adastra

I really did not expect Sinner to be this stupid. Well, maybe behind the scenes Djokovic offered him free coaching after his retirement (or something similar) if he manages to win...

Even assuming equal motivation, 3.0 would still be decent odds for Rune against Sinner. Rune isn't really injured anymore and likes indoor hard. Also, Djokovic was actually slightly better vs Sinner and Rune was just slightly worse against Djokovic. And let's be real here: Sinner probably wants to maximize his chances of winning the title and Djokovic is the most difficult player to beat here (with Medvedev clearly being #2, ahead of the rest of the field), especially in the final. Maybe even many Italian fans would prefer Sinner losing tonight, could be funny scenes if it does happen. I don't expect Sinner doing an obvious tank, but playing with a bit less energy and accuracy/focus increases his chances of losing by a lot in a sport of such small margins.

3.70 are terrible odds for this. Just by using the Betfair Exchange, multiplying all odds would lead to a value which is about 9 % higher (and there might be better odds available on specific bookmakers, sometimes). Let me explain... The individual available odds right now (I know that some of the lines might have change a little, but let's ignore this here) are: 1.44 (Tiafoe), 1.54 (Muchova), 1.43 (Medvedev), 1.30 (Sabalenka). For each value, due to the fee for winning bets, we need to apply the simple operation 1 + (odds - 1)* 0.98, leading to 1.431 * 1.529 * 1.421 * 1.294 = 4.025. I've been doing this for years, being profitable over thousands of bets. Low single-digit percentages are a realistic average (per bet) return on investment, certainly not 10 % or more. Picking individual profitable bets is already hard enough. By betting on accumulators you guys are making sure to basically have no chance of being a winning player, even over medium samplesizes! Better try to pick individual valuebets which often can be found on exchanges (but also look for other bookmakers).

McDonald had to retire in his last match due to injury, this is why the odds are what they are and I'm skipping this one, no idea how healthy/injured he is now.

What exactly is great about this? Amazon was way better than what I'm experiencing right now. They are showing just 2 (!) ATP matches right now while about 8 are going on - the worst Grand Slam streaming service ever, and it's not even close. Or am I missing something?

Regarding Djokovic leading 6-0 (or 7-0?) in the H2H against Fritz: Despite Djokovic being a quite heavy favourite in this match, the H2H is a bit misleading. 3 of the matches were on clay (where Fritz is weak) and two were on indoor hard (Fritz is weaker indoors compared to outdoors). Their last match (on indoor hard, end of last season) went to two tiebreaks (which Djokovic won) and their only match on outdoor hard was a five-setter! Additionally, my impression is that Djokovic's ability to return big serves has declined a bit. Furthermore, currently Fritz's level - in general - can be considered close to his historical peak, although he did play quite a lot recently (possible exhaustion), but on the other hand Djokovic might still be a bit rusty after a long break (looking good so far, though, but weak opponents). Overall a bet on Fritz for me (average odds of 4.59). And well... Alcaraz is clearly a heavy favourite against Purcell, but he did have quite a few off-days as of late... dangerous to bet on him. Right now watching Hurkacz vs Popyrin, Hurkacz dominating so far, I have a bet on a regular bookmaker (= no exchange) which is rare (William Hill, 1.333) because dozens of bookmaker don't accept my action anymore. Mentioning this as yesterday my bet on Mannarino vs McDonald was voided there because the whole match needs to be completed. And on the same day my bet on Hurkacz vs Lajovic (on Betfair exchange) was voided as well! Really annoying...

Djokovic will probably win, but with odds close to 5.0, Ruud is the play. The odds are so high because of a combination of factors and overall it makes more sense that Ruud is a bit underrated here. Some people might not have watched Alcaraz in the semi and / or the previous matches. He played way below his usual level in the first two sets and still managed to be in a winning position after two sets, having played slightly better overall, despite (according to Alcaraz himself) cramps having started at the end of set 2. Obviously sets 3 and 4 are very misleading, so just looking at the score gives people a wrong impression. Also, while being a very strong clay court player, this is Djokovic's worst surface and Ruud's best, especially considering the size of the court (Ruud likes some additional space). Additionally, there is a chance Djokovic will have some injury problems in the final, like he did in set 2 against Alcaraz, there was something wrong with his forearm (?) and he had to take a medical timeout. [This shows us how little people pay attention in general, literally nobody mentions this, also on other forums.] With the current odds, there actually would be value on Djokovic if it was the Australian Open oder Wimbledon, but here Ruud is the underrated player. By the way, I disagree that Djokovic and Ruud are similar from the baseline, Ruud hits with way more topspin whereas Djokovic is more balanced in terms of forehand / backhand and a bit more attacking.

Thanks to Cerundolo, my betting day was saved! To be fair, sets 3 and 4 could have gone either way. However, the odds I got (average of 2.23, after exchange commissions) were suspiciously high (would have taken 2.00 happily!), and in such a case quite often you have overlooked something, typically an injury, but maybe it just wasn't the case here. I'm having an excellent French Open so far, actually won all days, albeit most of the time with a relatively small profit. In terms of the remaining two matches today, I don't have any bets. Almost decided to bet on Zverev when the odds were closer to 1.50. Tiafoe is a favourable matchup for him, but I'm still not fully convinced that Zverev has reached a level similar to last year's French Open yet. So, I did not pull the trigger and with the current odds, this is a no-bet match for me. Also, Dimitrov-Altmaier seems to have rather sharp odds; rooting for Dimitrov, though, as I do have an outright bet with very high odds on him lol.

