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.