Thursday, October 19, 2006

Tennis trading return

Daily Result: £215.37

With no cricket from the Champions Trophy today I turned my attention to the ATP Masters event from Madrid. With the poor matches earlier in the cricket tournament I'd nearly abandoned it a few days ago in favour of the tennis. And after netting a nice profit today it's tempting to do it again tomorrow instead of the New Zealand v Sri Lanka game.

The Madrid Maters is being shown on Sky and, inbetween getting some work and writing done, I dipped in and out of 6 matches throughout the day - some for as little as a game or two, others for longer. Despite the encouraging daily profit it nearly all went pear-shaped before things really got started.

Roddick v Berdych was where I nearly came undone. And, as is often the case in potential tennis losses, it was due to a player injury. As you might expect from the two big servers both players had held their serves in the first set and Berdych had taken it on the tie break. Sometimes with the powerful servers the best strategy is simply to trade the serve and that's what I continued to to into the second set.

So at the end of a Berdych service game I layed him at 1.7 leaving me with over £200 red on him. Then I noticed his price drop a tick, and then another, and another. There was nothing showing on Sky pics but the commentary picked up on a possible Roddick injury which the footage then confirmed. Of course Berdych's price went into freefall, especially as the injury looked a bad one to the ankle, and I was left in an awful position as I chased the market down trying to reduce my £200 red on Berdych.

There's always a danger of overracting to these injuries incase they're not too bad but the market was jumping all over the place enough to make quick trades between the 1.4x and 1.1x points to reduce the red nicely while trying to listen to what Roddick was saying to medical staff. The key was he mentioned he'd carry on but if he was still feeling it he'd retire. Berdych's price plummeted again.

So the match continued but it was obvious Roddick was wasn't fit enough to play properly and a few more trades in the 1.3x range meant I was able to shift my red from Berdych to Roddick. At which point Roddick called for a match official. He clearly didn't want to play on but a bizarre conversation followed in which it appeared he had to or risk a $40k fine. Well I know the guy's loaded but he decided to carry on. Fair play, he didn't give up in an obvious manner but it was clear he wasn't properly fit and wasn't going to win. Even so, when the price on Berdych hit 1.01 I layed it a little to leave a small green on Roddick too just incase he managed to play through the injury and recover. Unlikely I know but for a few £ reduction in profit on a Berdych win I has happy to green out. Especially as I'd been looking at a potential £200 loss 10 minutes before.

Had a look into some other games after that. The one I was really interested in was the Djokovic v Murray match in the evening. Regular readers will know I like trading the Scottish Sulker's games and they have a tendancy to be profitable with nice market swings. Fact is though I was a bit knackered so only did part of the game before leaving myself with a small green either result. Shame really as seeing the result after the game it looks like it would have been another cracking match to trade with Murray losing after going into the 1.0x range!

Popular links: Betfair trading software .....Bet Angel.....Learn to trade

No comments: