Had a gutful of blogging again already

Sat down to do the blog and thought ffs this is too much like hard work. Benefits to me are zero too, as discipline seems ok (famous last words!). It's a real chore to blog daily - don't know how some do it. So I'm jacking it in again. Might come on and gob off from time to time, but really can't be arsed with a daily pl etc.

Good luck.

Zahlavova vs Zahlavova Strycova Betfair pantomime

A match between two players with these names would have to generate something odd! (One married the other's cousin, hence the names). The official scoreboard stuck with Zahlavova a set and 5-3 15-15, nothing too unusual there. The next match on that court duly appeared but Betfair failed to suspend the market and it stayed open until the end of the 1st set of the next match before it was finally suspended. Ah well, one thought, just market ops being a bit slow. But it then re-opened minutes later! It wasn't finally suspended until the next match had almost finished.

All the while the market was open there was a lot of activity as people who were on Zahlavova but a bit worried there was a very slim chance she may had suffered an injury on match point and had to retire covered their positions and those who knew the result helped themselves to free munney.

Now I've got a lot of admiration for the way Betfair runs the markets - there's so many to track and stop or start - but this sort of daft occurence is quite mad. Did they not have the intelligence to see the next match had started and at least suspend the market with settlement pending? I wonder what they'll do with all the bets matched long after the match had finished.

19 July The circus rolls on

Favs won 3 of the 4 semis on Saturday, the losing fav being Patty. Then the favs won 1 final on Sunday (Szavay) but lost the other (Pennetta). Didn't get to see any of the matches but by all accounts, Kanepi put in a fine performance. Good to see her getting back to the form she was in before she got injured last year in Madrid. Can't believe Szavay kept on going, her winning streak over the 2 weeks of 10 matches is the longest of her career I think. Back to back titles are quite rare. Deserves a nice week or 2's rest after that!

The circus moved on today. I didn't write down the SP's of the qualies, favs won 7 of the 9 1r matches, losing favs being Makarova and Malek. Malek was a fine 1.01 gubbing, losing from 6-1 5-2 up. 1.4m GBP matched on that match - amazing amount for a 1r on a Monday morning. There wasn't a feed from Portoroz - starts tomorrow - and the feed from Bad Gastein was appalling. Shows how used we've become to having streams! I'm sure there was better coverage of Bad Gastein last year - maybe tv coverage starts later in the week.

Had a good day with several small wins all adding up to a good total. Also had a couple MLB bets last night. Nice start to the week.A lot of action tomorrow, with 22 matches over the 2 tournaments. Sadly only 4 will be streamed from Portoroz - the Bad Gastein stream is unusable.

16 July Reverse Martingale

5 out of 7 favs won today, with one match being evens the pair at the off. The losing favs were AMG, who had been an uneasy fav anyway after Hradecka's impressive display yesterday, and Rezai, again not unexpected as it was her 8th match in 11 days. What was surprising was Patty and Agnes both progressing relatively serenely even though they have both had equally arduous recent schedules. I'm surprised the market has Agnes as such a strong fav vs the impressive Hradecka tomorrow.
Took it relatively easy today after yesterday's losses, a kind of reverse Martingale if you will, with small exposures and building up greens in running. I did mess up the Strycova match, caught out by Larsson's unexpected 3rd set rally which caused me to go all red.

I was also done by Betfair's failure to put the Goerges match in running and their subsequent decision to suspend it when they realised their mistake. I think only 4 games had been completed when they suspended and normally they would let such a match run on, only suspending if the 1st set has finished. It seems to be at the whim of whoever is on duty, with no clear consistent procedure. Those silly inconsistencies drive us punters to SEETHE. Thankfully it doesn't happen very often.

Doubtful I'll have any more bets this week. Prague kicks off at 11 UK time so I could maybe play the 1st match, but if it runs on for 2 hours then I'd be in trouble as I'd have to leave, so best avoided I think.

Next week is Bad Gastein and Portoroz, two nice little tournaments. Portoroz caught me cold a couple years ago when they changed the courts over the winter and I'd not found out in my research. It used to be very fast, one of the fastest hardcourts on the tour, but they changed it to a slow bouncy surface. So you had the likes of Errani winning instead of the Srebotniks. A very puzzling first few days it was until the penny dropped.

Looking forward to both immensely!

15 July calm down, dear!

5 of the 6 favs trotted up yesterday - only Pironkova got beat, hardly a surprise after her poor 1r perf. As I type, Rezai's in the 1st set tiebreak but so far, all 7 favs have won today.

Took yesterday off and started today well, but had a disaster on the Szavay, Oprandi and Errani matches, not greening up when I had the chance and not going red soon enough. And I was snookered by Hradecka's dominant display - rare to see a fast 1.01 train in WTA. Not entirely sure why I decided to try laying those favs today. Oh well, bad day.

