Posts Tagged federer
Bumps and ripples
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel, Tennis on January 26th, 2012
What can you tell about a Tennis match before it has started? Quite a lot actually.
The market is pretty accurate at discounting value into a match and assessing the relative strengths of different players, from that you can plot the most likely path through a match and its progression. You can also hunt for bumps and ripples in that path for odds that are most likely to be reached and how. If you do this, you will see that as a match progresses through various stages, certain odds are more likely than others. Of course this shifts as the match moves on, but if you look these values up before the start you can pick and target certain entry and exit points in advance and benefit from this foresight.
Here is a chart of today’s match between Federer and Nadal. I built it using Tennis Trader and it highlights, sometimes subtly, where some of these bumps and ripples are. On the axis you can see the frequency of occurance and on the x axis, the scoreline.
Awesome match
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 10th, 2011
At last, a real classic match to talk about at the US Open. Djokovic through to the final after defeating Federer, again, in the semi final from two match points down. A great trading match as well, with some clear cut entry and exit points.
Federer loses French Open final
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on June 5th, 2011
I’ve deliberately titled this post in a manner that is completely dissimilar to the current headlines out there. Well done to Nadal winning the French open; but if you look at the flow of the match from a statistical viewpoint, it was more like Federer who actually lost it in my opinion.
It was a fairly tight match, till the last set at least, 7-5, 7-6, 5-7, 6-1. You would expect the younger player of the two to do better in a tight match and the longer a match goes that has to be your leaning. Over all Nadal won 143 vs 130 points. For most the first set Federer was on top of the points tally, but the failure to close the set out was a real blow.
Set one and set two Nadal had 9 winners vs 15 & 18 from Federer; you can see Federer played some good shots. But the enforced error tally shows a different story. 17 for Nadal in the first two sets and 39 for Federer. For the third set Federer improved and the stats read 11/16 winners and 8/7 unforced errors, this set was farily even. But Federer couldn’t find any winners in the fourth and his error count went right back up. OK Nadal obviously had something to do with the way Federer played, but it was mainly errors on Federers behalf that cause the defeat. If you want a key to demolition job in the last set, Nadal’s return of Federers serve was at it’s peak at this point; he definately won that last set!
Now the Tennis circuit moves off clay and onto grass. Time for short points, power and the brutal servers to take centre stage.
Busy day
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 7th, 2011
Looking forward to a busy day today.
Promotion and relegation battles will be settled on the football pitches today, that always throws up opportunities. There is nothing like career death to focus the mind of a highly paid footballer. I’m looking for an outside chance today. I’ll probably spread around my options to even things out. Did you know that Bet Angel can monitor and fire in bets across multiple markets almost simultaneously? This is ideal for football where matches go off all at once. If you want to you can get bets triggered at X minutes before the off or something similar. You can do this using Guardian and the Excel functions.
In Tennis at the Madrid open we have an intriguing match with Nadal at a very short price on his favourite surface to beat Federer. Perhaps there is an opportunity here or at least a clue to the rest of the season?
Plenty of of racing to hand as well but I doubt I will be doing the Kentucky Derby. I have tried and failed to get anything substantive for quite a few years on this. I’ll have another look today but I doubt it will yield much. In previous matched bet turnover has been pretty poor and that’s been the key problem.
Good luck whatever you are doing today!
Good start to Tennis season
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 6th, 2011
In preparation for the Aussie open Tennis later this month I have been warming up on the Qatar open this week.
Best of three tournaments mean that the swings you can get can be very large and quick. If a heavy odds on favourite slips up or stutters, the response in the market will often be significant.
One of my favourite tactics, that I detailed here, is to lay a very short priced favourite in the hope that they slip up and the price starts to move out. This happened twice yesterday when very short odds on Federer and Nadal caused their price to jump out in response to some lacklustre displays. Nadal imploded at one point to lose a set 6-0, the first time in a couple of years. At least he has a fever to blame.
Of course laying at short odds willy nilly will not produce a profit in the long term. So I use Tennis trader, before the match has started, to work out what score will cause the odds to move and I nip in ahead of this potential. This allows me to maximise the upside while minimising the potential for loss. If it looks like it will not come off, I simply scratch the position or take a small loss. Because the odds are so short you can quite easily scratch when money buyers come in at very short odds to snap up ‘value’.
It’s been a good start, lets hope it continues.
Conclusions from a busy weekend
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 16th, 2010
Blackpool got off to a flyer but are still my favourites for a return to the Championship. No spending power, no ground, no way to attract premiership talent. I think 1.20 was skinny and difficult to find value for relegation but if the price drifts a bit it will be more interesting. I remember, eons ago, Millwall getting off to a flyer in the old division one and they topped the table for a while but were still relegated. I will be keep tabs on Blackpool.
Liverpool’s match against Arsenal was interesting and it played out pretty much as expected. Liverpool didn’t want to lose and neither did Arsenal. But Arsenal were lucky in the end to get the point. I still don’t think that Liverpool are title challengers.
Andy Murray did a fantastic job in defeating Nadal and Federer on his way to the title in Toronto. You shouldn’t read too much emphasis on this title. Most elite athletes will focus on key objectives. Nadal will be very focused on the US open in this tournament will have been a prep for that but not the real deal. Both Nadal and Federer will not be too disappointed at losing. But an excellent win nonetheless for Murray given his path to the title.
I got some kudos at the weekend for correctly predicting the result and score from Portsmouth vs Reading match. The local newspaper asked me to do a write up. So I guess I will be asked again until my luck runs out!
What a start!
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on June 22nd, 2010
Wimbledon got off to an amazing start with a near shock elinimation of Federer. In the last ten years there have been lots of seeds falling early, but never the top seed. Reading from the year 2000 we had ranked players going out in the first round as follows. 7,16,9,2,12,11,6,22,4 and 17. Basically, anything is worth a lay. OK the odds at the off are probably an accurate representation of true chance of winning, but from there anything can happen in the match. You can rack up specutacular profits if an outsider comes into contention, for little risk. It is always worth a try.
I have to say though, I was suprised to see just how short his odds were when you consider that Falla almost took the first set off him at the French Open. It seems people have very short memories. Unfortunatley I was unable to trade yesterday afternoon and I am not well today so my week is really going to start tomorrow.
Incidentally Tennis Trader would have given you several excellent exit points in the Federer match yesterday.
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.
Federer crashes out
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 15th, 2009
With Nadal and Federer losing at the Montreal Masters, Andy Murray now has a great chance to pop up one place in the rankings to world number two.
Federer’s match was quite remarkable being two breaks up and 5-1 up in the final set, but still losing. Scott did a good post on the market on his blog. At 5-1 up in the final set I calculated his odds at 99.7% or basically 1.00, so no particular value at 1.01 to lay but Tsonga was priced at 370 on my spreadsheet. He was available to back at 500′s. Hindsight it a wonderful thing isn’t it! Even taking into account the price that still only represented a 0.3% chance of winning.
Interestingly, holding serve reduced those odds to 41, the break 32, another hold to 3.57. Just shows you that when a Tennis match swings it often does so in spectacular fashion.
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.