Tennis is an exciting sport to bet on because unlike the popular football match markets, there are only two outcomes on a tennis match. There isn’t the possibility of a draw in tennis match outright to throw the spanner in the works of your wager. So that is one advantage of tennis and another is the vast variety of matches. There is a big turnover of tennis matches on a given day through the entire calendar year pretty much.
But with tennis, there does come a bit of a problem, especially for punters who perhaps don’t have a deep working knowledge of the current status of the sport. You will naturally spot the big players in a given field for a tennis event and they will all be strong odds-on prices through most of the rounds of action, to the point where they are not worth the trouble betting on. Of course, this will change if the top seeds meet up in the semi-final matches or something like that.
The bulk of tennis matches that you will see, especially in the early rounds of tournaments are going to provide you with players that perhaps you don’t know much about. Think of the English Premier League, you have twenty teams there and for casual followers, it’s pretty easy to get a picture of how good/bad/average a team is. Tennis tournaments start with fields of 32, 64 or even 128 players and there’s no feasible way to know all of them.
That leads to scenarios where you don’t know the real value of odds on players, not between two relatively unknown players. But that is actually a situation where you can trying and look for some Value Bets for your tennis betting.
What is a Value Bet?
A Value Bet is where you take on a bookmaker’s perception of the outcome of a sporting event. Note that this is all based on your own predictions, based off knowledge. For example, if you have studied form and other factors and think Andy Murray has a 60% chance of beating Rafael Nadal in a match that would convert to 1.67 decimal odds.
But if you were to look at a bookmaker and they were offering 1.83 odds on a win for Murray then that creates a Value Bet. The bookmaker has Murray as a bigger price than what your perceived chances of Murray winning the match, is. So there is the value and you are basically saying that the bookmaker is wrong in their pricing.
Value Bet Calculation 1
Let’s say you have Andy Murray at with that 60% chance of winning (your perceived chances of him winning)
Expected Odds = ([1 / Your Probability Percentage] * 100)
([1 / 60] * 100) = 1.67
So then if you were to find a price bigger than that with a bookmaker, you have created a Value Bet. that’s the simple and straightforward way to gauge some value when you are using this practice. That’s what Value Bets are. You can apply this same principle to not only individual matches but also to tournament fields as well.
Value Bet Calculation 2
There is another way to calculate whether a bet is a Value Bet or not. You can do this with a different formula.
Value = (Probability x Odds) > 1
So let’s go back to our thinking that Andy Murray has a 60% of winning his match but the bookmaker has him at 1.83 odds.
That’s (0.60 x 1.83) = 1.098
So that’s how that calculates out. Basically, if the final number that you get is above 1.0 then you have a Value Bet. If it is a negative value then it’s not and you may want to skip it because your estimation against odds balance is off. The bigger the number is above that 1.0 threshold then the bigger the value of the Value Bet is. It is just down to a matter of preference.
The Keys to Finding Tennis Value Bets
Value Bets, as we mentioned above are simply down to your perceptions of a given outcome. How you figure out your own probability of a player winning a match, is all based on studying statistics. There are some key points with tennis betting that you will need to look at, beyond the straightforward current form, which is often used as a nice tie-breaker in tight matches.
Head to head: This is an important place to start because if Player A has a big winning streak going over Player B, or even if they have just started the turn the tide in recent meetings, then you can gauge something from this. If for example, Player A was on a hot winning streak of matches, but his head to head form against Player B was in the gutter, having lost to them in the last five meetings, there could be value in opposing Player A even if they were favourite for the match based on current form.
Surface: This leads on from the Head to Head records. Something else to look at then would be the surface upon which the match is being played. Go back and look at the Head to Head and see the specific previous meetings that were played on the current surface. Let’s just say grass for instance. If Player A has lost the last five matches against Player B, but it has been Player A who has won all the previous meetings on grass, then you have to take that into consideration if the current match is on gass.
Certain players just thrive on different surfaces. Think Rafael Nadal on the clay where he is the all-time leader of French Open titles. But his success record on grass in comparison at Wimbledon is pretty poor. What’s the difference between the surfaces? Clay courts play the slowest with a higher bounce, while grass courts are the quickest and suit the big-hitting players. Hard courts are somewhere in between, but with a more consistent bounce than grass.
The Pressure Stats: If a game is looking tight (and this is something that applies well to live in-play betting on tennis as well) is to assess the points converted in pressure situations. The most notable ones here are the second serve win percentage and the second serve return percentage. Take a look at these and you will see how a player is able to respond when their service is under pressure and how much they are able to apply pressure on the second serve of opposing players (the key to breaks in the games). Leading on from that you are going to look directly and the breakpoint stats, those converted and those saved. That will paint a pretty clear picture of which players are more likely to come through tight situations. Those are the main pressure stats in tennis.
First set conversion: This is a stat that we like and this is how often a player goes on to win a match after winning the first set. You can flip this around as well and see how often a player wins/loses after losing the first set. These are all important stats and you have to remember that there are different styles of players. There are the those who are happy playing a longer, grinding defensive game, while there are those who are quick starters but can run out of steam. Don’t forget the all-important injury status of players as well ahead of your tennis match betting.
Basically, at the end of the day, we can’t stress enough the importance of stats when it comes to finding Tennis Value Bets. Look at the key stats but don’t get treat them as being set in stone. Dig around and find those stats that work for your betting system, then ones you also find that helps you get the most of Tennis Value Bets.
