18 Feb

Today started well with a nice win by JJ over Sam, but ended badly, thankfully not in the p/l sense, but with a complete misread of the Penne vs Kleybanova match. Can't believe I got it so wrong, and that's knocked me sideways. Going to take tomorrow off, and possibly Sunday, though I think Doha 1r starts Sunday so might have a look at that. Not actually going to miss much, as both Dubai sf's are quite tightly priced, and the Memphis and Bogota matches are low quality crapshoots.

17 Feb Done by a drift

I thought Polona Hercog's price was very tempting this morning so piled in, only to see her drift madly from 1.6'ish all the way out to evens! Nuff said, took the red, and she duly lost. Clearly something not right with her, as she got broken numerous times, having served like a demon 2 days ago and not dropped serve at all in her last match. Ah well.

Other than that, the day had got off to a bad start as I somehow managed to lose money on Patty. One of those "wtf were you thinking?" moments. Subsequently managed to get it together except for that irritating Hercog loss, and a small loss on Bepa. Hard to know the value of the Kleybanova win as there wasn't a stream, but if you take it as a relatively true result then she must have a decent chance tomorrow. Her opponent for tomorrow, Penne, was involved in an amazing match today, with MTO's for both players and both of them trading at 1.01! Penne did not look happy early on, with both ankles and right shoulder strapped.


I've decided to kick the Geek's Toy into touch. The small errors when greening up are doing my head in and I either have to accept I'm losing a few % every time or sit there working out the optimum hedge with Excel, which rather defeats the object of having a trading app. I wonder how many Toy users are aware of its inaccuracies, how many bother to work out how much they lose each time? It's a shame, as the interface is really funky and takes up so much less space on the desktop than Gruss. But the monthly sub for Gruss can be covered by the better greening up on just a trade or two.

16 Feb

After yesterday's chaos I'd decided to take it easy today, and I took it so easy I didn't have a bet! The scoreboard from Dubai was very dodgy, which made taking positions on outside courts impossible (there were sb's from bet365, but I don't trust those as I've seen so many wrong scores, mysteriously always at important points!). Nor did I fancy any of the matches on the televised court, so nothing in Dubai. The matches in Memphis and Bogota weren't particularly attractive either, so keeping the powder dry for a day was easy.

As it turned out 15/16 favs won in Dubai - an astonishing figure. Is there any other sport where this sort of hit rate for the favs can happen?

15 Feb Two wrongs don't make a right

Blimey what a day! I'm too exhausted to mention everything that went on, but am SEETHING at myself for losing discipline twice in two days, even though it turned out well today.

Yesterday I'd messed up with Bart, today I got involved with Squeaky, even though I'm sworn off her matches. I was happy enough just watching till I saw how well Patty was playing, and just lost it and got stuck in. The red yesterday plus today's win are exactly the sort of large swings and roundabouts I'm trying to avoid. Gah.

I also messed up several other matches, not least Dani and Kvitova. Both were winning finalists a mere 48 hours ago and just had to be laid, but I monumentally messed up both markets. A big green on the Petkovic match was fiddled away to a small red, a nice win on Groth was missed because the scoreboard went down and I had to hedge out to be safe, in fact so much went wrong today I'm amazed I made a profit! LOL

There was an astonishing match in Bogota between Hercog and Parmentier, which had 24 games before the first break of serve, on clay to boot. Cannot recall ever seeing anything like that before.

14 Feb Bloody Bartoli

God I hate Bartoli. She has such a bad rep due to dodgy injuries, retirements, tanks, abuse of the MTO, all sorts of chaos over the years. I can't help but lay her, and lay her, and lay her some more even if she's winning! Plus having seen her lose from the most improbable of positions I can't resist holding on to a position for too long. She did me again today, though I feel that it was right to hang on as long as I did, as the first set couldn't've been closer, 10-8 in the tiebreak. But she won in the end and destroyed all the earlier good work. Think I shall have to ban myself from her matches.

(The pic isn't Bartoli btw, it's Chanelle Scheepers who beat an awful Kirilenko today. What's up with Kiri?)

Then BZS went and got hammered by Michaela Krajicek in Memphis! Babs had played quite well last week, and Krajicek hasn't beaten anyone of note for donkey's years. That did my head in and I shut up shop for the day.


Some mouthwatering matches tomorrow in Dubai, with three of last week's finalists reappearing on short rest. How focussed will they be, one wonders? Wherever you look on the card there's interesting matches, but sadly many will be on at the same time. One hopes the live scoreboard will be working tomorrow, as it was very dodgy today.

