I have decided to write this article for the sole reason of what happened to our recent BH strategies on the 16th June. The results of the tips were indeed right but the strategies failed. The matches concerned were as follows:

ATP Halle Final: Federer v Youzhny

ATP Queens Final: Cilic v Murray

Match 1: Federer v Youzhny

The tip here was to BH on Roger@1.14 and lay @1.04 (10 decimals below). Normally I wouldn’t have put BH on such a low odds match but the main reason was that it was Roger Federer on Grass and also his opponent was Youzhny who had played him 9 times before this match and took only ’1 SET’ of him!! Hence there were enough reasons to put this tip as BH.

Unfortunately for trading, Youzhny hung in there for most of the first set and won it on a tie-break. So the question is how should you have traded this match?

First thing’s first, for me you should have your money on Federer’s side. Let’s assume you put 10 units on Roger to win 1.4 by backing him @1.14. As the match goes on you are watching Youzhny holding his serves. At this point what is most important to realise is that the market will reflect slightly. Meaning, the odds on Federer will increase slightly than the original odds even after he holds his service game. So basically, that’s an indication of something negative against us. The next question is about our stakes. For low stakes, that risk can be more or less neglected as its a best of 3 match. But for Heavy stakes we cannot neglect it. Indeed it’s safer to opt out of the trade completely before the tie-break as ONE point can change the whole market in a matter of SECONDS. Hence, the reasonable thing to do is [click to continue…]

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