Tennis bet Lacko v. Bedene

My model is pricing up Lacko as a 1,60 favorite. Odds available at 1.74 so that's a decent margin.

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Short words about this model I'm referring to. It's basically an excel sheet where I can enter various player data and stats, all in a pretty short time and out comes a probability calculation. My selection process is this:

* I scan tomorrows matches and look at the prices.
* If I find a match that looks interesting from a value PoV I have a closer look at the players' recent history.
* Usually the "value" comes from either player coming back from injury, is in dreadful for, or on a winning spree. If either of these are on the wrong side of my initial assumption the bet is off.
* If all looks alright I'll enter the numbers in my spreadsheet.
* If my calculations give a greater probability than the odds offered it's a bet. If not, well it's not a bet.

I feel this model should allow me to post stupid bets on instinct. You know the kind where you say SURELY Player A can't lose to Player B in any circumstance. Well he can and if it's not showing value it should not be a bet.

I'm still working on a way to transform Challenger level players' stats to the ATP-tour to avoid traps there. I have a few ideas that look decent enough but need to be tested more.

Reckless trading

I placed a pre match trade last night at de Bakker v. Dustov at a price I never thought would be matched. Turned out it was and when I remembered that bet it was way into the match. Fortunately for me I could get out with a pretty nice profit after de Bakker won the first set, but he was down a break in that set and things could have been much different. MUST NOT FORGET TO TRADE OUT MY PRE MATCH TRADES!

Tennis bets

Troicki @ 1.61 v. Kudla 46 26
De Bakker @ 1.75 v. Dustov 75 64

Pre match trade Nedunchezhian v. Bedene

These early tournaments have a lot of local wild cards and while the Indian ones are usually a class or two above for example the Quatari WC who goes about losing 60 61 to very average challenger players, they should not pose a serious threat to professional players like Bedene for example. The Slovenian was possible to back @ 1.12 on Betfair last night and I placed an immediate lay @ 1.11 to steal one tick and €4.

Tennis bet. Copil v Smyczek

My model says Copil small favorite. Odds say Smyczek @ 1.45. Doesn't add up. Very small bet on Copil @ 3.05

UPDATE: 63 76 So far the model is holding up very well. Still way to early to jump to conclusions though. 

Tennis bet Bozoljac v. v. d. Duim

Backing the Serbian to win this Q-match for Doha. My model prices him at 1.32 and since odds offered are 1.45 that's value assuming my model is correct, which is also what I intend to find out. :)

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Going into 2015

I've been thinking alot about how to continue this project going into the new year and have decided on the following.

I will continue posting most of my pre match trades. I can't publish everyone because many of them are quite short in time, more of in and out trades and doesn't render much profits either. When I started this I had the ambition to post a graph each week of my trading developments. Now I set my ambition to update with a graph at the end of each month. Trading bank is €700 and when it reaches €1000 I will withdraw €50 for every €100 I win on top of that. €1000 is about the size of money I want to have tied up in this kind of business so it can grow slower after that and the exceeding profits can be used to stock market investments or a new pair of shoes or what ever.

The Kelly bet project will continue as well. At the moment I have a 120% ROI which is the best I've ever had at any betting spreadsheet. Probably says more about my limited betting skills but it's still a quite good profit and with 32 bets it's not just coincidence, there seems to be an edge here.

I don't do many live trades, I'm simply not very good at it so don't expect to see many of them here.

I will have another go at tennis betting. Since I posted my last bet during the US Open I've been reading alot of stuff about different strategies and specific player traits and I feel I want to try them out with live money in the new season which starts tomorrow. Stakes will be small and it's more a case of trying to be smarter than the market than making alot of money.

This is how I see this blog developing into 2015.