Tennis betting

We offer a detailed guide to betting on tennis: you will not find ready-made betting strategies here, they are in our other materials. But you will understand how to analyze a match, where to bet on tennis and whether it is worth doing it at all. Go!

Tennis betting at bookmakers

Tennis competes for second place in bookmaker lines, constantly trying to move hockey and eSports, which has grown dramatically in 2021. In most bookmakers, tennis is a very popular discipline, which is given a wide line and, often, deep painting.

What can you bet on in a tennis match:

• Bets on the outcome of the game; 
• Bets on handicap by sets and games; 
• Bets on total sets and games; 
• Bets on individual totals by games; 
• Bets on exact accounts; 
• Same bets for the first set.

Some bookmakers give bets immediately on the second set of the match. At major tournaments, you can also find an additional list: bets on match statistics (aces, double errors), bets on the exact score for games in a set and even the exact score of individual games, bets on whether there will be a tie-break or a score of 40-40, bet on total breaks, combined outcomes and much more.

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Tennis is well developed in almost all bookmakers, it is easier to list where it is bad. But if we single out the TOP of 2021, we would name the grandees Marathonbet, 1X Stake, Melbet, Winline and Fonbet. Of the lesser-known offices, 888.ru, League of Betting and Zenitbet have very good tennis lines. Even during the tennis lull, all these bookmakers find something to give in line, and in the height of the 2021 season, the selection of events is simply luxurious.

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Also in these bookmakers you can find the best list, reaching up to 200-300 outcomes at major tournaments (French Open, U.S. Open, etc.) and a more than acceptable list of 50-100 bet options at the average level of the competition. The level of margin from 2-3% for the main line of major events to 6-7% for the list of the most unpopular challengers. 

From foreign offices we can traditionally recommend "Pinnacle" with their best margin in the world, and also reliable and world renowned bookmakers "Bet365" and "William Hill" with an amazing selection of events and exclusive bets.

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An important note: in tennis, players often refuse to participate in the match due to injury or personal reasons. Each bookmaker has its own special rules for calculating a bet in such a situation. Some bookmakers calculate the opponent's automatic victory, others - a return, and still others calculate depending on which part of the match was played at the time of the refusal. Be sure to check the rules of a particular office before placing bets on tennis.

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How to bet on tennis

First you need to make friends with several large portals that provide tennis statistics. There are quite a few cool resources now, but everything you need to make tennis predictions can be found in one place - on UTS. They only cover men's tennis, but they haven't come up with anything better. To view women's statistics, you can use, for example, the tennis explorer. 

To make tennis predictions or when developing your own working betting strategy, you need to consider the following factors:

• Athlete ratings

The official ATP and WTA rankings are informative enough to assess the overall level of athletes in a career or a particular season. But at the moment it very often happens that the underdogs defeat the big favorites, yielding tens and even hundreds of positions to them in the rating. This is due to the fact that it is impossible to keep the best shape all season. Recessions, dips are inevitable, at a certain moment of the season the underdog may simply be better prepared physically.

This is where the ELO rating comes to the rescue - an assessment of the player's current form based on the latest results. On the UTS player page, you can find information about the player's current place in both the official ATP rankings and the ELO rankings. David Goffin severely worsened his results in 2021, and despite the fact that he remains quite high in the overall rating (13), his real rating dropped to 32nd position in the world. Women's ELO rating can be found on other resources, for example, tennis abstract.

• Current form

In addition to ELO ratings, which fairly objectively reflect the current form of athletes, it can be assessed by gaming statistics in recent games. It is not only the results of these games that matter here, but other indicators as well. It is worth assessing how easy it is for an athlete to win, how quickly he completes games, sets and matches. 

From the statistics, the percentage of hits on the first ball and the percentage of points won on the first serve are of key importance. Also important is the number of aces, unforced and double errors. Compare these figures with those when the athlete was in objectively good shape. 

In general, shape in tennis is a very tricky thing. Players perform in cycles of about 3-4 weeks: they reach a peak, then a natural decline sets in. The best form is traditionally gained for the main tournaments, but sometimes injuries and other troubles interfere, it is difficult to make predictions and bets on it. 

Fatigue, the number of matches in the last two weeks, flights, acclimatization, sleep disruptions and training schedule due to jet lag. This is especially pronounced in older athletes.

All on the same UTS, you can find all these statistics, as well as run it through a variety of filters depending on the time period, tournament, opponent's characteristics, coverage, tournament level and many other indicators. You can even build graphs that clearly show in which component the athlete is sagging right now.

• Court coverage

There are only a few athletes in the world who perform equally well on any surface. There are four types of surfaces in total - hard, grass, soil and carpet. Each floor has several subspecies, but we will not delve into such subtleties. 

Play on the carpet in the modern world is extremely rare, so we will consider only the first three types of flooring. Their main difference is in the speed and height of the ball rebound from them. This causes the convenience and inconvenience of surfaces for individual athletes. 