Temptation to pile into Rezai was strong, but walked away as she was way too short playing her umpteenth match in a few days and against a competent claycourter.The qf's tomorrow look promising. Mustn't chase!!! (hence the title of the post)

Hard work today

Lots of matches, many overlapping, lower ranked players prone to all sorts of chaotic behaviour! Got to love it.

Of the 13 matches in Prague, 10 were won by the favs, the losing favs were Bacsinszky and Chakkers. One match I'm not sure who the fav was as it was a LL match and only added late by Betfair. Quite an amazing strike rate for the favs, although it seemed rather more chaotic at the time. Pretty disappointed in Chakker's performance - she'd played very well against Dulgheru last week and her oppo today, Pervak, didn't strike me as being up to much when I saw her play Pova in Wimbledon. A crazy pre-match market, with Chakkers matched at odds from 1.57 thru 1.94, SP was 1.65.

In Palermo, favs won 8 of the 12, a more normal sort of strike rate, though only 1 of the losing favs was really short odds - Parra Santonja. The other 3 were all 1.85+, Camerin, Pivovarova and Parmentier, so no real shock any of them losing.

Usually it pays to avoid the players who played in the latter stages of the previous week, but they all came through today, although Dulgheru has since withdrawn.

My main win today was on Cornetto, who I refused to believe could lose to the hopeless LL Paszek. It went much, much closer than I thought it would and I had to go no lose in the 3rd set for safety's sake, and wasted a lot of green. Otherwise it was all bits and pieces. With the fav strike rate, especially in Prague, I have a hollow feeling that I should've won a lot more today!

There's only 7 very ordinary looking matches tomorrow. May well take the day off.

12 July

Don't think I missed much action at the weekend - all 4 favourites won, although 3 went to 3 sets. Congrats to Szavay and Rezai.

After the weekend break it was back to business with qualies and 1r's. Amazed to see the amounts being matched on Betfair for these matches. I noted 3.2m GBP matched for Rybarikova vs Tatishvili - that's what you'd expect for a Tier 1 final.

I didn't note the SP's of the qualies - the Palermo markets went up pretty late anyway. Of the 7 1r's, 5 were won by the favs, Amanmuradova and Rybarikova being the losing favs, Craybas franking her 4-0 h2h with Akgul, making it 5-0. Maggie went to sleep after an easy 1st set and then couldn't get going again - has this ever happened before?

There was a bit of a plunge on Duque Marino, backed in to 1.35 at kickoff from 1.85 overnight, but it was a very thin market, one of the thinnest of the day, with only about 80k matched by kickoff. Interestingly, there had been a similar plunge on Castano when she played Zuzana Kucova's sister last week.

Started off with a nice win on Ungar who I'd backed pre-match on the basis that Paszek is a poor, and larger, imitation of her former self who I never thought was much good anyway, and Ungar, although no world beater, has been playing and winning on clay. Then I loaded up some more early in the 2nd set when Paszek bizarrely went odds on having had an mto between sets and clearly struggling. Thank goodness for a feed as no way could I have made that bet from SB only. You might wonder how the win was so disproportionately large - Paszek was low 1.3's fav, and the staking plan allows for a double max bet in special situations, and I felt this was one.

Then spectacularly effed up the Rybarikova match! Was sitting on a nice all green when Maggie broke to go 5-5 in the final set. Felt confident she'd trot up from there so switched it all and chucked in some more. But she didn't. Bah. Maybe a bit guilty of being too gung ho after the earlier win.

The rest of the day was a bit of an anticlimax after those 2 matches.

Easy come, easy go

4 out of 6 favs won, the 2 losers being Penne in Bastad and AMG in Budapest.
The cynics and/or conspiracy theorists among you may raise a quizzical eyebrow at the Penne result, noting that she has already qualified for Bali, whereas her good friend and doubles partner Dulko has not. The form students might point out the 1-0 h2h in favour of Dulko on clay, the 2-2 h2h overall, and the way Penne laboured to despatch Craybas yesterday. We'll never know where the truth lies. However, I have to say I think tennis is probably the cleanest sport to bet on. Anyone doubting this should try betting on the horses for a month.

I always laugh reading the Betfair tennis forum conspiracy theorists. One minute they're ranting on about how rubbish the standard is, the next they're postulating that those very same players have the ability to play to a prearranged script. Can't have it both ways.

