Tennis Analysis 2009 – Part 3

We previously looked at the year 2009 for ATP tennis, but now we will look at how well the model has gone over the past 5 years (since 2005). Note that this is based on head to head betting only and not set betting. Results are found below with commentary under that.

A lot of things can be discussed here. Note that because of the “Federer Factor”, betting on tennis players with probabilities under 30% was not profitable. Likewise, bets on players with odds of 6.00 or more was not profitable, and most likely for the same reason. This same reason once again means that it is hard to distinguish between profitable bets for the overlays, as low probability players with large odds are also most likely to have a large overlay.

Better to analyse the results under SP Rules, which looks at a 5% min overlay for all probabilities greater or equal to 50%, and a minimum 25% overlay for all probabilities between 30 and 50%.

Here we get some good results. A total of 7.7% ROI is very very good. Profits are found virtually amongst all probability and odds ranges. Similarly, all overlays had a good profit. It is good to see that the %ROI increased as the overlay increased which is what we would want.

As expected grass court only barely managed to make a profit, whilst all other surfaces did very well. Previously in the forum we talked about grass court and how favourites are more likely to win. Bets perhaps should be adjusted for this, we will talk about this more soon.

When looking at the near bet probabilities of 20% to 30%, we can see that no minimum overlays are profitable. Best to leave all these alone. Even the very high 100%+ overlays have not been profitable.

When the probability is between 30% and 40%, we note that higher range overlays are indeed very profitable. One can suggest a minimum 25% of perhaps 40% overlay for probabilities in this range, which is basically the same as what has previously been suggested.

Interesting to look at is the results for when the probability is between 40% and 50%. Higher overlays generally have a greater return despite the low sample size which is good, but results show that any bet under 10% overlay is not profitable. Previously we suggested bets only when the overlay is 25% or above for this range, but it seems that a minimum of 10% or even 15% to be conservative is more accurate.

I am thinking of changing the suggested bets to be as follows based on the above information:

Prob 50%: min 5% overlay

Prob 40%-50%: min 15% overlay

Prob 30%-40%: min 25% overlay

Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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