Torque

Oh, wow. Just secured the ranking and lost to Sonego. Awful sportsmanship.

gr8 call . ?

After a long hiatus - which will probably be a theme of this attempt - there's a possible bet today which will be bet 3 if matched. Djokovic is playing at the ATP tournament in Vienna, which I would normally swerve as it's not a big tournament. However, Djokovic is playing here with a specific purpose in mind, which is to protect his ranking as the best player in the world. With that motivation in mind, I think he'll be doing everything he can to win.

Liverpool v Sheffield Utd (1) 1.25
Rangers v Livingston (1) 1.17
Bayern Munich v Frankfurt (1) 1.20
10pt treble

Evans another one who couldn't finish his dinner. Had two serves for a win in straight sets, doesn't convert, loses tie-break then gets broken right at the start of the decider and that's the end of that. So much of tennis is in the head - I'm convinced it's what separates the best players from the rest.

Evans another one who couldn't finish his dinner. Had two serves for a win in straight sets, doesn't convert, loses tie-break then gets broken right at the start of the decider and that's the end of that. So much of tennis is in the head - I'm convinced it's what separates the best players from the rest.

I'm wavering between being amused by that post or finding it a bit arsey. Obviously it's laughable to expect anyone to reveal the precise selection method for a winning system, especially to a first time poster, but I feel you could provide a little bit more than "I'm looking for value" (quelle surprise) without blowing the gaff.
To quote from the "Rules for posting betting systems" thread "Obviously we want as much details as possible but it is not required. A statement like "it's private, under wraps, secret" however is not sufficient. You must give a description of the bet selection process as well as the staking plan used sufficient for anyone else to get a clear idea of what's involved."
I'd suggest it wouldn't hurt to give us a tiny peak behind the veil, e.g. it's a secret system based on the number of syllables in the horses names, it's an entirely automated system or just based on your own knowledge and experience in interpreting form.
Also, with reference to the guidance in the "rules" thread, any chance you could provide an update in terms of number of bets, strike rate and (especially) yield for each bank? The performance is obviously decent to anyone who's kept even half an eye on the thread but bare profit figures alone don't impart much to anyone coming to the thread part way through.
Anyway, keep up the good work and I trust you don't mind me sharing my thoughts in response to the post in question.

If anyone backs Davidovich Fokina in future, it might be an idea to cash out if he gets into a winning position. He's just gone from 6-2, 5-2 - at which point he was backed at 1.01 - to 6-2, 6-7, 1-6 against Schwartzman. Now Schwartzman is obviously a very good player, but that is one monumental choke. He served for a straight sets win not once, not twice, but three times and had a match point but still couldn't get over the line and win. The third set evisceration was sadly all too predictable as well.

POTUS back again I see (aka BrandNew, Tennis Girl, etc, etc)
 

I have to be honest Avongirl and I meant Inter Milan so please adjust my score accordingly. Sorry to be a pain but I have to be fair to the others. Also apologies for the late reply I have had to get a new laptop!
 

Reluctantly, but on the understanding it's what @BillyHills would want:
Real Madrid v Cadiz (1) 1.22
Nimes v PSG (2) 1.20
10pt double

£10 treble
Sheff Utd 2.1
Newcastle 5.0
Burnley 3.0
Potential returns = £315
Potential profit = £305
Likely outcome ... -£10

Reluctantly, but on the understanding it's what @BillyHills would want:
Real Madrid v Cadiz (1) 1.22
Nimes v PSG (2) 1.20
10pt double

After several attempts at posting I am hoping this will display ok for everyone as it keeps losing the images and displaying a blank link for me. I'll come back and look in the morning and fingers crossed it's still OK. (Hopefully solved the issue by changing the files from png to jpeg.)  I'm not sure if I am doing it the same way as BillyHills did, the only way I could find to get an image was to use the snipping tool to save as a pic.
Any comments please post in the thread titled Odds, as this one is locked.

Hi @avongirl
@BillyHills was using bet365 previously, but he switched over to William Hill this season because of something to do with formatting I think. IIRC correctly bet365 changed their display and it became easier to use the pages from William Hill.

Yes I've made the same mistake before.
Very honest of you @LeMale, sums up the integrity of people on this forum.

@Fader 
Hi Fader. Firstly, thanks for taking over running the Naps Comp and Sir Puntalot KO Cup in this time of mourning. I'm sure it's the last thing you want to be doing at this moment in time. Also, i'm sure i speak for a lot of the Punters Lounge family when i say, that trying to carry on picking out naps for the comp and general picks in the daily thread as well as the £20 challenge, has been difficult. I was going to take a break from it all and reflect, but comments about how he would of wanted us to carry on has encouraged me to keep on going. We all know that Graham has left some HUGE boots for someone to try and fill and from comments it would appear he did far more than any one knew,so again i thank you for stepping in. 
My second point is my nap for yesterday came 4th and did not win. 
Thanks, Jason (LeMale)

An interesting debate guys, nice to see two different perspectives! 