13 Feb Calm before the storm

A relatively quiet day today, with 2 finals, some qualifiers in Dubai and a handful of 1r's in Memphis. Next week is going to be mental, with all day coverage of Dubai from early morning, and Memphis and Bogota later on each day.

I'd had immediate misgivings when I posted yesterday that both finalists today looked like locks! That sort of thing has a tendency to come back and bite you on the arse. And Kvitova duly obliged by producing a stunning performance to beat the newly-crowned world no1 Clijsters. Luckily it was pretty obvious what was going to happen and a quick switch saved the day. Earlier, Dani looked like the player we all know she can be with a fine display, although she was never under any pressure from Errani.

I hadn't intended to bet on Dubai, but there were a couple of matches with decent liquidity - surprising for so early on a Sunday morning, and without a stream. Was fortunate to make a couple good calls.

There was a funny old market for the first match in Memphis. The 1.65 fav suddenly flipflopped to 2.3 when serving at 2*-3! Now that's most odd, and it signalled a quick retreat out of that market. Looks like THEY knew something, as the fav went on to lose, though not that easily, in two tight sets. Annoyingly I had her as my tip of the day - sadly not so easy to reverse out of that. Had a little dabble on another of the Memphis matches, but it all looked very iffy so packed up for the day.

12 Feb Mad Vera?

Poor Bepa had a bit of a meltdown in Pattaya today, not without reason as she was on the wrong end of some poor line calls and over-rules. She has a bad rep from many years ago as being a bit of a fruitcake, which she certainly was! But since a very publicised meltdown in Beijing in 2006 she has tried and, for the most part, succeeded to get her head together. But that tainted rep remains, and on the odd occasion she has a wobbly the cries of "Mad Vera" ring out again. But now she's no worse than most on the Tour and it's very unfair. (The pic isn't Bepa, by the way, it's Kvitova, who beat Mattek-Sands today).

Where has Daniela's form suddenly come from? She was garbage in Australia and got spanked just last weekend in the Fed Cup. Granted Bepa was below par today, and upset by the umpiring, but Dani did play pretty well. Baffling!

A solid day's work, managing to dodge bullets on the Errani and Hantuchova matches thanks to the streams. Not sure what would've happened had there not been pictures to show how the players were doing - doubt I'd've been confident enough to switch in either and would probably have taken a red when the matches turned against the favourite. Messed up the Clijsters match by redding out too soon, well before the second set even started, and there was a chance to get out when Clijsters went 1-4 down in the second.

Both favs look like locks tomorrow, though you won't get rich backing them.

11 Feb Iranian shirtless men

The Betfair tennis forum is a weird place, nowhere near as colourful as it used to be, in fact rather dull and repetitive now. But every so often something happens. Such an event happened this morning. I opened a thread which was apparently moaning about yet another unplanned outage last night only to find that a screenshot posted by the thread starter, who posts as "Srichaphan or Ancic?", had the last google search still in the browser address bar. This happened to be "Iranian shirtless men"! Needless to say, everyone on the thread picked up on this and the ensuing hilarity had me laughing for some time when I should've been concentrating on the Pattaya matches! Unfortunately, the thread starter had it removed by Betfair.


An excellent day's sport, with 3 of the 8 favs losing. Errani played a virtual carbon copy of her match yesterday, losing the first set and trailing in the second, only to suddenly turn the power on and win in three. I was fortunate to call the last two matches of the day perfectly, backing and laying almost dead on the turning points. Will definitely savour the moment while it lasts as bitter experience has shown it can all turn sour very quickly!

10 Feb Injury? What injury?

Twice in two days there's been market chaos over players with injuries who have gone on to win. Yesterday, an obviously compromised Wicky won, thanks mainly to an horrendous brainless display from her opponent, Vesnina. I wasn't following the market too closely as I took the day off from betting after my poor performance on Tuesday, but Wicky went off sub 1.4 and Vesnina traded sub 1.5 for some time I think, while Wicky was hobbling around. Today Wicky went off at around 1.7 but the market collapsed quickly when she was seen to be moving better, and Koukie just didn't have anything to hurt her with.

Earlier today, Errani drifted madly just before her match started. There wasn't a stream for this so it's guesswork, but one imagines she turned up on court with something strapped, and she proceeded to lose the first set easily. She was trailing for most of the 2nd set too until her oppo Morita just imploded! Carnage.

