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.