Reasoning: There are some really good tipsters out there. They know the sport inside out and they have time on their hands to do the research.
Method: If I follow 10+ tipsters, who would most likely tip 4-5 selections, I'd probably end up with 30+ different picks. Based on the previews, and available value, I will narrow this down and choose 3 or 4 bets.
Aim: First and foremost, to make a profit! Also I hope to become more disciplined when placing my own bets. My staking can be up and down, and I tend to throw money at silly longshots. So hopefully this thread will encourage me to keep things sensible. And in time maybe I will learn more about the sport, the different courses and the players, making bets with my own knowledge.
I fully expect a slow start. I'll start the bank at 0 points. If it gets to -100 I'll knock it on the head! I don't suppose I will bet more than 10 points a week. 

I understood you didn't mean the best players having their own tour, and I certainly agree that the ranking system needs to be changed. I don't think it's fit for purpose at all, and if it was changed in the right way in theory it should mean more incidences of higher-ranked players beating lower-ranked players. I don't necessarily agree there should be fewer places available at tournaments - the current numbers are effectively based on the financials of the sport and if the sport can afford to offer up opportunities for as many players as it does then long may that continue as far as I'm concerned as that gives any talent that's out there the best chance of showing itself.
I also don't agree the standard is being diluted downwards - I see it as just the way it is right now where there are a lot of good players and not many great ones, as opposed to times in the past where there were a lot of great players and not many good ones. More players doesn't mean a lower standard, in fact it's probably the opposite and the comparison I would draw is snooker. Years ago there was a top 16 and that was about it, and since the sport expanded the consensus seems to be that standards have improved.
Ultimately though, your opinion about the sport being too random is exactly that; your opinion. My opinion is different - the randomness doesn't bother me so much because I'm not convinced it really is randomness. For me, if you strip away rankings assigned to players then what you're left with is a lot of players of very similar ability and so in that context any player beating any other player on any given day is understandable. True randomness is inferior players beating superior players on a very regular basis and I'm not sure we're seeing that, except perhaps at smaller tournaments and then most likely it's a case of motivation. I would like to see the ranking system change though as right now any good run in a big tournament disproportionately affects a player's ranking, and there are numerous examples that back up that assertion. Also, not all rankings are created equal - in one year, the gap in ability between the top 10 and the top 50 could be much smaller or bigger than another year so that the number 50 beating number 10 could either be a really big shock or no shock at all.
Finally, the only way that results are going to become consistent in the way you want them to be, and again as I've mentioned before, is if there are a core of players that are significantly better than the rest and therefore that much more likely to win when they're expected to and even then there will still be plenty of upsets. Unfortunately, no change in the ranking system, or seedings, or number of rounds or players taking part can influence how many really talented players are playing in any given era and without those players there is always going to be a wide variety of players reaching the latter stages of tournaments. You seem to be very happy with the way the men's game is going, but that's only because there are 3 exceptional active players. When they retire, and if they're not replaced which is highly likely given there's 3 of them, you'll most likely be bemoaning the state of the men's game. The bottom line is that tennis is like life - no matter how much you try to control it unexpected things always happen.

I am wondering about the idea of tournaments with groups of the best players and I think that is a lame idea.
How do smaller tournaments survive? How the worst than top 16 players will survive? What about local young players? Who will be interested in buying broadcasting from smaller tournaments when top 16 tournament is on the way, there are often 3 ongoing tournaments?

The more I think about it the more I think the ranking system is the cause of 'inconsistent' results and unpredictability - or at least the perception of it. A lot of results wouldn't be seen as inconsistent or unpredictable if there were no rankings - the rankings make you think that a certain player should be beating another player even if there isn't much between them in ability and that even translates to the betting.
I mentioned a two-year ranking list as a preferable alternative to the current one-year list - that would definitely make the rankings more stable and another thing I would do is look at the ranking points given out at Grand Slams. The thing that skews rankings more than any other - certainly in a one year list - is a good Grand Slam performance. The best example of that I can think of is Cecchinato - he had a great run at the French Open a couple of years ago which propelled him into the top 30 and that one good tournament performance meant he stayed at least at that ranking for a year. He's done next to nothing since and so it's probably fair to say that he was ranked higher than he should have been. One great performance at one big tournament shouldn't have such a big impact on your ranking.