Had a much better disciplined day today, the one blot being Daniela. Her form so far this season hasn't been too impressive, I really thought KDK would win, and held on to the position too long.


Also, a well done (ahem) to Betfair for giving people 10 minutes notice of an outage, which just happened to coincide with the 2nd set tiebreak of Kvitova vs BZS! A £1m GBP matched market arbitrarily suspended with 10 minutes notice. Don't you just love monopolies?

8 Feb Can't relax discipline for an instant

Seething I spaffed away some green on daft silly bets! Only did them through sheer boredom, and costly "entertainment" they proved to be. All the main bets scooted home nicely, but the day's profits compromised by those other bets. Tough game this, can't afford to relax at all.


Staying up to watch a men's match in Brazil between Robredo and Fognini. They played each other and had some afters just a couple days ago, so it should be fun. Also might take tomorrow off to sort my head out lol

7 Feb A nice solid day

A quiet Monday, with few matches, mainly qualies. Good to see Voskoboeva back, though beating LLW isn't that much to get excited about. Benesova lost as a 1r fav - has this ever happened before? I've no stats to back it up, but have the distinct impression she is one of the worst offenders for losing in 1r when fav!

Didn't have any bets on the Superbowl last night. GB went out to an early lead and their price collapsed. Wasn't keen to back them at short odds, nor to lay them, so just watched.

Some nice conservative bets, taking profits and minimising risk, though I was probably too cautious with Peng, hedging out a lot of green when her match went to a 1st set tb. But a few more days like this would be very welcome as it's been a slow start to the year compared to last. Interesting to see from my blog entries that Betfair crashed a few times about this time last year too!

PS Forgot to mention some weird goings on in the Kirilenko match. Kiri was sent off as fav around 1.35 and bagelled Brianti 1st set. She traded sub-1.05, but then proceeded to lose 5 games on the trot resulting in Brianti going 1.5'ish! A suspected injury timeout followed and Kiri fought back to narrowly lose the 2nd set. Kiri then went on to drop serve 1st game of the 3rd but went on to win. Nothing that out of the ordinary, except for the volume matched - over 1.1m GBP by the end, this for an early Monday morning (Europe time) match in Thailand, with no stream. A bit fishy?

6 Feb Fed Cup

Back after a few days away, did nothing on Saturday. Managed to stay up for Hobart but only just, and decided to pack it in when there was a rain delay in the first match as there was no telling how long it would be. Then later on, Betfair decided to crash and continue to misbehave for the European matches. Silly to get involved when the site is unstable, so just sat and watched. Hilarious to see a big plunge on Kuz when Cornetto sprained her ankle early on in their 3rd set, only for Betfair to crash and leave people helplessly watching as Cornetto somehow defied the injury and won. Must've been a horrible feeling if you had gone in big on Kuz.

Some nice matches and bets landed on Sunday - very satisfied with the day's results. Stupidly lost discipline and got involved too much on the Betfair tennis forum yesterday and today. It's something to do between matches and during rain breaks, and there's a few nice folk on there to have some banter with. But there are also some extremely obnoxious characters, and it's easy to get sucked in and have it all get out of proportion, something I'd been managing to avoid. Discipline extends to more than just betting!



Waiting for the Superbowl as I type though not sure whether I'll be dabbling. I just hope it isn't a boring defence dominated game, and there's lots of scoring. Sadly, somehow I doubt it.

28 Jan Fightback

Amazing comeback from Penne/Dulko from a set and 1-4 down to win, saving some match points on the way. Quite a meltdown from Azarenka in the final set, and to a lesser extent Kirilenko. Sometimes an extreme will to win can seem to work against a player.

Tomorrow's final looks very keenly priced and I'll probably just watch. After that, there's no more until the Fed Cup next weekend. Some interesting ties, especially Aus vs Italy, Stosur and Groth vs Penne and Schiavone.

27 Jan How many million viewers on Saturday?

With Li Na making the final it could be the most watched women's tennis match ever! The sheer scale of China is hard to grasp - mind boggling numbers - and it will be in a nice timeslot for their tv audience.

Li Na's PR people are certainly doing a good job on her image and post-match interviews and press conferences. I don't buy the line that they've got better as her English improved. She studied at Uni in the USA for 2 years and she's been on the tour for 12 years. More likely now that her profile has skyrocketed her management company decided to invest in a tame scriptwriter to give her some nice one-liners.

