Tennis Trading Advice: In Depth Live Trading – Match 1 Haas v Youzhny

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Ok so I’ve mentioned a lot of applications and tools in a ton of articles that I’ve posted recently. However still a question remains as to how I personally would have traded a match on Betfair from start to finish.

Match : Haas v Youzhny (French Open Fourth Round – 2013)

Initial Betfair Odds on favourite: 1.98 on Haas

Step 1– Deciding the stake:

I’ve tipped this as a BH on the site, hence decided to go with a minimum of 100 units for this match.

Step 2– Delaying

As the match is about to start, after deciding my investment for this match, I have now decided to delay the trade to watch the players in action.

Step 3– Backing at a better price.

Haas serves first and its not a convincing start at all and he loses the game easily. However I back Haas when he gives a break point first for 50 units at around 2.1.

The remaining 50, I decide to wait till he gets broken. Indeed he does get broken, which gets his odds around 2.5 and assuming I got around 2.4 at least, I can consider that to be a rightly backed price.

(This sort of backing early at a much better price has been profitable for me, and is extremely good to apply for WTA as well. I mean how many times have we seen players storm back from 4-2 or 5-3 down to win sets. Be bold! If the tip was given on a particular player, might as well back him/her at a higher price. I give the tips for good reason!)

Step 4 – Consider trading out a profit early if necessary

It’s Youzhny turn to serve and he gives a break back to get the odds to its initial prices. At this time, it is worth considering to trade some profit out. However, I would give Haas one more chance to hold his serve now.

Step 5 – Lay off some of our losses on Youzhny after Haas breaks

As the match goes, Youzhny looks deeper in trouble and Haas breaks him easily to dominate this set. However as soon as the price dips below 1.5 range, it is the right strategy to lay something off him to not get stuck to any nasty surprises later. So lay 50 on Haas to reduce our loss on Youzhny if indeed things take a wrong turn.

Once we get the above lay done, we see three of our trades as follows:

1st Trade:   Backed Haas @2.1 for 50 to win 105

2nd Trade: Backed Haas @2.4 for 50 to win 120

Total Backed = 100 to win 225.

Total possible profit : 225 – 100 = 125

3rd Trade: Laid Haas @1.5 for 50 losing 25 units

Situation on both sides:

Haas -> Profit of 100

Youzhny -> Loss of 50

The third trade is worth delaying here as it’s highly likely the odds would shrink further since Haas stormed to win the first set. However, it is very much worth considering laying Haas even if you feel he won’t lose. That is the trade someone clever and patient judges as ‘worth it’ for worst case scenarios. After all, the initial market odds was a 50/50 chance.

The above are basically the steps I would have made to trade this match. I would have further gone on to lay Haas after the 2nd set when his odds reached around 1.1. However, it is fairly safe to let the trade run in the second set as we would very likely be still in profit, unless of course there’s a major injury to Haas.

There are probably a few other bits and pieces I would have applied during trading personally but simply putting, the above steps are the building blocks of my targeted profit!

Hope you found this worth reading…

Cheers

550

3 Comments

  • Jack Homs Posted August 22, 2013 10:01 am

    Great post Patrick. experience is the best teacher…couple of great pointers here…

  • Jerome Posted March 1, 2014 4:56 pm

    Hi Patrick, thanks for this article. If I understand correctly, your strategy here is that you believe in Haas, wait to see how things start, take the opportunity of a bad start, thus giving you better odds? Is this the general idea for all your matches (because I don’t do that at all…) or is this particular to a BH tip (where you would have more faith in the player)?

    • Patrick Ross Posted March 2, 2014 9:44 am

      Hi Jerome, Thats exactly right. When advising to delay trading we really are hoping for better odds on the tipped player. This applies to most matches – there are exceptions – see the delayed trading article…Patrick

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