I'm always happy to discuss but the problem is we fundamentally disagree. You think something has to change, whereas I broadly believe it's fine the way it is. At the moment, whether you like it or not, the sport is run as a meritocracy - albeit with an element of protectionism in the form of rankings and seedings which give promising players the chance to solidify their position at the top of the sport and create a legacy - and that's the way it should be in my opinion as there's a balance between every player getting a chance to compete whilst giving an advantage to the very best players which should mean they get to the end of tournaments and then face each other for the best spectacle.
At this tournament, despite having the advantage of being seeded a number of the very best players failed to perform and so lost to other very capable players, regardless of what those players were ranked and besides which rankings change - who's to say that Podoroska for example won't be much more highly ranked next year and then with the benefit of hindsight her run here won't look as strange. I think it's insulting and demeaning to those players to say that it 'stank' for them to go as far as they did - today's random players way down the rankings could go on to much better things tomorrow. If anything stank, it was the poor performance of the 'very best' players and I'm sure that most of them would agree with that if they were being honest - Svitolina for a start held her hands up to playing particularly badly.
I'm not at all interested in, nor do I believe in the idea of an elite group of players playing each other all the time. For a start, if such a system did exist, then how would the likes of Swiatek and other young players get a chance to make it. At the moment, tennis works like a free-market economy and as such it's been the case now for quite some time that the sport can support the top 128 ranked players that are needed in the current Grand Slam format. There are players below that ranking - those that are emerging, declining or simply not good enough to be ranked any higher, but in those cases some kind of sponsorship is usually needed to continue in the sport. That status quo could be about to change in view of the pandemic, and if it does then I'll be in support of those changes as they will be organic and the result of the economic situation within the sport, not engineered to suit a particular preference.
Your argument seems to be that the 'best' players aren't winning as often as they should be - which strikes me as an oxymoron -  and so something should be done to make it easier for them to win so that they're able to play more often against other 'best' players or that the 'best' players should exclusively play each other more often. My argument is if they were that good you'd have nothing to complain about because they'd be winning far more often than they do and subsequently meeting each other more often, which leads me to conclude that these 'best' players that you speak of just aren't really that good or that instead of thinking of the best players in terms of ability it would be better to think of the best players in terms of form instead.
Having followed the game for a number of years now, that makes a lot of sense to me. There is tremendous volatility in the rankings, and as I've mentioned before that has to do with consistency. Consequently, you can have a player ranked in the top 10 on the back of a great twelve months playing against a player outside the top 100 because they've had a lean twelve months and that kind of scenario is not uncommon -  those two same players could then play each other the following year with the roles reversed. That has nothing necessarily to do with ability and Siegemund is a good example of that - by your logic she should have got nowhere near the last 8 of this tournament but I disagree. Her ranking is lower than it could be due to injuries - her career-high ranking is 27 and so it's not that much of a jump to make the last 8 if, as was the case, she plays well and/or her opponents play poorly. Also, the rankings as I'm sure you know take into account all surfaces whilst Siegemund's best surface by far is clay. If she were to be ranked according to clay-court performance only, I imagine her career-high ranking would be higher than 27.
I think the reality is there's only a few players that really stand out, and even then they'll still lose matches that they should win - something I'm happy to see because it would be boring otherwise - and that the rest all move about in the rankings as their ability levels are similar but their form changes, to the extent that the rankings are almost obsolete as a measure of ability. I look at rankings - with the exception of the very best players - as a measure of form, and so your idea of siphoning off the highest ranked players to play against each other isn't valid to my mind because ranking isn't exclusively synonymous with ability.
There are two things that come to mind that could potentially 'solve' inconsistent results where much lower ranked players regularly beat higher ranked players -  firstly, more players that are head and shoulders above the rest and secondly a two-year ranking list instead of one which should lead to more stable rankings. One thing I am certain of though is that inconsistency isn't caused by an inability to hold serve -  in the men's game there are lots of service holds which more or less cancel each other out, and in the women's game there are lots of breaks and these more or less cancel each other out.
Finally, the consistency in the men's game that you consider to be a benchmark I would argue is the result of a freak situation where three of the best players ever to play the game have been playing at the same time - players who are head and shoulders above the rest. It's therefore no surprise that the men's game looks more consistent as it's usually one of these three players that wins all the big titles, and once again at this tournament as I mentioned previously the final was between the top two seeds. Take those players away and arguably the men's game would have been as inconsistent in the last 15 or 20 years as the women's game has been.

The more I think about it the more I think the ranking system is the cause of 'inconsistent' results and unpredictability - or at least the perception of it. A lot of results wouldn't be seen as inconsistent or unpredictable if there were no rankings - the rankings make you think that a certain player should be beating another player even if there isn't much between them in ability and that even translates to the betting.
I mentioned a two-year ranking list as a preferable alternative to the current one-year list - that would definitely make the rankings more stable and another thing I would do is look at the ranking points given out at Grand Slams. The thing that skews rankings more than any other - certainly in a one year list - is a good Grand Slam performance. The best example of that I can think of is Cecchinato - he had a great run at the French Open a couple of years ago which propelled him into the top 30 and that one good tournament performance meant he stayed at least at that ranking for a year. He's done next to nothing since and so it's probably fair to say that he was ranked higher than he should have been. One great performance at one big tournament shouldn't have such a big impact on your ranking.

