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.