Tennis Inplay Betting Strategy
Tennis is an ideal and uncomplicated sport to trade primarily because there are just two participants in a match, with no draw possible. So effectively, whether you back one player, or lay the other player you’re essentially doing the same thing.
Tennis betting strategy can revolve around in-play options, with fast streams a crucial component for any bettors looking to get the best results. 888sport has a wide range of in-play tennis markets. You might be surprised how often in-play tennis is available, with matches underway somewhere in the world at almost any point throughout the day. Betting exchanges like Smarkets introduced in-play betting, which has given bettors a platform to apply trading techniques to lock in a profit - by backing and laying - or reduce their risk on a market much like a stock trader would on the stock exchange.
Tennis Inplay Betting Strategy Odds
Despite initially sounding simple, however, there are plenty of pitfalls which can await those who are unprepared or fail to understand the risk/reward elements of entering into trades at certain periods of the match.
With this in mind, I advocate planning a semi-flexible live betting strategy which will incorporate statistical elements of the match, as well as potential entry points based on player strengths and weaknesses.
The benefits of such an approach ensures that you have all known and relevant statistical information available in advance of the match starting, while also reducing the risk of making impulsive, irrational and results orientated decisions.
Live Tennis Trading Strategy: Focus Areas
1. Pre-Match Pricing/Value Assessment:
Is a player good, bad or neutral pre-match value? The in-play price of a tennis player tends to be derived from their pre-match price in conjunction with the current scoreline, so if a player is decent value prior to the match starting, then there is a solid chance that they will be value in-play as well.
2. Projected Hold Percentages:
These take into account the serving abilities of both players, and the return abilities of both players – where relevant. In addition, court speed should also be factored in, to provide a complete picture of whether the match-up is likely to be serve orientated or return orientated.
3. Lead Loss/Recovery Data:
Statistics in this area detail – for players leading in the match – whether a player is good as a front-runner, or struggles to see leads out. This is also important for players when losing. In this case, focus would be whether they are good or bad at recovering break leads.
Player tendencies in this area are stark. Some players play well solely on ‘their terms’, in that they don’t often have a plan B, and tend to succumb meekly when losing, whereas others will fight to the end to turn around a losing position. While this data is also driven by how good or bad a player’s serve or return game is, understanding these player tendencies are also extremely useful.
4. Match Progression:
The above lead loss/recovery data split into sets, or early/late stages of matches. Some players have a much better ability for turning around losing positions earlier in the match, when fresh, than later in the match, when tired. An insight into these areas is also extremely useful.
With this information already gathered in advance, it makes it much easier to highlight potential entry points which can be acted upon if and when the match develops in that particular direction.
Understanding & Dealing With Risk
Understanding that some situations in a match have much higher risk than others is also vital.
Tennis Inplay Betting Strategy Tactics
Several high risk areas include backing servers prior to service games starting, which has a high risk/low reward, and the disaster scenario of player retirement.
In truth, it’s difficult to completely prevent being exposed to player retirement, and it’s highly likely that every regular tennis trader has been hit hard from this particular downside at some point in the past.
However…
There are some techniques which do allow this eventuality to be reduced, with retirements often being more predictable in certain instances.
Firstly, retirements often come at the end of the first set, or when a player falls a set and break down in the second set.
So, to counter the former spot, as an example, if you have laid the leader in the first set with a view to trading out if there is a break-back or the end of the set, and they get to a score like 5-3 40-0 (where it is virtually certain they’ll win the set), it’s worth just closing the position then, as opposed to waiting to the end of the set.
In addition, retirements usually come when a player perceives that they have little/no chance of getting back into the match, and this is often highlighted in advance from the match statistics. It’s much rarer for a player who looks competitive statistically to retire, as opposed to one who has made little impression on their opponent’s serve, and who has had few chances at key points.
With this in mind, keeping on top of the match data is critical, and much more useful than listening to commentators on TV or a stream, which is often biased and misleading.
I hope this gives readers some insight in how to approach in-play tennis strategy, and some of the riskier spots which can quickly turn the tables on an unaware trader. You might also like my post of how to use statistics when betting on Tennis.
Related Posts:
Tennis betting is made for betting exchanges. Due to the frequent dramatic odds swings and the fact that the prices move after every single point, it is a sport which is absolutely ideal for trading on a betting exchange. In this article, we will discuss some important tennis trading strategies and how our free to use betting tools can be utilised to achieve a profit.
