Trading at the End of the First Set

Tennis ball resting on a racquet.

Trading Stats based on the end of the first set In the Tennis Profits members’ area there is a ‘Strategies’ section which reveals a selection of tennis trading strategies. One of these strategies is around laying the winner of the first set under certain conditions, and resident trading expert Paul Shires discusses a variety of factors to consider when deciding whether or not to lay the first set winner. In this article, I am going to look at some key end of first set stats for different players which, when combined with Paul’s insights, have the potential to give us a real trading edge. The stats are based on the last two years up to and including 25 September 2025. The big advantage of using two-year stats is that we tend to get decent sample sizes for individual players; the downside is that those players who are either improving quickly, …

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ATP Tour: Top Ten Player Analysis

The ATP Tour: a look at the current top ten players In my last article I discussed ‘Pressure Points’ on the WTA and looked at percentage chances of winning the game from certain scorelines in the first set of matches, writes Dave Renham. If you missed it, you can read that here. Those percentages were based on averages across all WTA tour matches. For the first part of this article, I am going to revisit Pressure Points but on the men’s main (ATP) tour. Pressure points refer to points in a service game when the server faces the imminent danger of losing their serve. This includes defending breakpoints, as well as situations where losing the next point would put them in a breakpoint scenario. Hence the following eight scores count as pressure points: 0-30, 15-30, 30-30, 0-40, 15-40, 30-40, 40-40 and 40-A.   Overall ATP Pressure Point performance Below is …

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Diving into WTA Game Score Stats

Female tennis player about to serve.

Breaking down some WTA stats and percentages In this article I will focus on the women’s game (WTA) as. from a trading perspective, it tends to give us more options and opportunities, writes Dave Renham. Specifically, I am going to look at different game scorelines from over 1000 WTA matches and break down the percentage chances for both the server and the returner on certain scorelines. The data focus on games within the first set up to 6-6. So, let’s crack on. First point of the game (1st set only) I have looked at over 9000 individual games within first sets, so this will include data for the first game of the set, the last game of the set (excluding the 13th game / tie break), and anything in between. I’ll start by sharing the percentages in terms of who wins the first point within each game:     It’s no …

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US Open and ChatG_TP

Tennis ball on the line of a tennis court.

Let’s start with the caveats, writes Matt Bisogno. I am not a tennis expert, though I do know some things about it (more every week) and have a good grasp on how to use data most of the time. And, for its part, ChatGPT is still prone to hallucination even when expressly instructed not to. But having fun with data is in my DNA and so, with the US Open inbound, I thought I’d share a little bit of my own play. The most important caveat is caveat emptor: buyer beware, every man/woman for him/herself. Wimbledon fun It started with a similar exercise I undertook before Wimbledon began. On that occasion, I wasn’t strict enough with my prompts while using ChatGPT, an AI chatbot with some impressive abilities as well as some annoying shortcomings. It has been programmed to favour speed and a complete answer over taking time and flagging …

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Profiting from the Men’s US Open

Trading a tennis match in a full stadium

Qualifying for the 2025 US Open starts on Monday 18th August with the first main draw games beginning on the 24th August. For the first part of this article, I will be focusing on pre-match betting, while the second part will discuss some possible trading strategies.   Betting Angles The good news for tennis punters (rather than traders) is there are plenty of different markets on offer across the multitude of bookmakers. There is the outright win market, which is obviously the most popular, but there is also handicap betting both for games and sets, individual set betting, number of games in a match, first set score, and so on. And some bookmakers offer more niche bets connected with aces or double faults, which player will break serve first, etc. The problem with betting with bookmakers is the margin, or overround, built into their odds. This is their profit figure …

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Trading Volatility in Tennis is Big Business

Hi, my name is Dave Renham. I am a maths teacher by day, and in my spare time I bet and trade on horse racing and tennis. I’ve written almost a thousand data-driven articles on racing, many of them on geegeez.co.uk, run by the co-owner of TennisProfits.com, Matt Bisogno. He asked me to share a ‘pilot’ article on tennis, and here it is… In this first article in a regular (approximately every three weeks) series, I am going discuss tennis betting and/or trading. In recent years tennis betting and trading has grown massively, driven mainly by the live in-play markets where traders can back and lay players as the game is in progress. On Betfair around 90% of all tennis betting comes from in-play betting as compared to pre-match betting, and I am guessing some of the pre-match betting is also traders entering a position. Tennis lends itself to trading …

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