when to cash out.

If you start up Tennis Trader before the match starts, it will tell you where the odds are likely to be given any particular score line.

This will allow you to decide roughly where you would like to either open a trading position or decide to cash out.

In this case a break or double break would put Swiatek's odds around 1.152/13 to 1.171/6 so that was the best place to exit.

How often does this happen?

The remarkable thing is that, even when you look at very short odds (in this case around 1.021/50), about 70% of the time you will see the price of the heavy odds-on favourite drift during a tennis match.

Tennis has uncertainty built into it thanks to its unusual scoring system and that is why this happens. Trading Tennis is not about who wins. Instead, it's about how they win.

Of course, there are situations where it doesn't occur, and you'll have to take that loss. But the opportunity to profit from trading arises much more frequently than you would expect.

It's not about picking the winner

Regardless of where players' odds start in a tennis match, they can meander throughout the match.

That presents the opportunity to profit from trading the match. We don't try to pick a winner. Instead, we're more interested in that variability that we see during the match.

With very short odds favourites, we like to go in and lay those because the downside is limited but the upside is large. The opposite is true if you back at these odds.

Our exit point is when a player has or nearly has their serve broken. There we can net a profit regardless of what happens from that point onwards.

Tools like Tennis trader will tell you where you should exit in a match.

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