2011 £100 - £50,000 Tennis Betting Challenge

End of Second Week

2011-08-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

Overall P&L = +£82.29
Week 2 P&L = -£77.34

Its been quite a hectic week for me both on and off the court. The blog posts have been rather thin on the ground for the week for 2 reasons. Firstly I have been away in London and secondly rain has caused havoc in both tournaments. This week players have been forced to play multiple matches on the same day and often having to wait long hours to get onto court. This has had a negative affect on my strategies resulting in a small loss this week. At one point I was that frustrated with waiting during rain delays I was considering leaving the betting for the week and focusing on something else.

I did however manage to complete 11 selections with the following results:

Chela to beat Gimeno Traver WON @ 1.4
Davydenko to beat Ebden WON @ 1.44
Lopez to beat Haase LOST @ 1.67
Monfils to beat Sweeting WON @ 1.33
Chela to beat Granollers WON @ 1.7
Davydenko to beat Verdasco LOST @ 2.37
Monfils to beat Tursunov WON @ 1.39
Chela to beat Montanes LOST @ 2
Monfils to beat Tipsarevic WON @ 1.55
Monils to beat Isner WON @ 1.76
Monfils to beat Stepanek LOST @ 1.5

My final loss of the week came in the final of Washington when I backed Monfils the top seed to finish the tournament off. This final match would finish the week either +£150 or -£77 depending on the outcome and unfortunately it was the latter. On the previous day Stepanek had an uninterrupted match and was done and dusted early afternoon. Monfils on the other hand had a tougher opponent in John Isner and due to constant rain delays the match was dragged out over 5 hours with constant stop starts. But -£77 for a week of weather mayhem is not too bad a result. Now onto this week.

This week sees the first ATP Masters 1000 event since back in May is is being played in Montreal Canada. This event will see the big 4 playing in their first events since Wimbledon and Andy Murray is bidding to win his 3 title here in as many years. A tall order however with Djokovic's current dominance still having only lost a single match all year and Raphael Nadal wanting to take back the number 1 ranking. And of course you cannot rule out Rodge Federer, the only man to beat the Djoker this year. Federer knows that if he is to reach his first Grand Slam final of 2011 then he needs to do some damage during this US Open hard court series.

As rule I tend to have 1 losing week in every 5 so fingers crossed this week for some better results.

Eagerly Awaiting Play

2011-08-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately so far this week no selections have caught my eye. In the smaller tournaments such as the ones featuring this week it often takes a day or two before the seeds take to the stage. So for day 7 and day 8 there have been no bets. Tomorrow is certainly looking brighter however with 6 games shortlisted so far.

Losers Are Like Buses

2011-07-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

Overall P&L +£159.63
Week 1 Profit +£159.63

Since starting the challenge I have had no losing selections all the way up to the Saturday of the opening tournament and then like buses there is a batch of them. Due to a night out last night I was in no fit state to do a blog post so tonight I will be covering the last 2 nights action. Bets were as follows:

Day 5 P&L -£65.38

Del Potro to beat Gulbis @ 1.15 LOST
Youzhny to beat Granollers @ 1.71 LOST
Verdasco to beat Almagro @ 3.1 WON
Cilic to beat Fognini @ 1.53 WON
Ferrero to beat Dolgopolov @ 1.74 LOST

The first losing day but saved by a the Verdasco win at the generous price of 3.1.

Day 6 P&L -£300

Verdasco to beat Granollers @ 1.4 LOST
Cilic to beat Dolgopolov @ 1.74 LOST

The opening week saw a total of 17 selections of which 12 were winning bets. Bellow is the P&L screen shot for the the week. It was a disappointing end to the week but a profit overall none the less.

The Winners Keep On Coming

2011-07-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

Overall P&L = +£525.01
Day 4 P&L = +£212.04

Four days into the challenge and I am still awaiting my first loss. Unfortunately it will come at some point :( Today saw 4 selections of which all bets won. I would like to talk a little more about the tennis on the blog rather than just the betting. Unfortunately as this weeks tournaments are only small 250s they are not televised so I have watched very little.