Tennis players with a strong serve prefer grass - there is the fastest and lowest bounce of the ball and rallies are completed in a couple of strokes, often even in one blow through ( ace). Endurance athletes with not very strong serve are usually good on clay - the slowest surface. Here, long draws are often tied up and you can enjoy the combination game. Hard is a universal coating, a cross between grass and soil, but in terms of qualities it is nevertheless closer to grass.

To assess the profile of a tennis player, go to his UTS page and look. On the left, you can find your “favorite” surface with the percentage of matches played on it. On the right, there is a breakdown of all surfaces a tennis player has played on during his career and the percentage of victories for each of them. Thus, Dominic Tim gravitates towards slow clay courts, playing 41% of all his matches and wins 74.2% of them.

• Motivation in the tournament

All tournaments are divided into levels, depending on the level of the athletes performing there. Roughly the same set of competitions is played every year. Major tournaments - TBS (Grand Slam Tournaments) - Wimbledon, Australian Open, French Open and U.S. Open. Also highly regarded among tennis players are the year-end final tournaments, the Olympic Tennis Tournament and the team competition - the Davis Cup for men and the Federation Cup for women. 

Each tournament has its own level of prestige based on the amount of prize money and rating points, which are given for passing it. To get to the top-rated tournaments with big prizes is the dream of most athletes. But not everyone succeeds in this. At the same time, high ranked players often use out-of-level tournaments as training.

In this regard, there are two unspoken rules:

• Players are not particularly keen on tournaments of the lowest level for themselves; 
• Players play 200% of their capabilities if they manage to break higher.

The major league stands apart - absolutely everything is laid out at the main tournaments. Also an exception are tournaments in which the player went far last year and now defends the title or rating points. Another exception is tournaments “on home soil” - which are held in the country, or even better, in the athlete's hometown. In such tournaments, motivation is always increased.

You can study the list of tournaments on the "Events" tab on the player's page. After analyzing the levels of competition in which the player usually performs, you can try to make predictions on his motivation in the current tournament and find profitable bets.

• Personal meetings

The analysis of even the most ancient face-to-face encounters is of great importance in tennis. In team sports, even last year's personalities may not carry any information due to the fact that half of the teams have already changed. Tennis is not like that - the same people play against each other from year to year. 

The more extensive the history of personal meetings, the more conclusions you can make for a bet. It is important to assess the exact form in which the opponents approached the previous matches, to identify trends and patterns. Many players have comfortable and uncomfortable opponents, and the latter will still be bet underdogs by bookmakers if they are significantly inferior in the rating.

For men, comprehensive information on head-to-head games can be found on UTS. For women, more modest amounts of information are contained in the tennis explorer, tennis abstract or match stat.

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This is basic information to consider when analyzing a tennis match. In addition to the numbers, it is necessary to carry out a heuristic analysis of the event for the most accurate assessment of the probabilities. When making predictions, it is useful to take into account the psychological component, watching the open profiles of players in social networks.

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Estimating probabilities

Over time, you will learn to automatically display the exact probabilities of outcomes, and for a start, you can use the hints. The same UTS and other portals, for example, tennisprediction, provide forecasts and estimates of probabilities based on their own ratings and algorithms. You can build your strategy on finding outcomes that differ greatly from the odds and make value bets.

For example, UTS estimates the victory of Monteiro over Delbonis at 40%. We look at what the bookmaker has to offer, and we see a delicious value odds for a bet of 2.70.

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And using the BetMAX browser extension, we find the coefficient five points better - 2.75. Total, 2.75 x 40% = 1.1 - a great rate with 10% value.

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Pros and cons of tennis betting

Tennis betting: pros

• A large number of matches - the tennis season lasts almost all year round with a short break in December. Matches take place almost every day, you will always find what to predict for

• Many big market tournaments with high limits, low margins and stable odds

• A large amount of statistics in the public domain. As well as analytics, rates and forecasts from experts

• Singles sports are easier to analyze, because in them everything depends on only one person, and not on the whole team

Tennis betting: cons

• The match is often delayed. Sometime for a few hours, until the athletes who are earlier in the schedule finish the game. And once and for a day or two, for example, because of the rain

• It is also unclear when the match will end - the world record for the duration of a tennis match is 3 (!!) days and more than 11 hours of net time

• Increased likelihood of fixed matches - in a one-on-one game, agreement is much easier

• Having received damage, the player is removed from the match and the tournament. In some bookmakers, because of this, you can get an offensive loss of the bet

Conclusion

We dare to hope that you had an interesting and informative time reading this material, and now you know a little more about tennis betting. In general, it is a very exciting and dynamic sport, it is even interesting to watch it. And when you get into the rhythm and constantly follow the entire pool of top tennis players, you also begin to better understand many processes. 

There are a lot of highlights in tennis - powerful comebacks, sensational underdog wins with odds of 5+ , unexpected departures due to injuries. All this can and should be used in your strategies. You just need to understand the issue a little and not be afraid to make predictions in a new sport for yourself.