Q's from a reader

So I got some questions from Jonas from sweden... I used google translate to translate it for me due cause i find it most time effective. I'll copy the swedish version first then the translated part.

Hejsan!
Jonas heter jag och har hittat din blogg, intressant och bra.
Dessutom verkar du duktig på trading.
Har själv vidrört ämnet periodvis, med blandade resultat. Det som gick bäst förr var iaf live-tennis. Har precis investerat i en laptop och så sakteliga börjat igen.
Undrar lite ang din trading, inom tennis.
Tradar du direkt på betfairs hemsida el använder du någon mjukvara?
Körde med bettraders själv förut men "harvar" på hemsidan nu. Finns visst något på hemsidan som heter Betfair Rapid - någon erfarenhet utav den?
Vilka matnyttiga sidor använder du?
Kör du med scoreboard eller streamar du matcher?
Vore kul om du svarade, finns inte många att fråga sådana saker om
Mvh Jonas

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Hello!
Jonas is my name and found your blog, interesting and good.
Furthermore, you seem good at trading.

Have yourself touched the topic periodically, with mixed results. It went better sooner was anyway live tennis. Having just invested in a laptop and slowly started again.

Wondering little about how you trade tennis.
Do you trade directly on Betfair website or do you use any software?
I used bettraders before but I use the website nowwadays. There is something on the website called Betfair Rapid - any experience out of it?

Which tennis webpages do you use?
Are you running the scoreboard or stream you matches?

Regards Jonas

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Hello Jonas!

First of all thanks for the kind words.

What you use for hardware is probably very personal (eg. laptop, desktop computer). I find having alot of working space is nice. But when I started out I just had a one screen so I didn't have anything more than you. Now I have two different setups. One @ my girlfriends place with two 28" 2560*1400 screens and one @ my house which looks like this. ->

I have never used the website for trading basically. I do know alot of very succesful people do use the website only. This is from what I have read on various blogs etc. 

I use Geektoys and I find it good enough for me. I have tried Bet Angel aswell but being so used and comfortable with geektoys I have sticked to it. I find it quite cheap aswell. Bet Angel have a cool feature that you can connect the markets to excel and basically do anything excel can do handling data. As you might have guessed by now I have never tried Betfair Rapid. Never heard anything about it either, sorry.

Tennis infromaition websites I use is the ones I have linked on the right handside here on the blog.

For scoreboards and streams I only use bet365. 

Good luck with you trading Jonas!

/Sammy

Q: from a reader...

Got a question from Ste:

"Hi Sammy, I have been reading your blog on tennis trading. I am a student and have recently started to look towards trading, mainly horseracing as I have a greater knowledge about that. Yet I see more and more trading on tennis, would you be able to give me a few beginner pointers? If you can that would be great, if not then its not problem. Thanks!"

Hey Ste!

So this is a super broad question cause there is many aspects that you have to learn. But key in all sports trading is learning to read the markets.

You have to know from with in 1-2% margin where a odds will be if X or Y happens. If not its very hard to make any assumptions on what your liability or profit will be for the specific trade / strategy you are looking at.

How to do this is pretty straightforward. You just watch alot of matches and see how the market moves each ball / game / set. This might seem abit overwhelming at first cause odds seem to move a bit random. But eventually after alot of practice you can start to see patterns on what is normal and not and after that spot value (when market is out of line)

It took me about 3 months of pretty much watching every tennis match during that time in 2012. I dont know if that is fast or slow. You could probably learn it much quicker but. The first month I pretty much didnt trade i just focused on following the markets movement in relation to what happened in the match.

What else...

Bankroll management, there is loads of information out there on this topic. If you have a small bankroll that you can easily replace. Then you can risk a much higher proportion of your bankroll. If its something that you need to be able to work and make a living. Then you have to take really good care of it. Otherwise you wont make any more money if you blow it all. Its like being a carpenter and not taking care of your tools. You will be out of a job -> no food on the table.

Note worthy is, depending on your margins you have on each trade. If you have small margins = higher variance which then you should use a smaller porportion of your bankroll. The bigger the margin the bigger amount you can risk.