Today's results are as follows:

Youzhny to beat Haider-Maurer @ 1.28 WON
Verdasco to beat Benneteau @ 1.25 WON
Cilic to beat Seppi @ 1.54 WON
Ferrero to beat Berlocq @ 1.38 WON

There is so far looking to be 4/5 selections for tomorrow two of which are odds against :)

Enjoy the weekend all!

PS All emails received will be responded to by Sunday.

Still 100% Winners

2011-07-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

Overall P&L +£312.97
Day 3 P&L = +£115.53

We are now 3 days into the challenge and a total of 6 bets have been place and 6 winners have been claimed. There has been some rather tight clashes however. Today I backed Marin Cilic to beat Robin Haase and the Croat had to come from a set down to progress to the next round. 3 selections were made and as discussed yesterday 1 was in the early hours. I woke up this morning and checked my phone to see that Del Potro had comfortably seen off Blake in straight sets.

Today's selections were:

Juan Martin Del Potro to beat James Blake @ 1.21 WON
Fernando Verdasco to beat Federico Gil @ 1.23 WON
Marin Cilic to beat Robin Haase @ 1.35 WON
All rather short prices today but none the less proved good value.

Things are looking good for tomorrow with 5 selections currently shortlisted.

We Are Up And Running

2011-07-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

Overall P&L = +£197.44
Day 2 P&L = +£175.50

Today saw 2 selections both of which turned out to be winning bets. The first in Switzerland was Mikhail Youzhny to beat Denis Istomin priced at 1.25 and in Croatia Juan Carlos Ferrero to beat Ivan Ljubicic on his home soil at 1.96. The Russian Youzhny won rather comfortably whilst Ferrero had to come from a set down to prevail. These combined selections produced a healthy profit of £175.50 after commission.

There is one other match that I will be betting on from today's fixture list but it is unfortunately in the early hours for me over in Los Angeles. My bet is placed and I will check the result when I get up tomorrow. The P&L for that match will be shown in tomorrows results.

Not a great deal of upsets so far this week. This morning Pablo Andujar priced at 1.26 was beaten by the German Matthias Bachinger which is the shortest price I have seen this week to fall.

I know this is only day 2 but this is a new best day since starting the challenge ;)

Day 1 Lets Play!

2011-07-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

Apologies that it is so late in the season to start this but I do not want to wait until the start of the new tennis season. The rules have now changed in that I am now betting as opposed to trading for this challenge. For me an average week consists of both tennis trading and betting but due to working commitments I cannot do the level of trading required to complete this challenge over a realistic time period. Betting is less of an issue because I do not need to be as actively involved during games.

So, here's the deal. Every night I will be reviewing the following day's devising a list of betting selections. The next morning I will place those selections and post the results at the end of play. The majority of tennis bets will be placed using the exchanges Betfair and Betdaq but some specialty selections may be placed with bookmakers. The prices of my selections can be as short as 1.05 and as high as 10s but are usually just short of evens. Most of the selections will be individual match bets.

Ok so the first day is complete and the first P&L snapshot is ready for viewing. Just a single selection today which was Juan Carlos Ferrero to beat Maximo Gonzalez bringing in the first profit of £21.94. Looking at tomorrows fixture lists I am hoping for 2 to 3 games.

Day 1 P&L +£21.94

Australian Open Week 1

2010-01-28T10:07:00.000-08:00

Current Bank £887.30

So far so good! This Australian Open has proved to be another profitable time of year. The beauty of the 4 grand slams is the high volume of liquidity in every single match. It is quite bizarre how a match with 2 unknowns can have 200k matched prior to the first ball being hit and when the same 2 faced each other a fortnight ago the was little over 10K. A lot is down to TV coverage but the grand slams are for many the only times they show an interest in the sport.