1) Scalp The Server.
A scalper is a trader who looks to profit from short-term movements in a market. It is one of the most popular trading strategies in tennis because the price is always changing. One technique scalpers look to adopt is by backing the player who is serving. They will then look to take a profit if the chosen player wins or takes a significant lead within a game.
Take the recent World Tour Finals match between Roger Federer and Kei Nishikori. Before his service game, at 4-4 in the first set, Nishikori was available to back at odds of 4.0. When he went 30-0 up in that game, his price dropped to 3.65. After Nishikori had held his serve, he shortened further, to 3.30. By having £50 on Nishikori pre-game @ 4.00 (profit £150) and by laying him for the same stake after holding his service game @ 3.30 (liability -£115), you would lock in a £35 “free roll” on Nishikori. Scalpers would hedge this £35 across both selections for a £10.60 profit. This might not sound particularly impressive, but applying this method hundreds of times a day and getting it right more often than not, it is plain to see how scalpers can make serious profits.
Tennis Inplay Betting Strategy
Using the bet.me betting ladder is the best way to achieve such a technique. Our trading tools allow you to place bets or enter the queue at each price point with just one-click, improving speed and efficiency. This view also gives you a full insight of the market in terms of the depth of liquidity at each price increment.
2) Lay at Low Prices.
This is a strategy which can lead to rapid bankroll increases with less risk taken. Common entry points using this strategy are laying a player when a set and a break up in a three set match, or laying someone who is leading by two sets to love in a five set match. The obvious drawback to doing this is the likelihood of long losing runs. If you are constantly laying players @ 1.01 – 1.30 and are hoping to trade out at much bigger prices, then more often than not you are going to need to have the discipline to either trade out for a loss or take that loss to the end.
“2 sets to love up in a best of 5 match”
Another tennis trading strategy would be to look at which players have either history in throwing 2 set leads away or are inexperienced in best out of five Grand Slam matches. You could then look to lay these players when the opportunity presents itself.
Tennis Inplay Betting Strategy Games
For example if two players started a five set match at broadly the same price, you could look to lay the player leading 2-0 in sets (Player A) at around 1.15. You could then hope for Player B to win the third set. If he was to do so then you would be able to hedge for a decent profit with Player A now trading at more like the 1.5 mark. Or, if your reading of the game supports it, then you could look to keep your position with the expectation that Player B wins the fourth set. At two sets all and with momentum on his side, it is highly likely that favouritism would flip-flop and Player B would now be trading at around the 1.8 mark. With this example, it’s easy to see how profitable this high variance strategy can prove.
One of the most important things to consider when laying at short prices is player personality traits. Which players have a history of blowing leads? And on the flipside which players have strong deficit recovery stats? It would be a great idea to build up this information in a set of spreadsheets of a database. More simply, if you watch enough tennis, you can start to get an idea of which players are mentally weaker than others in certain situations and are likely to fold when the pressure is firmly on. It’s also a good idea to keep note of player retirements and tournament workloads, with an eye on match fitness levels.
3) Anticipate the Swings – WTA Tour.
Tennis In Play Betting Tips
The percentage of service games held for the last five years across all surfaces on the ATP tour is around 81%. Compare this to the WTA tour where the percentage is more like 66%.
The upshot of this is that there are far more drastic price movements in women’s tennis caused by these breaks of service and thus there are often more trading opportunities. One strategy would be to lay whoever breaks serve first, then hedge that position if and when the break is recovered. There may be the opportunity to continue to adopt this strategy throughout a match. If the average games per match in a women’s game is about 23, and as noted above, 34% of service games lead to breaks, you are looking at an average of 7.82 breaks per match. With this in mind, you can continue to build and rebuild your position over and over again.
Our integrated real-time charts on bet.me can be extremely useful when trading tennis in this way. As well as analysing the graphs to anticipate future swings in the market, historical price data within the market can be monitored to help assess probable prices if a certain outcome is to occur.
An obvious caveat to this strategy would be avoiding certain players whose service hold percentage deviates from the mean. The likes of Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova and lesser known players such as Naomi Broady and Krystina Pliskova, who bomb down aces for fun, are highly efficient at holding serve.
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