I managed a nice win on the Patty vs Hercog match purely by in-play switching, with max liability never exceeding the 10% permitted by the staking plan. But I then decided to go on reverse tilt and piled into Cornetto. I thought Cornetto had a good chance based on how she'd looked beating Timea and how Agnes had spluttered to beat the Mouseburger, a much lesser opponent. But Agnes was a different proposition today and Cornetto seemed to struggle with the half-shadowed, half-sunlit court, though it certainly didn't bother Agnes! So sadly, the reverse tilt went tits up this time, and it's back to normal stakes.
Edit : Just seen the kickoff times for tomorrow and it looks like that's me done for the week, as I play cricket at the weekends in the summer and won't be around when the matches are on. Not comfy betting if I'm not going to watch or follow the matches. So see you all on Monday for Palermo and Prague!

A quiet day

Well that's what it was supposed to be! Didn't fancy any of the uderdogs and all the favs looked very keenly priced, so after the hectic last 3 days I was going to take it easy and just watch and see how everyone was playing to form a view for tomorrow and the weekend. But I ended up playing on 3 games in running as there were some daft (imho) prices on offer. Those 3 plus the Chakkers match carried over ended up with quite a nice profit indeed. If 0nly all quiet days were like that.

There was a clean sweep for the favs in Bastad, but Bacsinszky and Vinci lost in Budapest. Vinci turned in one of the very sub-par performances she's prone to do - just wish we could tell when one's due. Actually, that may be a bit unfair to Ondraskova who did play well.
Good to see Cornetto winning, with more than a little help from Timea. Maybe she might repeat her title win from 2 years ago.

Poor Chakkers just wasn't at the races today. She's not having the best of luck, but I reckon there's definite signs she's on the way back. The market seems to be regularly underpricing her (imho) so maybe some others can see the same.
Some cracking matches tomorrow. Really looking forward to it.

7 July

8 of 11 favs won today, though with varying degrees of difficulty. The losing favs were Kleybanova in Budapest, and ALG and Rus in Bastad. Safarova, Dulko, Strycova and Hercog all dropped sets. I failed to cash in on Sevastova as wasn't keen to back her odds on, only for her to romp home easily!

Chakkers was very unlucky that her match has had to be suspended due to darkness as she clearly had the momentum - it could be a different story entirely when they resume tomorrow. It reminds me of the Pova vs Henin match in RG when it was clear Pova would've prevailed had they not had to break overnight. I was on the wrong end of that suspension and fear I might be on the wrong end of today's!

A pleasing day, though.
I also had a few small bets on the MLB overnight. I got into it a little when Eurosport stopped covering the late sessions of the US hardcourts and so I had the baseball on the TV for something to watch while following the scoreboards. A very strange game it is. Fans scramble and fight with each other to get the balls which are knocked into the crowd, the manager performs a little ritual when they change the pitcher, going out to the mound and patting the departing pitcher on the back. All very odd. But it's something to watch in the background, and if I can make a few quid as well then so much the better.

Those lazy hazy crazy days of summer

The next few weeks leading up to and including the US Open are my favourite weeks of the year. It has it's dangers however, as I've found it's very easy to go crazy and overstake as confidence in the form tends to be very high. And, as we all know, it takes just one lump-on job to go wrong to completely fuck up weeks of careful betting! So I'm resuming blogging again to try and keep the crazies at bay.

The last 2 days have been a decent enough start. There wasn't too many matches of interest on Monday and also cautious as it was back to clay after the short grass season. Pleased to see Chakkers playing well again - she's put up some good results recently but been unlucky with the draw and not managed to go deep into the tournaments. Tough 2r again this week.


Today was a bit more interesting, though I got suckered and joined in to some big lays of Dulgheru - recall her having her knees bandaged during Wimbledon so thought THEY might know something. Some very one-sided matches in Bastad.


Speaking of crazy, it's crazy that there's better coverage and streaming of these minor tournaments on gambling websites than we get for the bigger tournaments which Eurosport cover. Tennis really needs to sort out the coverage. I was particularly miffed that I was banned from subscribing to the Wimbledon website streams as I live in the UK, yet the BBC didn't provide equivalent coverage neither via TV nor via their website. This censorship of sports coverage is truly ridiculous in this day and age.

Bored now

Doing this blog over the last 3 months has been good for keeping focus and discipline but it's become a bit of a chore now, so I'm stopping for the time being. If things get a bit crazy and there's the need for some perspective I'll start it up again, but goodbye and good luck for now.

24 March

15/20 favs won yesterday, with Keothavong, Bammer, Mattek, Kulikova and Morita the losing favs, no really big upsets. That could well happen today as the seeds have their first matches of the tournament.

I took a couple of losses on Keothavong and Voegele.The Voegele red was particularly irritating as I could've greened out twice for a nice profit but felt Cornetto would blow it in the end. As for Keothavong, the old ego got a bit bound up in that as I'd tipped her as the tip of the day and waited too long before redding out. Might have to stop the tip of the day if it's going to mess with my head like that! Thankfully, some wins on other sports saved the day.
Some very interesting matches today, could be a cracker. Strange the Yanks don't start TV coverage of Indian Wells or Miami, two of the biggest tournaments of the year, till the Saturday - we'll miss seeing some nice matches.