Ok thats all I had time for today. I hope you can take something with you from all of this anyways! I think learning how the markets behave for the different sports is for me the most important thing.

Stay Sharp!

/Sammy

Question from a reader

"Hi Sammy
I have one question to you - how to calculate where odds "should" move after first set.
Example, we have 2 players, both have 2,00 odds.
First player win set, odds "should" move to 1.33. How to calculate it?
Thanks, Adam."

Hi Adam!

First of all remember that the calculation only refers to 3 set matches.

So starting price is 2.00 for both players. Which equals 50% for both winning the match. And therefore a 50% chance of winning each set.

Season 2014 is just around the corner

Lets assume that Player A wins first set. Finally we have come to the million dollar question, how do we calculate his theoretical odds?

Lets calculate Player B's chances of winning the match. He needs to win 2 sets in order to win the match from a 0-1 set deficit. Which gives us 50%*50% = 25% (0.5*0.5=0.25)

Now we can easily get Player A's winning chances 100%-25% = 75% (1-0.25=0.75)

75% chance of winning the match equals 1.33 in odds (1/0.75=1.33)

Merry Christmas & Stay Sharp!

/Sammy

Question from a reader

"Hi Sammy! I'm from hungary and can't speak english very well, but I hope you will understand me. :) I am trading betfair for 5 years. Greyhound and horse racing: scalping.

I began trade tennis for 2 months. I think, I know, where there are my entry points.
double break, if the price nearly set price.
My stop loss: set price
But I can't decided, where is my green?
Break back liability off, duble break back hedge?
Or be happy that I got such a good price and let the end of the game?
Can you give me some instructions?

Best Regards, Tamas Keller"
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Hi Tamas! Your english good...I hope you will understand me now though =)

The easy answer to your question is the boring but still so true: It depends...

Every match and market is different so there is not a guide how to trade a double break or trade any given scenario in a tennis match. It always depends on the market and how you think it will react.

Ok, so im going to make an example here before it gets really boring. Tomorrow we have a match between Feliciano Lopez - Julien Benneteau. Odds are att 1.95 - 2.04 just now when I write this. But to simplify we say an even match, 2.00 - 2.00 for both players.

So this gives us that the market estimates each player chances to with the match to 50% and therefor 50% to win a set. So theoretical setprice for each player is 1.33 if they win first set. But if you have traded tennis for sometime you would probably have noticed by now that a match with 2.00 starting price seldom end up @1.33 after first set. Its usually more like 1.27ish  or even lower depending how the first set ende (double break, tiebreaker etc). More than often lower than higher than the theoretical price. Probably due to momentum and market pressure and so on.

Lets say Feliciano Lopez takes a *4-1 lead with a double break. and market is really favoring Lopez. and 1.30 is trading. Now you might think, Hey! That is lower than the theoretical price, and we should lay Lopez! Very good observation! Yes its true and in a vacuum if you thought the market had a correct starting price for the match it's a easy lay of Lopez......... Unfortunately it's not this easy. We always have to consider the market and what we think will happen if X or Y or Z happens.

This could turn into a very long post but i'll continue the example and hopefully you will get my point. We lay lopez 1.30 and our intentions is to trade out at set price or if benneteau levels the set.

So how will we know if this is a good trade or not? Ok so current price is 1.30 and if match gets back to even odds will be 2.00. So we have to estimate what the set price will be if Lopez wins first set.

Set price: 1.18 | Current price: 1.30 | Match leveled: 2.00 ->  1.28 = 77%

Set price: 1.22 | Current price: 1.30 | Match leveled: 2.00 ->  1.19 = 84%

Set price: 1.27 | Current price: 1.30 | Match leveled: 2.00 ->  1.07 = 94%

As we can see its pretty big difference between these three examples. And its up to you and estimate both the likelyhood for Lopez to win the set compared to what the target price will be for set and when the match is leveled.

So to wrap this up...

I hope my little explenation made some sense and this is why I started off with the boring "it depends". But it really does as I have pointed out. Laying double break is usually a good trade but not always and when to take "green" also depends on what kind of odds you get in a certain situation against the probability on a given scenario.

Stay Sharp! /Sammy