I'm always happy to discuss but the problem is we fundamentally disagree. You think something has to change, whereas I broadly believe it's fine the way it is. At the moment, whether you like it or not, the sport is run as a meritocracy - albeit with an element of protectionism in the form of rankings and seedings which give promising players the chance to solidify their position at the top of the sport and create a legacy - and that's the way it should be in my opinion as there's a balance between every player getting a chance to compete whilst giving an advantage to the very best players which should mean they get to the end of tournaments and then face each other for the best spectacle.
At this tournament, despite having the advantage of being seeded a number of the very best players failed to perform and so lost to other very capable players, regardless of what those players were ranked and besides which rankings change - who's to say that Podoroska for example won't be much more highly ranked next year and then with the benefit of hindsight her run here won't look as strange. I think it's insulting and demeaning to those players to say that it 'stank' for them to go as far as they did - today's random players way down the rankings could go on to much better things tomorrow. If anything stank, it was the poor performance of the 'very best' players and I'm sure that most of them would agree with that if they were being honest - Svitolina for a start held her hands up to playing particularly badly.
I'm not at all interested in, nor do I believe in the idea of an elite group of players playing each other all the time. For a start, if such a system did exist, then how would the likes of Swiatek and other young players get a chance to make it. At the moment, tennis works like a free-market economy and as such it's been the case now for quite some time that the sport can support the top 128 ranked players that are needed in the current Grand Slam format. There are players below that ranking - those that are emerging, declining or simply not good enough to be ranked any higher, but in those cases some kind of sponsorship is usually needed to continue in the sport. That status quo could be about to change in view of the pandemic, and if it does then I'll be in support of those changes as they will be organic and the result of the economic situation within the sport, not engineered to suit a particular preference.
Your argument seems to be that the 'best' players aren't winning as often as they should be - which strikes me as an oxymoron -  and so something should be done to make it easier for them to win so that they're able to play more often against other 'best' players or that the 'best' players should exclusively play each other more often. My argument is if they were that good you'd have nothing to complain about because they'd be winning far more often than they do and subsequently meeting each other more often, which leads me to conclude that these 'best' players that you speak of just aren't really that good or that instead of thinking of the best players in terms of ability it would be better to think of the best players in terms of form instead.
Having followed the game for a number of years now, that makes a lot of sense to me. There is tremendous volatility in the rankings, and as I've mentioned before that has to do with consistency. Consequently, you can have a player ranked in the top 10 on the back of a great twelve months playing against a player outside the top 100 because they've had a lean twelve months and that kind of scenario is not uncommon -  those two same players could then play each other the following year with the roles reversed. That has nothing necessarily to do with ability and Siegemund is a good example of that - by your logic she should have got nowhere near the last 8 of this tournament but I disagree. Her ranking is lower than it could be due to injuries - her career-high ranking is 27 and so it's not that much of a jump to make the last 8 if, as was the case, she plays well and/or her opponents play poorly. Also, the rankings as I'm sure you know take into account all surfaces whilst Siegemund's best surface by far is clay. If she were to be ranked according to clay-court performance only, I imagine her career-high ranking would be higher than 27.
I think the reality is there's only a few players that really stand out, and even then they'll still lose matches that they should win - something I'm happy to see because it would be boring otherwise - and that the rest all move about in the rankings as their ability levels are similar but their form changes, to the extent that the rankings are almost obsolete as a measure of ability. I look at rankings - with the exception of the very best players - as a measure of form, and so your idea of siphoning off the highest ranked players to play against each other isn't valid to my mind because ranking isn't exclusively synonymous with ability.
There are two things that come to mind that could potentially 'solve' inconsistent results where much lower ranked players regularly beat higher ranked players -  firstly, more players that are head and shoulders above the rest and secondly a two-year ranking list instead of one which should lead to more stable rankings. One thing I am certain of though is that inconsistency isn't caused by an inability to hold serve -  in the men's game there are lots of service holds which more or less cancel each other out, and in the women's game there are lots of breaks and these more or less cancel each other out.
Finally, the consistency in the men's game that you consider to be a benchmark I would argue is the result of a freak situation where three of the best players ever to play the game have been playing at the same time - players who are head and shoulders above the rest. It's therefore no surprise that the men's game looks more consistent as it's usually one of these three players that wins all the big titles, and once again at this tournament as I mentioned previously the final was between the top two seeds. Take those players away and arguably the men's game would have been as inconsistent in the last 15 or 20 years as the women's game has been.