I managed to spaff away some large chunks of green on the Li Na and Fed matches by fiddling about. And I was never green on the Bepa match. Very impressive the way Clijsters has stepped up the gears as required - the wily Slam competitor.


My sleep patterns have been all over the shop for weeks now, but I was awake enough to play a few footie matches last night, so still ended the day in profit, thankfully!

26 Jan Wet dream final

Both favs in the singles won, though both had minor splutters along the way. I had thought Rads had a chance vs Clijsters but although she fought back a bit 2nd set Clijsters was just good enough. Not sure Clijsters deserves to be fav for the sf, and so short too.


We also have a marketing dream doubles final, with Azarenka/Kirilenko vs Pennetta/Dulko, four of the hottest babes on the tour. As predicted, my bigging up of Srebotnik proved to be fatal for her!

25 Jan Doubles r us

There's seldom markets or live streams for the doubles, but Melbourne has seen several. Now that the number of matches has dropped off it was worth having a look at them, and it paid off handsomely.

I've always been a fan of Srebotnik - fantastic hands. Seems injury has curtailed her singles career and she now concentrates on doubles. Probably put the curse on her now by suggesting her partnership is worth following! They have got a tough matchup tonight vs Azarenka/Kirilenko.

Had a big early green on Petkovic, but stupidly didn't cash it in. Couldn't pull the trigger at any time during the Woz - Fran match. Woz has this nasty habit of comebacks and Fran had question marks over her due to her very long match 2 days ago. But at the same time, Fran was playing so very well.

Also got suckered into a small lay of Fed dammit.


Sad to see news about Rezai having a family member suspended by the WTA "because of a serious safety matter affecting her health and well being". People criticising a player for significantly poor performance would do well to remember there may often be a lot more to it than meets the eye. Let's hope it all gets resolved satisfactorily.

24 Jan Strange business, Grand Slam tennis betting!

A week ago there were 32 matches scheduled, tonight there's 2! Tennis betting has a certain rhythm to it, with lots of matches early in the week tapering off rapidly towards the weekend. This is magnified for Grand Slams where the second week has very little action - 120 matches in the first week, only 7 in the second. The danger is that, having got used to quite a few matches and probably a lot of punts, one tries to force the issue in week 2.

Didn't bother with the NFL in the end. Wasn't sure about any of the teams pre-match so decided to watch each game for a bit. In both games the favs got off to good starts and the markets collapsed. Not keen to pile in at short odds, but didn't fancy a lay either as both games looked pretty one-sided, so decided to leave them and stick to the tennis.

Had a couple wins on the early matches but then fell asleep and missed the Peng vs Arads match - not sure what I'd've done there. Woke up in time for Clijsters but wasn't tempted at the odds either way.


Not sure the next time Benesova and Pennetta will feature on here so better grab the chance to post bikini pics of them!

23 Jan You don't HAVE to bet

Seem to have been watching a lot of tennis without betting! But there were some very watchable matches.

Saturday's 8 matches all looked very keenly priced to me, if anything I liked the dogs in most of them. That's a recipe for disaster when betting on tennis as favs win so many matches, so I decided to sit out the day's play as I wasn't comfy backing the favs either. As it turned out, 3 of the 8 favs lost, so a level stakes bet on all the dogs would probably have made a small profit.

Benesova, Makarova and Kvitova accounted for Pav, Nads and Sam respectively. Kvitova looked most impressive, but she's going to have to go some to beat Bepa.

Lucie and Bepa played a fine match. How often have I seen Lucie play a big match vs a top girl but just come up short? Bepa's defence was incredible, as good as JJ at her best.


Sunday's matches also looked quite tough to me. Two of three favs lost, Pova and Kuz, with the fourth match being evens the pair.

Was disappointed how quickly Sevastova crumbled after racing to a 3-1 lead in the first set, and although she rallied a bit in the second, it was never in doubt. As for the silly Kuz vs Fran 4.5 hr slugfest .... ! In hindsight, trading the flipflops in that match could've made a fortune. In hindsight lol

Only got to see the tail end of Pova's match thanks to that match running on and on. Having bigged up Pova on here she goes and plays a stinker - has this ever happened before? Looks like that perf vs Goerges remains the exception not the rule, though to be fair Petko is playing very well at the moment. The Brisbane form is looking very good, with both finalists into the quarters, having rolled much higher ranked oppo to get there.