The excellent liquidity volumes make me feel more confident in the market and so on the opening day of the tournament increased stakes by 50%. This proved to be the right move as the opening 3 trades were all winners.

The Aussie Open can be difficult for someone who works full time. I find myself easily engrossed in the matches and end up with 3-4 hours sleep a night. After about 3 days of trading I felt absolutely knackered. So I decide that as week 1 has the majority of the matches I would really go for it and ease off on week 2.

With the increased stakes and near perfect markets, week one of the Australian Open provided a fantastic profit of £616.51. That has put is well on course for the jackpot.

2 Weeks In

2010-01-13T11:58:00.000-08:00

Current Bank £270.79

It has now been 1 month since I decided to run this challenge and we are almost 2 weeks into the 2010 tennis season. As always, trading is limited for me in the opening month of the year as the majority of matches are played in Australia and the middle of the night for us in the UK. It is often difficult to find a rhythm during this time as the liquidity in this markets tends to be very low. Australia have strong laws governing online gambling which has a massive impact on the markets. Still I have made a good contribution to the challenge pot during this time. In just 2 weeks I have almost trebled the betting bank. The wins are still relatively small but when I cross the £300 mark I will consider the first stake increase. Below are screenshots of both my main wallet and my Australian Wallet:

Main Wallet

Australian Wallet

1 Win 1 Loss

2010-01-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

Current Bank £179.41

A quiet night last night. With a full night session the day before I traded just 2 matches resulting in around 25% profit. Unfortunately the Xmas festivities are now over and tomorrow I return to work. With the tennis currently in Australia I will have limited trading opportunities until the weekend now. Unfortunately work and night trading do not mix.

Making Progress

2010-01-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

Current Bank £153.86

Hi all,

Hope you had a good new year. Most started back at work today so it is back to normality! We are now 4 days into the new year and Xmas seems a distant memory. The trading is now well under way. After a terrible tournament in London 4 weeks ago Raphael Nadal opened up his season by winning the Capitalia World Tennis exhibition tournament. It has to be said that he looked quite impressive in his 2 matches.

I apologise for the lack of posts of late. With the Xmas/New Year festivities in full swing it has been difficult to find the time. I have certainly been trading however.

I have included screenshots for Saturday and Sundays trading. Friday started off well but a dodgy couple of trades late on resulted in a £14 loss for the day.

Please not that I call it Sunday as most trades were done before I went to bed. The tennis is in Australia so really we were into the 4th. My trading for Brisbane in the opening day was up and down but Justin Henin's return to the main tour put us well into profit.

Day 1

2009-12-31T07:44:00.000-08:00

Current Bank £105.02

A pretty poor start to the campaign but a profit none the less. The opening match between Ferrer and Davydenko went rather well pulling in an approximate 14% profit over 2 markets. Despite numerous trading opportunities the 2nd match resulted in a loss of 9%

Total P&L for the opening day +£5.02
5% increase on bank.

I'm am hoping to trade an average of 20% profit on stake so day 1 is under par.

It Has Arrived Early

2009-12-30T12:48:00.000-08:00

Current Bank £100

Well folks the new tennis season is here! Although I said previously we would be starting on the 3rd January they are once again running the Capitalia World Tennis Championship. This is an exhibition tournament in Dubai featuring 6 random players. The tournament is run over 3 days starting tomorrow so we are starting early :)

Rodger Federer and Raphael Nadal are given a bye through to the semi final. Challenging the top two are David Ferrer, Nikolay Davydenko, Robin Soderling and Stanislas Wawrinka. Tomorrow sees the following matches starting at 11:00am CET and are all shown on Sky:

Match 1: Ferrer v Davydenko
Match 2: Soderling v Warwinka

My Approach for Tomorrow

For all players this is their first competitive play since the close of the tennis season so don't expect a good show, however this is actually good news. The early tournaments shoot up numerous opportunities as players a take time to get back into their stride. Their mistakes provide entry points for us traders. Of the games tomorrow Davydenko and Soderling start as favorites. With the expectation that the 2 players will still be full of Christmas turkey and the fact that this is an exhibition tournament posing no real importance to either, both starting prices are far too short. Their opponents are more than capable of upsets here. Wawrinka is no mug and Ferrer showed in the Davis Cup final what he is made of.

