Truths, Lies and Tennis Statistics / Matthew Walton / 04 January 2008 /

"Magical" Matthew Walton looks at how to manipulate stats when studying the form in tennis betting

The study of form can be as simple or as complex as you wish to make it.

Some backers are happy to base their betting on a superficial knowledge, a general impression, a gut instinct. Others, however, require a thorough investigation of all known data. A clinical examination of the facts, a systematic process of selection.

In all honesty, most of us are somewhere in the middle. Our betting is often a mixture of hard facts and hunches - it gets us by though doesn't it?

Before we progress in the coming weeks to discuss more complex examples of form study the purpose of this piece is to start with one of the simplest examples.

The A-B-C Method is one which we can all readily understand. It takes but a second to explain and even less to understand. The pattern is thus :-

Player A beats Player B
Player B beats Player C
then, we can logically assume, Player A beats Player C

And, after all, isn't this the basis of most form study when all the frippery has been stripped away? It's collateral form. One against the other to produce a readily understood yardstick which we then apply in turn to another situation.

In tennis terms surely the same should apply - or at least be applicable. We can look at examples where three players are involved and we should be able to deduce from the first two pieces of data what the third one will be ... right?

Example - Lleyton Hewitt leads Andy Roddick 6:3 on past meetings, Andy Roddick leads Mikhail Youzhny 3:2, so Lleyton Hewitt beats Mikhail Youzhny? Correct, the Australian leads the Russian 2:0.

So, it's that easy. Tennis match betting reduced to three easy steps, an A-B-C approach which churns out the winners time after time. Well, not quite.

The point to make is these examples were selected at random, by and large. Players of roughly similar characteristics were put together but no allowance has been made for the surfaces these matches were played on, the form of the players, the time of year etc.

Accordingly we find a rudimentary but quite interesting starting point for our discussions about form study in the area of match betting.

We start to take matters on when we dissect the data from the table above.

For example, the second group (Moya, Robredo & Volandri) works out perfectly as do the third (Djokovic, Murray & Haas), the sixth (Nadal, Federer & Djokovic) and the seventh (Ferrero, Grosjean & Johansson).

In the other cases, the first (Blake, Davydenko & Gonzalez) provides a clearly contrary result to what we were hoping for.

How about the remainder though? In the fourth group we can see that Safin and Ljubicic both beat Nalbandian with ease so doesn't it stand to reason that both might be about the same level against each other - hence their 2:2 record. Maybe.

Likewise, in the fifth group Ferrer beats Gasquet slightly easier than Djokovic beats the Frenchman, so it's perhaps understandable that he (Ferrer) has the slight edge over the Serbian (Djokovic) when they meet.

All this, it has to be stressed, is the most simplistic of studies and, no doubt, plenty of examples could be cited to undermine the cases mentioned above. That said, you have to start somewhere when studying the form. Newcomers to the sport need to be given some reference points from which to begin their own appreciation of the intricacies of the tennis formbook.

The aim in future pieces will be to build up these examples with greater detail, using cases studies as they appear in the early season events, to show how match betting can be analysed to greater levels. For sure, if we take such studies through to their natural conclusion then we can get lost in a welter of information and suffer the so-called 'paralysis of analysis' but it makes sense to go a little deeper (where the opportunity allows) in order to improve us all as backers.

Then you are better prepared to see where the value lies on the betting exchanges and then YOU will become a better trader when you're 'at work' on Betfair.

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