23 March

A stunning 11/12 1r favs won, with only Dushevina losing. 3 of the winners lost the 1st set - a deadly scenario for in play lumpers! Didn't write down the qualie favs so can't be sure, but I think 8/12 won, with Sevastova (inj), Kerber, Flipkens and Tanasugarn probably having been fav and lost. Had suspected Sevastova of being a LL but it appears not.

I messed up a bet on Duque Marino yesterday - wasn't paying attention as I was watching the cricket IPL and failed to red out early. Still surprised she lost to Morita on these slow courts. Then I completely forgot I'd had a bet on West Ham, didn't even watch the game! Don't think it made much difference as I'd've redded out at 0-2 which wouldn't've saved that much. Other than that, Lucie saved the day with a nice inplay lay of Kanepi at the start of the 2nd set. Poor Kanepi. She had been on a roll and playing great stuff up till she got injured in Madrid a year ago, but has struggled badly since.

I do like Mondays

A relatively, almost seductively, straightforward day yesterday. Several of the very short priced favs obligingly lost the first set and could then be backed at nice odds, and then went on to win. And the longer priced favs of interest trotted up quite nicely. Bottled out of Tanasugarn on the basis of the courtspeed, even though it was hard to envisage that eclipsing the gulf in class with the hapless Zec Peskiric. Tana did go on to win.

Annoyingly spaffed away some money on the NHL, but can't complain too much as I've done surprisingly well on that since starting having the odd bet - it's something to watch while the tennis is on but there's no stream. But glad to have clawed back last week's losses.
Qualies finals today - tread with caution backing the top seeds as they may well know they're already through as lucky losers!

Favs lose both finals

It's quite rare for both favs to get turned over in the finals. I did fancy JJ pre-match, and she produced a tactically superb performance, much as she'd done vs Stosur. Her new coach is proving worth his weight in gold as her perfs are now so different from the chaotic unstructured aimless perfs we'd been seeing from her over the last couple of years. Maybe it's time for Woz to get an outside coach and cut the paternal ties as she looked quite hapless. It was her 4th big final and she's been spanked in all 4.

Don't follow the men that much, but was good to see "old" Ljubo do the business.
Had my first bets for a few days yesterday (Sunday) and managed to notch up a nice positive day. Probably went in a bit too much on Ljubo, but he did look the better bet throughout the match. After the favs had been quite solid in the early stages of the tournament, Indian Wells turned out to be a bit of a graveyard!

As I type, Betfair haven't even acknowledged the existence of Miami with no markets whatsoever, so I guess the chances of markets for the qualies, which start in 4 hours time, are pretty slim!

Bloodbath

4/7 favs lost yesterday, 1 match without a clear fav. Pavlyuchenkova, Pennetta, Azarenka and Clijsters all lost, and JJ tried her best to lose too.

I had 2 big losers yesterday resulting in the first major red day since I started the blog. What's particularly annoying is that I exceeded my limit per event both times trying to retrieve a bad situation. Also, the betting spoiled the enjoyment of 2 cracking matches, the JJ and Clijsters ones, and whenever that happens it does give pause for thought, as I am firstly a sports fan and enjoy watching the sport, so it's quite annoying when the betting intereferes with that.

Anyway, not one to dwell too long on the gory details, but whenever this happens I do walk away from betting for a few days as I feel it's bound to affect your thinking. Back in due course.

Back in the saddle

Just to recap, on Friday 12/14 favs won, with 2 matches not having a clear fav. Na Li and Abond lost, and Lisicki retired - not sure why. Henin was the big surprise, as she had already had a match. There was a pre-match driffy from 1.06 to 1.12 so someone knew or suspected something! CWoz, Deme and Pova had tough matches, though nothing unusual there, as seeds having their first match often struggle a bit vs players who have had a match already.

That theme continued Saturday, with 12/16 favs winning. Losing favs were Kuz, Hantuchova, Ivanovic and Cibulkova, again all players having their first matches of the tournament. There was a strange pre-match driffy on Szavay from 1.4 out to 1.7, quite a bit matched on the way so not due to it being a thin market. However, she ran out the straight sets winner. Very strange.

There was also the first tv coverage - the courts seemed even bouncier than before, with many groundstrokes seemingly being played around shoulder height!

Yesterday 5/7 favs won, with one match a pickem at the off, Schiavone and Pova the losing favs. It was really sad to see Pova struggling again as there was some hopes she was getting back on track after winning Memphis, but seemingly not.
I finally got back into it yesterday, Sunday, though stupidly bottled a back of Barca. A few small bets on the tennis rounded off a strange week.