These two matches are very similar and will be tackled using the same approach. I am going to anticipate favorite swings in both games and trade the set betting markets. I will look for further opportunities as the games pan out.

The new tennis season is here. Good luck for tomorrow. I will post results at the end of the opening day.

How Will I Run This?

2009-12-26T14:14:00.000-08:00

I hope you all had a great Christmas. I sure did!

A few friends have asked over xmas drinks why I am putting the results of the challenge onto a website. There are 2 main reasons for producing this blog.

Firstly and most importantly to challenge myself. I love to set myself new goals each time pushing back the boundaries. I would consider it a great achievement to hit the target figure and the website will keep me focused and on the right track. I will also learn a lot from my own trading experiences and from talking to others. The website simply make the challenge known and forces me to continually apply 100%.

Secondly to help others. As I post my results I look forward to hearing how others are doing and will try to offer pointers to those that are struggling or new to tennis trading.

I intend to post my results as often as I can. I will be trading the tennis most days of the year and I intend to give regular P&L snapshots with a mini breakdown of the techniques used to achieve the results. This will not be every day as I simply won't have the time but I will do my best to add these as often as possible. Every post from the opening day will have the current bank figure included so that you are always aware of the overall progress.

For the larger tournaments throughout the year I will post a pretournament write up of my thoughts with an in depth analysis of the tournament winner market. This will usually be for my own enjoyment and will not play a big part in the overall challenge.

The 2010 tennis season is just around the corner. If you have and pre season trading questions please feel free to drop me an email.

8 Days to Go!!

2009 Review

2009-12-21T06:12:00.000-08:00

The 2009 tennis season has been one to remember on both the mens and womens sides. For the first time in years the dominance of the top two Rodger Federer and Raphael Nadal has been broken up by new talent. As with 2008 Novak Djokovic continued to apply the pressure and for most of the season held the number 3 spot. After breaking in to the worlds top 10 late 2008 Andy Murray built upon this success by breaking into the top 4. He even had a few weeks as world number 3. But the biggest story in the mens game as far as world Rankings go has to go the Juan Martin Del Potro. The 19 year old Argentine has cruised to the top of the mens game and has really troubled the worlds best.

As always the 4 majors were great events and really showcased the sport. In January Raphael Nadal claimed his first hard court Grand Slam winning the Australian Open in Melbourne. Playing in perhaps the form of his career many thought that he would go on to do the "Grand Slam" and win all 4 majors in a single tennis season. Something that even Federer has not yet achieved. In the months that followed he dethroned the King and for the first time in 5 years there was a new man in the number 1 spot. All of this success came crashing back down to earth however when against all odds Nadal was beaten in the 2nd Major of the year Roland Garos. It was a shock 3rd round dismissal and seemed to plague the rest of his season. If Rodger Federer was ever going to take the elusive French Open title it had to be now. He stepped up to the mark and won the final major trophy missing from his collection.

Federer soon returned to form and it was only a matter of time before he regained his position as world number 1. He won Wimbledon in a fairly comfortable manner and made the final of the US Open in August. This last match of this tournament saw Juan Martin Del Potro in his first Grandslam final come from behind to win his first major. It was an epic 5 set battle and a match that confirmed the Argentine as one of the games current greats.

The Women's tour has been a lot more open with a much less of an elite group than the mens. The majority of the year saw Dinara Safina holding the number 1 spot. Despite reaching the finals at both the Australian Open and Roland Garos and the semi final of Wimbledon she still awaits her first major title. As usual the Williams sisters stepped up 5 gears at the majors and claimed 2 and reach the later stages at the others.