NFL Championship matches tonight.

21 Jan Is the whirlwind back?

Six of seven favs win, with one retirement and Kuz upsetting Henin.

A very encouraging performance from Pova! Been waiting patiently for 18 months since her comeback from injury for signs of a revival and there were a lot of good things to admire about her win over Goerges. I nickname her the Whirlwind because she has this extra gear when she goes into a sort of berserker mode that just blows her opponents away. I'd say she's probably 70% of the way back to her peak here 3 years ago.

The Kuz Henin match was a bit of a mugfest and sad to see so many errors and howlers from two of the best players of the last 5 or 6 years. Henin has the excuse of her elbow injury, wonder what Kuzzy's is? ;-)

Also sad to see Venus having to retire. What a stupid Aussie crowd, booing her. Maybe the last time she plays Melbourne?

Not a bad evening's work. Hadn't originally intended to get involved in Pova's match, but had to have a dabble when I saw she was playing quite well and dived in after the first set. The one blot was the Sevastova match. The market collapsed so quick at the start that I was tempted into a lay, thinking Manasieva can't be that bad. Unfortunately she was.

20 Jan

Some excellent tennis to watch today. In particular the first set display by Jovanovski was stunning, though sadly she couldn't keep it going. Other notable bits I saw were Peng out-JJ'ing JJ, Cornetto playing with some confidence again, and Lucie and Kookie producing some fine rallies, winners and howlers in their 3 setter. Four favs lost out of fifteen, with one match evens the pair pre-match.

Made some dodgy decisions which cost me some green. I held on too long before greening up when Jovanovski started to fade, and fiddled about too much in the Lucie vs Kookie match, turning a nice all green into a small all red. Also I decided I had to take the red when Makarova went to a first set tie-break, too dodgy to hold on. She then, of course, won the tight tb and proceeded to bagel the 2nd set! Doh. But a good day overall, mainly due to a nice win on Peng. JJ just had to be laid when she got backed in to 1.55 from 1.8 prematch, even more so when Peng showed up on court minus thigh bandages. A baffling market move (but then I would say that, wouldn't I? lol)

19 Jan

Don't think I missed that much with the ISP being offline for the bulk of the session. Most matches were either v short odds favs, too short to back, or evens the pair and hard to call. Bart and Wicky the main casualties, Bart falling to the qualifier Manasieva, a bit of a dark horse. Sevastova had shown some solid form at times last year and simply outrallied Wicky - yet another dangerous floater in the lower ranks.

Had a couple bets at the start to see if I could nick a few quid in the first hour, but had to hedge out. Landed a couple nice wins later on when the ISP came back online, and a fun lay of Fed got quite serious!

18 Jan That's more like it!

After the chaotic and ill-prepared punts I had yesterday it was gratifying to see some solid results last night having put the required legwork in. Having said that, 30 mins after kickoff I was staring at huge reds in all 3 matches I'd bet on! Peng had dropped the first set easily, Jovanovski was 1-5 down, and the talented but mercurial Martic was having a hard time vs the very mediocre Ferguson. It was hard to know whether to stick with the picks or take the red. Decided I had to go with the form picks and sat it out, and was gratified to see all three turn it around and win.

Good to see Cornetto get a nice win, and at odds against! Though knocking off Coco isn't that much to shout about. And a big surprise to see Molik return to some form and beat Vinci.

I'd also decided to stay away from Squeaky matches. I do hate her and her fist-pumping on court antics, and cannot make objective rational decisions in her matches. Typical that the day I decide to do that she gets turned over!


My ISP has a maintenance outage tonight from 1am to 5am - fine for most users I suppose, but scuppers any betting, unless the outage ends early.

17 Jan - A cheerleader-less Superbowl?

Only one of the four NFL teams left have got cheerleaders. The New York Jets therefore deserve everyone's support! If Pittsburgh win there's the prospect of a Superbowl with no cheerleaders. The NFL marketing people might not be too happy about that lol

Was on the wrong end of that upset, as they knocked off the New England Patriots. Might as well tear up the formbook, ratings, everything, when a result like that happens.


The usual chaotic first day of a Slam followed, with 32 matches played - that's one more than you'd get in the whole week of a normal tournament. Hadn't planned things too thoroughly and ended up playing some dodgy matches and missing out on some I should've played. Think I was lucky to come out in front.

A further 32 matches tonight. Must try and plan things a bit better!