Haven't got a clue!

It's really weird how some days you can form a reasonably solid opinion about events yet other days feel completely clueless. This is quite separate to getting it right or not, but just about having that opinion in the first place. I felt pretty sure about most matches last week, I got some right, some not, but at least I had a feel for them. Yet I've felt quite hapless since Monday, a sort of a numb feeling when looking at the lists of matches. Perhaps it's because last week a lot of the matches were streamed so we could see how the players were doing whereas this week so far it's just the scoreboard. Also it's still 1r with matches between the lower ranked players and qualifiers. Whatever the reason I've not been betting at all. It's reminiscent of the first week of Melbourne when I felt a similar numbness.

The results haven't been that unusual, however, the favs have been trotting up. Didn't write down the sp's on Tues, but on Weds 14/16 favs won, only Kanepi a short odds loser. The layers fared a bit better last night, with only 9/16 favs winning, a few short odds casualties - Safarova, Hradecka, Petkovic, Oudin, Shvedova.

Mind you, it's not just the tennis I've been feeling numb about, it's other sports as well. So I seem to have watched a lot of sport over the last few days without betting on any of it! Updates when I get some "feel" back.

Markets galore

Some will remember not so long ago how it was a struggle to get Betfair to put up some tennis markets. Going back a few years, I recall one notorious incident where Pova was playing Hingis in Tokyo on Hingis's return, it was live on Eurosport in the early hours and Betfair stolidly refused to add a market. Live on Eurosport, a high profile match and no market! So it's very droll to see them putting up markets for qualifiers now, though as I type midday Tuesday there still isn't a winner's market nor any first round match markets even though the draw has been out for some time!

The qualies pretty much seemed to run to form though I was done by Larcher de Brito taking out Kookie. Kookie had looked in good nick in Monterrey and de Brito hasn't come close to fulfilling the hype yet, so expected a Kookie win there. I was happy running a largish position as late as I could as Kookie often gets it done in 3, and I knew I had a big green coming from Arantxa Rus, who was the main bet of the night. Couldn't be bothered to stay up for the late matches.

I was going to insert a youtube of Larcher de Brito but her noise really is too much to bear!

Earlier I'd backed the draw Wigan vs Pool and held on a bit too long for a Pool equaliser that never came.
More qualies tonight and two CL matches.

Reverse Tilt?

Quite a chaotic weekend.

Going "on tilt", also known as chasing losses, is a well-known phenomenon among bettors, to be avoided at all costs. I'm not too prone to that, in fact any losses tend to make me stop and probably reduce stakes. But I am prone to what you might call a reverse tilt, upping the stakes when I have a win or three. This isn't quite as undesirable, as you're betting with profits, but it can lead to the also well-known boom and bust cycle whereby the initial bank will be increased dramatically only to be lost back again in short order.

Why do I mention this? Because I went on a bit of a reverse tilt over the weekend. But thankfully I've not lost it all back, nor have I any intention of so doing. Following the nice win on Dani on Friday, I was quite convinced Dani would come back and beat Cib, and similarly that Pav would do that to Dani once she loosened up in the final, and piled in on both. Most of the profits have been withdrawn and it's back to the usual stakes for tonight.

The chaos mentioned at the beginning was inflicted in the form of a nasty virus deposited on my PC from a justin.tv site. There I was idly watching a Davis Cup match when whammo! Popups everywhere. I've got so much anti-this and that on the PC that sometimes I think it grinds to a halt because of all the protection, but somehow this thing got through. So spent most of Sunday fixing that. Thankfully managed to get most things going again for the Final in Monterrey though I missed the rain-delayed semi and had to hedge out over the phone.

Other than the tennis, had a few bets on cricket and footie, not very successfully on the footie! And the bizarre run on the NHL continues - very odd, as I know nothing about the sport, merely have a look at the form on Covers.com.
Indian Wells qualies tonight - should be entertaining!

What would you do?

You've backed a player, she's cruised the first set, and also the second and now stands at 6-2 5-2* 0-40 ie 3 mps.

Would you green up?

She blows all 3 mp's, but that's ok as she's now 6-2 5*-3 40-0.

Would you green up?
Cornetto was in those positions last night and managed to lose 6-2 5-7 1-6! And I didn't green up, but thankfully did hedge out when she got back to SP. What a ridiculous collapse. Sad to see, as she has been prone to these for a while now, though nothing quite on this scale! And had seemed better so far this tournament.

She was the only fav to lose last night. Had a nice win on Dani as managed to call the match correctly, unlike the damn Cib - Errani one the night before!

4 March

Quick update while waiting for the Bang vs Eng ODI to start.

