Posts Tagged australian open tennis
Extra rest will help Djokovic
Andy Murray booked his place in a second successive Australian Open final following his four set victory over David Ferrer.
While Murray has looked solid throughout the tournament, the outstanding Novak Djokovic stands in the way of the Scot’s Grand Slam dream having beaten Roger Federer in the other semi-final. The Serbian is chasing his second Aussie Open title and has had an extra days rest before Sunday’s showdown.
The head-to-head record stands at 4-3 in Djokovic’s favour, although Murray has won the last three matches. Interestingly, the pair have never played a five set match against one another. Further encouragement for Murray is that the past two victories have come in ATP finals, in Miami and Cincinnati – both on the hard court.
Murray has been fantastic at mixing up pace and spin on his way to the final and that is his best chance of success. In contrast, Djokovic will rely on his immense power that will test the Murray’s defensive prowess to the limit.
It’s sure to be an epic finale and as Murray pointed out after his semi, both players are in pretty good shape. With little to separate them, the 2.08 available for over 41.5 games looks tempting.
Outright, it’s hard to go against the world number three. Beating Federer 3-0 will have given Djokovic all the belief he needs and will likely start the stronger of the pair given his extra recuperation time. Back Djokovic at 1.74 now as I suspect he might win the first set and shorten slightly.
Tennis trading lessons
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 28th, 2010
A couple of neat lessons were served up by the Tennis yesterday and both showed that statistics don’t always give you the key to actually understanding what is going on in the underlying market.
First we had the Federer match. Struggling with a vibrant opponent and having lost 13 games in a row you could have counted Federer out for the count, but a revealing post match interview revealed what was going through his head at 2-6 1-3 down. Federer commented on how the sun was bothering him and how he couldn’t wait till it had cleared the court. He also, accidentally, revealed how he timed his ‘comfort break’ to allow him a chance to regain his thoughts and break the stride of his opponent. Unfortunately I was not around for this match so I missed this opportunity but it is amazing how a break in play can change things around.
Later than morning / evening we then had Djokovic seemingly in total control of a match only to get beaten from odds of 1.12. The explanation, Djokovic suddenly felt ill in the middle of the match. At the end of one energetic rally Djokovic bent over double at the end and looked up to his trainer. A few points later he was also off for a ‘comfort break’. He never managed to recover from feeling ill and it was an easy win for Tsonga in the end. I’ve captured the movement in odds from the moment he started to feel ill. Just goes to show it’s not only stats you should look out for in Tennis matches.
Best trading match of the tournament?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 20th, 2010
It’s not often you get such close matches so early on in a tournament, but massive credit to James Blake for almost pulling off a big shock today. It could be one of the best trading matches of the tournament; I think it will difficult to beat. In the last set you could have laid Del Petro at 1.06 only to see him reach break 2′s just minutes later. Fantastic stuff, great trading fodder and very entertaining too. Del Potro is currently on course to meet Murray in a later round.
Del Potro won, eventually, 6-4 6-7 (3-7) 5-7 6-3 10-8.
Classic final underway?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 1st, 2009
Odds on Federer after losing the first set
Currently watching some great tennis this morning at the Aussie open in Melbourne. I’d be happy to hit just one of these shots when I play tennis, let alone on each stroke. It’s generating some great trading opportunities as well. Unfortunately I have promised to take the kids swimming so I am likely to miss out.
As an example, when Nadal broke Federer in the first set the price moved out a fair bit, but this also left Nadal to serve for the set. He successfully served out this game. The move took the odds from 1.60 to 2.50 a move of 90 ticks. The logic on this type of trade was pretty easy to understand. If Federer won his game the odds would move in a little. If he lost, Nadal would serve for the set and you would get a significant move.
Over the last few years I have focused more and more on modelling Tennis and finally cracked all the detail last year. This makes it much easier to pinpoint key points when you can look ahead and see the odds and understand where the low risk trades are. But when you think about it, most of the areas are quite obvious. The only disadvantage you have without all the data is you may not understand just how much the odds are likely to move.