The real fairy tail this year came at the US Open. Former world number 1 Kim Clijsters returned to the game after a long period out to have a child. She played just 2 tournaments in the run up to Flushing Meadows before take the major for the 2nd time. She becomes only the 2nd woman to win a major title after becoming a parent.

2009 was a great year for both tennis and trading. I am fully expecting 2010 to be even better!

Patience is a Virtue

2009-12-20T11:24:00.000-08:00

I am running this challenge with a starting bank as small as £100. This will mean that in the first few months the profits will be small but relative to the stake. As the betting bank grows so will the win / loss figures. When attempting a challenge such as this or for that matter any form of trading you should always remind yourself of the bigger picture and your long term P&Ls.

In order to hit the £35,000 target I will aim to double the betting bank on a monthly basis. This is fairly important and will put us slightly ahead of ourselves. There will be times in the year where I will be unable to trade or where the markets themselves are not suitable. Also there is very little tennis played throughout the month of December and so realistically the challenge will end the first week of Dec 2010.

Either way patience is the key and you must learn this if you want to become a successful trader.

14 Days to Go!!!

Staking

2009-12-16T04:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was asked the question how am I going to manage the staking for this challenge? What stake will be used for each match?

The answer is this. The starting bank is £100 and at no point will I risk anymore than 10% of what I have. More often than not however the amount staked on a trade will be even less than 10%. I will be using a total of 6 different trading strategies and the amount of money varies depending on which strategy is used.

Trading is very different to betting in that stakes must remain the same for each strategy. Increasing after each win is the fast road to disaster. However the £35,000 target will not be reached without a gradual stake increase. Stakes will be increased only when the overall bank hits certain levels. Every Sunday I will review my staking plans for the following week.

This is going to be a very gradual challenge and you will see on the posted P&Ls that the profit in January will be very small. As the stakes increase over the months as will the profit.

17 Days to Go!!!

Why £35,000?

2009-12-15T03:51:00.000-08:00

Many of the other blogs you read that are going to demonstrate a run over a 12 month period are attempting £100K+ so why only £35,000. This is due to a number of reasons:

Firstly, many of the people attempting £100K fail and only hit around £20,000 over the 12 month period. That is still respectable but is a failure as far as the initial goal is concerned.

Secondly, most of the people attempting these trading challenges trade horse racing. Horse racing is a sport designed with gambling in mind. There are numerous meetings, all at convenient times in the day and all fetching in crazy amounts of market liquidity.

Tennis is very different in that most of the tournaments played will be oversees therefore making it difficult to trade every day. Tennis is not a sport designed for gambling and many of the markets simply do not possess the required levels of liquidity to trade. In 2009 I pulled in around £20,000 so for 2010 I am going the extra mile for £35,000 which I believe is an achievable target.

18 Days to Go!!!

Tennis Trading Challenge 2010 Launch!

2009-12-14T05:53:00.001-08:00

Hello and welcome,

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a keen sports enthusiast with a real passion for tennis. I have been betting on the game for around 5 years now and up until last year my results were rather average. Betting on tennis is very difficult indeed. The tennis markets are so precise that identifying value selections is a tough process. Last year however I discovered trading.

Early 2008 I invested in Bet Angel professional with the intention of trading the horse racing. As I familiarised myself with market movements and how an exchange actually works I started to identify potential opportunities in tennis. I then waded through the mass array of bogus strategies the internet has to offer until I found a few that worked. I then repeatedly implemented these ideas and techniques, slowly but surely mastering them. In the final quater of 2008 I made a profit of just short of £6000.

Now feeling very confident in my ability as a trader I would like to set myself the above challenge of turning £100 into £35,000 buy the end of 2010. I will post P&L screenshots as we go along and discuss the strategies used in each image.

Aside from the trading I would like to use this blog to discuss all things tennis so feel free to drop me a line about anything at all.

19 Days to Go!!!