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!

16 Jan

It's always annoying when teams without cheerleaders beats teams that have them. Though not quite as annoying as the real world intruding causing you to miss a trade! Missed out on Baltimore last night as was otherwise occupied when they went 21-7 up, though not sure whether I would've actually greened up or not. By the time I got back to the PC I had to take a small loss.

The Hobart final was played in very windy conditions, but neither player wanted to compromise and kept trying to paint the lines. This resulted in a very disjointed error-strewn affair and I wasn't happy pulling the trigger at any point.

Betfair live video mysteriously failed to stream the match, although they had shown all the matches from Hobart all week. When querying the "help"desk, there was the usual "clear cookies and cache", followed by any number of daft excuses. Why not just admit there was a technical cockup ffs? There's no shame in that.