3 of the 4 favs in Monterrey won, ALG being the loser.

Szavay seems to have got over her serving woes and injury from last week. Took a red in that match when they had a huge and longwinded argument over a dodgy line call at 4*-5 30-40, with the ump appearing to overrule only after ALG had a moan. Agnes quite rightly got the tournament ref involved. But had no idea how either girl would react after that so decided I'd take the red.

Also messed up the Cib - Errani match badly. Was nicely green at one stage but thought Errani would come back in the 2nd set from 2-5 down as Cib faltered. In fact Errani had bp for 5-5 but didn't convert. All my green was on her but she faded away badly in the 3rd and I couldn't rescue much.

Had a small loss on the WI vs Zim ODI earlier, so a red day.

The other Monterey

3 out of 5 favs obliged yesterday, with Coin and Wozniak losing, neither of whom was any surprise. Coin had played very well vs Lucie but it would've been quite out of character for her to maintain that level of perf for a 2nd match! And against an oppo from whom she wasn't going to get too many cheap points.

The pre-match Pav market was most odd. She had been steady around 1.35 all day when suddenly loads of money pushed her out almost to 1.5 just before the off. That spooked me a bit - I wondered if she'd shown up on court with both legs strapped or something! Thank goodness for the stream which showed nothing amiss in the warmup. That high 1.4's was just too tempting and I had my first double max bet of the year, though got a bit nervous running such a big position and hedged off half the stake after the 1st set. It turned out to be a 1.01 train, however, so whoever those layers were never got a chance to recover. What prompted them to pile in is a mystery - maybe they saw Hercog had taken a set off Venus, ignoring that it was on clay, and this is a hardcourt, on which Hercog is totally unproven.
That rounded off a nice little session for me. Earlier I had a small lay of England but didn't green up when Egypt scored, just covered the red and let it ride.

Looking forward to the rest of the 2r's later tonight, though it's bloody annoying they've scheduled one of the matches on a non-televised court. It's not like they have loads of matches to get through, neither of the two players on the outside court are in the doubles later, and I doubt very much they're selling tickets specifically for that other court. A mini-seethe is well in order!

Monterrey

What an amazing looking place Monterrey is! Wow. I had no idea where it was - I'd assumed it may have been a coastal resort on the Gulf or something, had no idea. But that's a pretty dramatic picture.

There's full tv coverage of center court matches this week. Last week there was no coverage available at all in Europe of Acapulco and only the sf's and final of Kuala Lumpur - very poor. So it was surprising to see so much coverage available this week, though not via satellite but over the internet.

Monday's matches were a poor bunch. Think it was the first time there's ever been live streaming and betting on a qualifier match! Didn't pull the trigger on any of them, managing to dodge a bullet when Lucie Safarova surprisingly lost, but she was just too short to back in a 1r match. AMG also lost to an inspired performance from "Kookie" Klara Zakopalova nee Koukalova.

8 of the 11 favs won last night, with a high profile loss by JJ. A shame as she even went there a few days early to prepare. Other losing favs were Craybas and Savchuk.
Felt much more comfortable with betting on yesterday's matches, notching up a nice day's results. Also had small wins on the cricket and the NHL, back from the Olympic break.

Haven't had a bet for days!

Just haven't felt right backing or laying anyone or any team so been keeping the powder dry. Next week could be pretty quiet too, as there's a poor field in Monterey and it's international break for the footie. May not be much to report till the week after, when Indian Wells gets underway.

Less is more

Only 7/12 favs won last night, with Errani, Vinci, Cornet, Malek and Zheng losing. Bit surprised about Malek and Zheng, and also Pous Tio returning from her drugs ban to upset Vinci.

After the Hradecka mishap the prev night I decided to cut down on the number of matches I'd bet on and just had the one bet on Hercog. Can't be bothered to make a screenshot. Was also going to back Malek in KL but didn't have enough confidence to put the money down and leave it and failed to wake up.

I also couldn't decide what to do in the CL Inter vs Chelski and just watched. A good game, the sort you could've done your nuts on!

Will continue the less in more approach after the upsets last night. Cue all the favs trotting up!
If any of you use the Geeks Toy betting app you should be aware of the major flaw in the greening up functionality on 2 runner markets when the fav has flipflopped. If you look at the screenshot from the Hercog match you'll see the app is calculating the greening up bet using a back of Cornetto at 2.7 and not a lay of Hercog at 1.13. Hence the figure is wildly incorrect - it should be c£140, not £58. It would work ok if the initial bet had been a back of Hercog and not a lay of Cornetto, but it makes the app unusable for 2 runner markets.

New alarm clock needed!

