It’s the day before a big tennis tournament starts and you really like Djokovic to win the title in an ATP Tour event, but he is paying $2 to win the tournament. Do you accept those odds, or can a better price be achieved by backing him to win each match at a time?
The answer to that question of course, will not always produce the same results as the price of individual matches in later stages of the tournament will be heavily affected if other top players are beaten. Likewise if Djokovic reaches the Semi Finals but still has Nadal, Federer, and Murray to contend with, then the individual match prices will be higher than if he has to meet someone else, like Kei Nishikori for example.
Let’s look at two tournaments in 2014 to compare the prices. At Wimbledon, Djokovic was playing $1.01 in his first three matches v Golubev, Stepanek and Simon, $1.08 v Tsonga, $1.09 v Cilic, $1.20 in his semi-final v Dimitrov and $1.55 in the final versus Federer. Accumulative odds of $2.25 if you backed him each match and then put the entire return on the next match.
Pre-tournament Djokovic was slightly longer to win the title so punters would have done better had they backed him to win from the start without going through the trouble of having to place a series of bets. Though, if Dimitrov hadn’t upset Murray in the Quarters, he would have been more than $1.20 in the semi-final, which would have pushed the result the other way and returned punters a better return than pre-tournament odds.
On the flipside though, when an outsider wins a grand slam (which isn’t very often), the odds can often be far greater backing them individually as many sportsbooks aren’t willing to offer massive odds on the roughies.
Cilic at the US open and Wawrinka at the Australian Open are prime examples of this. At the Australian Open, Wawrinka started the tournament at $61, but the cumulative odds of him winning totalled $83. ($1.02 1st round v Golubev, $1.04 second round v Falla, $1.11 third round v Pospisil, $1.34 fourth round v Robredo, $6.65 Quarter final v Djokovic, $1.6 semi v Berdych and $4.93 in the Final versus Nadal)
Pre-tournament betting has its advantages by saving you the hassle of having to continue to back a player match after match and eliminating any ‘risk’ that you will lose the money on the off-days by backing a different player. It also stops you from getting nervous and withdrawing.
Had you started with $100 on Wawrinka and turned it into $1676 before the final, only a really brave punter would have put all $1676 on him to beat Nadal in the final, so in most cases the punter who put the $100 on him to win at $61 would have come out ahead. But then again, that is also one of the advantages of putting individual match bets on. Had Nadal won the final, the guy who would have won the $6K, would instead have won nothing whereas the guy betting individual matches would likely have still pocketed a tidy profit.
One thing is for certain though, when we are talking about someone having to win 7 matches to win the title, every extra few cents you can get out of individual match prices can have a large compound differential to the end profit and this is one of the strongest reasons to place your bets with a betting exchange like wbx.com for example.
Unlike sportsbooks, exchanges don’t rely on the margins to make money, the prices available are hard to resist. With tennis being a very popular betting sport, the liquidity in the markets will allow the majority of wagers to be matched without issue.
World Bet Exchange (WBX) has no premium charges and a lower commission rate than their competitors, so already you are a few percentage points ahead by betting with them, so be sure to check out online betting site wbx and compare for yourself, and while you’re at it, take advantage of the £25 in free bets that they offer as a welcome bonus.