Is Cerundolo slightly injured or something? In terms of odds, Fritz is the slight favourite, but I think it should be the other way around.

I managed to get effective 58.8 for Tommy Paul to win it all before the Tsitsipas-Khachanov match started. Strangely the market seemed to assume Khachanov being a significantly better player than Paul which I don't think is true. Such a bet as well as Tommy Paul beating Djokovic at 14.x (or even a bit lower) might still be value as we cannot completely ignore injury concerns. I don't like the idea of betting on Paul to win a set, though, as some of such matches will have Djokovic suffring from injury and some of such bets would be void due to Djokovic retiring. By the way, I don't think at all of Paul being a great server or a weaker version of Fritz. Fritz has a much better serve and is good at hitting powerful winners whereas Paul is better at defending and much better at creating angles (which could trouble an injured Djokovic). Yeah, betting on Paul is largely betting on Djokovic getting somewhat injured, the most likely result is 3-0 Djokovic.

1/1.40 + 1/3.05 = 1.042 For a surebet, you would need this value to be under 1.000. A single bookmaker's odds always lead to a value bigger than 1. You should always look for the best odds available, by either comparing with other bookmakers or using exchanges. And despite what others say, it does not make mathematical sense (in terms of the expected value of your return on investment) to use accumulators as they can't be better than using invididual bets. Unless, of course, you are bad at picking value bets and accumulators leading to a smaller overall betting volume. Or if you just want to gamble, I guess, as you always can get lucky. [Well, even if you have positive expectation, the gambling component is huge as you need thousands of bets to draw meaningful conclusions.] For today, I've picked Tsitsipas to beat Khachanov at effective odds of 1.431. Both play a bit above their typical level, but similar to the US Open (albeit less extreme), Khachanov again got lucky with opponents getting injured. The clear victory over Korda is less impressive than it looks on paper, Korda started to have injury problems in the 4th set against Hurkacz (this is why I'm still convinced my bet was a good one, despite the close outcome) and against Khachanov he even had to retire in the end. Also, while Tsitsipas tends to beat players he should beat (much like Ruud in the US Open against Khachanov), Khachanov has a terrible record as an underdog. Of course, he does have a chance, but in a best of 5 format, I like my odds for a Tsitsipas victory.

And @neilovan and others: What makes you guys bet on accumulators? Why not pick the best odds available for each individual match?

For the fourth round, Korda at 1.60 (or even better, possible on exchanges) seems like a steal, watched Hurkacz's last two matches, they were quite low quality (almost lost against Shapovalov who made a ton of stupid mistakes, that match could have gone either way). Sonego played a bit better (until set #4), another match he could have lost. And Korda is in strong form.

He might have been a mess in that 1 1/2 sets, but he obviously did well in most of the countless other sets in the last few weeks. In terms of the odds, maybe up to 1.40 would have been "proper odds" for Felix as he is a bad matchup for Tiafoe who tends to get a good boost from strong crowd support (which is obviously bigger in the USA). At the time when we wrote our initial posts, the odds for Felix were up to 1.50 (maybe beven slightly higher).

Unfortunately, I did not watch much of Tiafoe's and Felix's matches, but I did watch most of Tiafoe - Draper and Tiafoe was really lucky in that one. Most of the close line calls went in his direction and Draper was very unclutch on break points (0/7). Also, they had a few complete mishits, it wasn't a high quality match. Usually, Felix should be even more of a favourite (expect Tiafoe to dislike Felix's serve), but obviously the big elephant in the room is his potential exhaustion from all these matches. Overall, though, I do not think that 2.75 are good odds for Tiafoe (and you would get better odds on exchanges, at least for this match), I'm rather leaning Felix, but there is quite high uncertaincy due to unknown level of fatigue (Felix is very fit and has been relatively unaffected so far, but this can change in any match from now on). Regarding Felix, did anyone notice any fatigue or even an indicator of injury or illness (e.g. coughing) in his last match? (Yes, I'm a bit surprised by the odds, a bit too high for Felix).

Maybe we should focus on information regarding visible or potential physical problems as tennis is such a physical sport and performance obviously can decrease dramatically due to injuries. Also, while recent results are available on many websites, such information is not so easy to get, you need to watch matches (does the movement change? what happens during medical timeouts?) or pick it up somewhere else, e.g. internet forums. And it's not just the player itself but also the opponents in recent matches which are interesting. Here I'm wondering: Is Karan Khachanov the luckiest player ever in a Grand Slam? He was about to be 2-1 behind against Jack Draper until Draper got an injury which made him retire from the match. Then, he won in 5 sets against a physically struggling Carreno Busta who already had a long medical timeout with a physio helping out in the match before. And then he got lucky to play against a Nick Kyrgios who very obviously had a physical problem (movement/calf) and took an early medical timeout. So, I'm not that impressed by Khachanov's performance, he should not have reached this stage of the tournament. Ruud's level is generally higher, even on hard court and he tends to beat players he should beat. In terms of Carlos Alcaraz, it seems more of a guessing game how much he might struggle due to fatigue. Maybe he will recover surprisingly well due to being just 19 years old and very fit. But this is not guaranteed and the likelihood of him getting injured within the match should be higher than for other players who don't have such impressive, but also risky movement around the court.