7 out of 9 favs won overnight in Acapulco, with Kookie and Kerber losing. The latter had played in the final in Bogota on Sunday and it's so often the case that those players do badly in their first match the next week - always worth laying. Last week, Hercog and Deme had both lost. Though having said that, Venus cruised through with no problem. No such thing as hard and fast rules in this game, it's not physics!

All 4 favs trotted up in KL. I missed a couple winners through failing to get up in time dammit. Didn't have enough faith in them to put the money down and just leave it, ah well.

Got done by an unexpectedly rapid collapse by Hradecka. Think of her as quite a solid fighter and of Dulko as a bit of a flaky finisher, so was happy sitting on my bet going into the 3rd set, only for Hradecka to collapse so fast there wasn't much chance to get out of the bet. This then made me a bit leery and I took the cautious route in the Kerber lay only for that one to come in! Mind you, with Kerber winning the 1st set I think discretion was the right play there.
Also had a lay of Barca in the CL but bottled it when Barca equalised. It could've been so much more. More CL tonight and Acapulco back to a 9pm kickoff tonight. What a civilised time that is.

23 Feb

5 out of 7 favs won overnight in Acapulco, with Parmentier and Cirstea losing. Cirstea's poor start to the season continues as she was dumped out by the fast improving Fichmann. Szavay gave me a fright losing the 1st set easily before going on to win. There was a rumour touted on the BF forum about a new back injury and her serve stats did seem to confirm that - jury out on that one, may just have been due to 1st match of the year on clay.

As I type it looks like KL is done for the day, though they did play till a silly hour yesterday so can't be sure. 3 of the 5 matches completed so far were won by the fav, with Voegele and, surprisingly, Tanasugarn losing.

Had a pretty good session last night, and didn't have any bets in KL, partly through not being able to stay awake (!) and partly because there didn't seem like any worth having. The obvious favs looked too short especially as it's 1r, and the others didn't convince.
Acapulco kicks off at 5pm UK time today, so there's the possibility of round the clock tennis. There's also CL footie tonight, so an interesting evening awaits!

The voice of an angel

I came across this while I was searching for the "Loco down in Acapulco" on Youtube. Not entirely sure why or how it also appeared on the search! But it's worth a post. She really does have the voice of an angel.

Going loco down in Acapulco

After a few days off it was back to dodgy scoreboards in Malaysia early this morning. Only had a couple bets and then the sb's froze completely. There was some doubt whether play had been abandoned for the day, so much so I unwound my bets and gave up for the day. As it turned out play was under way, just the sb's were fooked, with one match finishing at 17.30pm UK time which I think translates to 1.30am local!

We can't get too superior and condescending about dodgy sb's in far flung parts of the world - iirc the sb in Birmingham last year was pretty patchy, as was Eastbourne.
It was great to see Pova winning again, though she didn't beat much. Her serving stats were much improved and if she can keep that up then beware!

I also had a small bet on the usual Monday afternoon madcap Greek footie. Away side down to 10 men score, then reduced further to 9 and hold out for the win. Madness!
I'm not entirely sure what time to update the blog - there's one tournie in Malaysia running from 5am UK time through till the afternoon and one in Acapulco that will run from 9pm into the early hours, and could conceivably overlap with the start of Malaysia! Seems the best time is after the end of Malaysia, hence the update now while waiting for the first day's action in Acapulco. It's going to be a tough week!

A short break

As I mentioned in my last posts I'm getting a bit leery about the recent good run, and also the unexpected mental pressure blogging about it has brought. So I didn't bet at all Friday and I'm taking a break till Monday. I'll continue to put up a tip of the day just for fun.

I also intend to reset the bank to levels that are more comfy. My betting is % of bank based and it's getting a bit out of touch with real-world values and reality!

18 Feb

Only 2 of the 4 favs won in Dubai, with Na Li having to retire and Bepa's run finally coming to an end. I'd really like Peer to beat Venus tomorrow just to see what the Dubai organisers do for the final, but doubt it'll happen as Venus looked much more focussed than she did vs Govortsova. But you never know!
Another fine day of betting. This is getting quite ridiculous! But it'll be hard to keep up this pace as we move towards the weekend and the later stages of the tournaments, and that'll be a relief in some ways. The reason I started this blog was to try and help with discipline and it's certainly done that, but an unexpected side effect is the pressure I now bizarrely feel due to this good run. I am even considering stopping blogging for a bit if it does seriously start to affect my thinking. We'll see.

Debating whether to try and stay up for Pova vs Baltacha. I suspect Pova may well trade higher during the match, but it's still well over an hour away ......

