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Betting on Tennis: The In’s and Out’s

So much of a sports makers money comes from bets on the big sports of football and basketball. And sports like tennis are often overlooked. But take a while to study the form of the players, the surfaces played on and the rules, and you'll see that there's plenty of value for profitable bets.

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Introduction: Betting on Tennis

So why are you not betting on tennis? Look at any typical sports bettors calendar and you’ll see the sports like football and basketball receive the lion’s share of sports bets. But there are other sports, like tennis for example, which are often overlooked. And yet they hold tremendous value if only a sports bettor could convince himself to spend some time and energy doing research and broadening their horizons. Probably the main factor that makes sports bettors reluctant to wager on tennis, is a lack of understanding of the game. This makes for a frustrating viewpoint. When you consider that the majority of sports wagers are lost, then tennis, with just two players, hold a higher odds of success than say, football or basketball. Betting on tennis can certainly offer some great jackpot winning strategies.

Bet on tennis at the Bovada Sportsbook

Before Anything, Get Familiar With Tennis Odds

As with all sports betting, knowing and understanding the odds is of crucial importance before any betting takes place. As you’re probably aware by now, we obsess about finding value, as opposed to simply backing a possible winner. Though there is any number of ways of representing odds all over the world, we’ll stick with the US version, the “money-line”, as it’s probably the most familiar form known to bettors. As with all types of sports betting, the risk vs reward, along with the favorites and the underdogs should always be taken into account before putting down any hard cash on a game of tennis.

Find Your Specialty

As with many sports, tennis also has a calendar, where certain events are played at certain times. This will give you plenty of choices for betting material. We suggest that you study each separate competition, and the players taking part. In the beginning, you can’t hope to understand trends in tennis, so just concentrate on the players and the events. To simplify things even further, choose men’s or woman’s events. Also, focus on either Grand Slam or Circuit competitions in order to refine your knowledge.

Betting on Tennis: Shop for Sports-books

This is something every sports bettor should be doing as a matter of course. It’s like you’re after a new TV. You would most definitely search many different sources until you found the best offer. And so it is with sports-books. Take your time and check the odds with at least four or five different online sports-books. Most will have more or less the same variations of odds, but there’s always the possibility of some having either higher or lower. Essentially, these differences affect your bottom line rather than the amounts you could win. For example, you’re betting on Roger Federa to win a match. Three separate book-makers have him listed at -200, -215 and -185. So in this case, there’s little point in paying $200 or $215 for a $100 payout, when you could pay $185 for the same risk. Saving money like this will help increase your jackpot winning chances.

Keep Track of Your Spend

This tip isn’t just for tennis. It’s something every sports bettor should be doing as a matter of course. You should always be tracking the in-flow and out-flow of betting money. We included this tip, because the game of tennis is pretty fast in pace. Meaning that there are lots of different opportunities for wagering. And it’s simple to lose track of your spending. Keep in mind, that with tennis, you’ll more often than not be playing the money-line. This means that your win and loss records are of little consequence. For example, in one game you might lose 60% of all bets, and yet still emerge ahead with a healthy profit. Likewise, you could win 60% of all bets, and yet still come out with a loss, simply because the last big bet on the favorite was lost.

As an aside, tracking your bank roll is a good habit. It’ll stop you from falling into bad decisions.

Betting on Tennis: Seek the Unseeded

This is where you’ll find real value in tennis. But it does require some work on your part. You’ll need to spend some time doing research. Remember that seeding is done over the course of a year. This means that it’s not always easy to see when a player is on a hot or cold streak. Tournaments tend to favor those players with great performance, but looking further down the list and it becomes apparent that the lower seeds get disproportionately higher odds.

Another factor to bare in mind is that the seeded players are often big favorites over the un-seeded even when a side by side comparison doesn’t support the odds. So your job is to find which matches favor the unseeded player. And it’s there that you’ll find valuable.

Know Your Tennis Servers Strengths

A popular form of tennis betting is that of betting game by game. Therefore it follows, that the player with the strongest serve, has a better chance of winning. If the better server starts a game, then there’s a much greater chance they’ll be victorious if they’re a stronger server. Conversely, a weaker server is on the way to getting a beating, even when they are in control of the serve. We suggest that you spend some time analyzing the serving skills of the players involved.

Betting on Tennis: Study the Court Surface

These days tennis isn’t only played on grass. There is a range of different surfaces including clay, grass, and hard court. As you can imagine, different players tend to favor different surfaces. Of course, a top-level payer can still ace everything on all surfaces. But if you take a deep dive into their numbers, you’ll start to see that there is one surface in favor of all the others. Though it’s probably unlikely that an unseeded player will beat a seeded one, the actual service could be a contributing factor and end up having a significant impact on the game.

Thanks to the internet, a quick Google Search will give you all the required details about which players perform better on which surfaces. What you’re looking for is an underdog who’s on his favorite surface, facing a better opponent who’s playing on their worst.

Learn the Styles of Tennis

The more you spend time watching tennis, then the more you’ll get to understand the game and the various playing styles. There are players who are all about the opening serve. Others like to make their opponents rum all over the tennis court. Some are unbeatable at the net. Yes, it’s going to take some time to be able to thoroughly understand the differences in technique, but at least all the relevant information is readily available. On the whole, you can add this to your overall strategy for selecting underdogs, or what we refer to as “value picks”.

Conclusion: Betting on Tennis

We suspect that tennis will never become the big sporting betting platform as other sports are. Games like football and the NFL will continue to attract huge wagers. Essentially they have the possibility to be jackpot games. But that’s no reason why you shouldn’t be betting on tennis. As with all other sports, you’re looking to capitalize on this under-bet sport. Because the game features just two players, you will need to spend some time getting to know them better.

As a sports bettor, we can’t see tennis ever taking over from the bigger targets. Your other sources of sports betting income will be there to sustain you for the sporting year. But on the other hand, don’t be so quick to right off tennis just because you don’t understand it. Have a punt. You might surprise yourself and actually like it. And don’t be afraid of winning. Sportsbooks won’t ban you.