Tennis Trading Advice: What Do The Stats Say?

What are the stats and how are they relevant?

One of the first things to watch out for, while you are planning a trade, are the historical head to head (h2h) stats between the players you are about to trade.

This however, is only worth looking into, if they have played at least 5 matches and hopefully on different surfaces and more importantly, ‘in recent times’!

Let’s have a look at what stats generally mean:

When people talk about stats in relation to Tennis Trading on Betfair, they refer to the present match stats of a match, such as the Serve Percentages, Break point conversions, Total Winners, Aces and so on. However, while these stats are definitely worth looking into, what about the historical stats between the players? This basically includes their oberall head to head record, and which surfaces they have played each other on.

Are they that important? Surely its historical data, how can it possibly matter to the current match!?

Yes, they are important and can give a better overall picture before you plan your trade!

Here’s why:

Suppose Player A has a H2H record of 10 wins out of 15 matches against Player B and that the latter has won his 5 matches all on clay, that is a huge thing to take into account. The odds on Player A being low on a Clay Court match means, he/she maybe worth laying. Obviously other factors do come into play such as present form, any injury concern etc. but the historical stat is a fact and that cannot be ignored!

A lot of people do check the h2h between the players but forget about checking the surface. Clay is the nemesis of many players as we all know only 1 player has dominated it and that’s Rafa Nadal. A question pops into mind for any tennis enthusiast; what if there were 2 Clay courts instead of 1 for Grandslams? That would have easily made Nadal the best player ever, as not only has he beaten Roger, but there were times he absolutely hammered him. Of course, I do hope Roger can get his payback someday. The Rafa-Roger story is just to mention how important it is to look at the surface H2H as well. Also, I am not biasing clay here! It’s easily applicable to other courts where a clay court player is terribly poor on grass or hard courts.

There are other stats which you can deduce yourself if you are an avid  Tennis Trader. For example:

Suppose if Player A is new to the ATP circuit and he is playing Rafa Nadal. The score line was a 2 set victory for Rafa, but the stats say Player A had at least 5 break points as you’ve seen him returning Nadal’s serves with ease, quite a few times. Here, even though the scoreline was unfortunate for our new ATP player, he has given us really good info. One, he can return Rafa’s serves, but more importantly, he can play against the toughest of left handers. This is valuable info for a match against another left hander, let’s say Nieminen, if there was a match between them in the near future. The odds would likely be too low on Nieminen who is an established ATP player against our newbie Mr.A. Looking deep into such stats made me quite a bit of money a few years back on a ‘very different styled player’ called Oleksander Dolgopolov. I had predicted him to be a very promising player after watching one of his earliest ATP matches and soon enough he gave me a huge lot of profit against Robin Soderling in a Grandslam! At the moment, Dolgo or ‘The Dog’ as he’s known as, is one tough cookie to crack on any surface even for some of the best players in the world!

Summarizing this article, always look for any stat out there, be it past or present. Do as much research you can, especially if you are planning on heavy staking a match on a player you know a lot about, against someone you know nothing about. What you need is, as much data as you can get.  Of course, if you’re a member of my tips service, I take care of all of this! If you’re not a member, don’t just leap into the market putting all the money on anyone, as sooner or later your so called amazing ‘6th sense’ can turn into ‘non-sense‘!

Thanks for reading!