17 Feb

Today was a bit of a favs bloodbath in Dubai, with only 3 out of 7 winning and 1 match having evens favs at the off, Penne, Hantuchova, Wozniacki and Kuznetsova losing. Yesterday, 11 out of 13 favs won, only Schiavone and Dementieva losing. Once again I forgot to note the favs in Memphis and Bogota so no stats for them.
Bepa Zvonareva just keeps going on and on, wnning her 8th match in 10 days! It's great to see her being successful - I'm sure many readers will remember those bad old days when she got the nickname Mad Vera. Not so any more!

Such a rare thing, a retirement by Deme yesterday, first for 2 years. Was sad but not surprised to see numerous pig ignorant comments and cries of fix on the Betfair tennis forum. What a bunch of fools they are.
Another cracking good day. I'm getting very nervous now about this good run as we all know how quickly things can change!

Oh, just a brief mention of a couple crazy happenings in Dubai on Monday.

Firstly, AMG playing Mirza on the main televised court, chugging along nicely, then slips and appears to twist her ankle. Heads off to her chair looking for all the world like a retirement was imminent. Mirza is obviously backed right down to 1.01. Luckily I'm All Green by this stage so I can sit, watch and laugh as AMG gets up, carries on and wins in 2 comfortable sets!

Secondly, Bammer playing Rezai on a non-televised court. Rezai leads by a set and 3-0 when nothing happens for a while on the scoreboard. Rezai is then backed in to 1.01. Now usually when this happens it means there was a medical timeout followed by a retirement so it's a bit of a surprise when the sb bursts back into life 20 minutes later to show it's 4-4 and Bammer goes on to win the 2nd set! My god I wish I'd laid that 1.01 - there was a lot of it available. To be fair, there hadn't been any hint of the scoreboard being dodgy up till that point. It also shows there were no courtsiders at that time on that court in Dubai, quite surprising, really.

Might as well have stayed in bed!

A net of -£1.44 today! Messed up badly on a couple bets thanks to poor research (flu my excuse, but was stupid to then go and have a bet) and also got done by Vaidisova winning her 1st match for god knows how long. Think I'll stay in bed tomorrow!

Fun and games in Dubai

Wow there were some extraordinary happenings in Dubai today! I've not got the energy to write them up as I'm still feeling flu'ish. 7am kickoff tomorrow as well with some really cracking good matches in prospect, so off to bed for me. Hope I don't miss any Pova chaos in Memphis!
A pretty damn good start to the week. Let's hope it continues.

PS just adding this on here while waiting for Razza vs Peer to kickoff. Sunday 6/10 favs won with 1 match no clear fav, Kirilenko, Kleybanova, Dushevina and Zheng losing. Yesterday, 8/13 won with 1 match pick em, Wickmayer, Stosur, Schnyder, Abond and Petrova losing. Zheng, Stosur and Petrova quite surprising, but the others had if's and but's about them.

I didn't note who the favs were in Memphis and Bogota so have no stats for them.

14 Feb

Think I've caught the flu or something in the damn internet cafe yesterday. Early to bed hopefully get up in time for Dubai tomorrow morning.

Internet down

What a nightmarish day! About 3.10pm my internet connection just packed up for no reason at all. I've just got a standard ADSL setup, nothing fancy, but it's been very reliable for years, now it just died on me. I was running a few medium footie positions and a biggish one on Deme vs Oudin, waited for a bit to see if it would come back to life but no joy, so decided better get the f*** out of everything pronto! Never placed many bets on the phone and was pleasantly surprised how clued up the bloke was taking the bets. Then down to the internet cafe asap to try and rescue what I could.

Quite happy to get out of the day with a reasonable profit in the end after all that chaos, though obviously a bit annoyed at the footie reds and the red on Deme, solely due to having to get out as best I could. In fact I was rather a lot more red on Deme but managed to reduce it down the cafe.
The connection resumed at 11.15pm just as suddenly as it had died, and again for no discernible reason. Maybe some workman had cut through a cable, who knows, but it has made me aware just how vulnerable you could be. Nowt to be done about it, though.

Dubai kicks off tomorrow with a pretty full program, and a few matches in Memphis too. Not too sure how much liquidity there'll be at 8am UK time on a Sunday morning with the matches not televised. The Sunday kickoff might also explain the losses by Schiavone, Lisicki and Dushevina earlier this week (ahem).

12 Feb

After the previous 2 days carnage some sanity returned as 7/8 favs obliged today, the only fav to fall being Peer in Paris, blown away by a red-hot Safarova. Tomorrow's clash between Penne and her should be something else - think they should consider new balls every 5/7 games, not 7/9! They're going to get a fearful bashing. Sad to see Agnes getting an attack of the walkabouts again - she'd been doing really well so far this year and was clearly the better player till she inexplicably left the building.

Managed to tiptoe my way through the day ending with a nice profit. Just the 4 matches tomorrow as we head into the weekend so will be having a look at the footie and anything else on the TV.