In Play Tennis Betting
A positive experience betting on tennis begins with and hinges upon finding a safe, high-quality bookmaker. There are literally hundreds of tennis betting sites out there that would love to have you as a customer, so finding any old bookmaker is easy. Finding the best betting site for your individual needs is another matter altogether.
The good news is that’s where we come into play. In fact, helping you find a worthy betting site is one of our main jobs here at TennisBetting.com. We can talk about tennis betting and discuss strategy all day long, but it’s all moot if you don’t have a reliable place to bet on tennis and get paid when you win.
Let’s begin with a quick look at the sites we recommend first for tennis betting. We’ll discuss more about what all goes into finding a reputable bookmaker below.
In-play tennis betting operates in the same basic manner as standard betting with one key exception: you can place bets during matches as the game progresses. This means instead of making sure you have all your wagers placed before the match begins, you can tune in to watch the action live and place short-term wagers throughout the match. BTW, the latest LeoVegas in-play tennis offer is Australian Open. Bet £20 x 4 In-Play at odd of 1.25.
Best Tennis Betting Sites
In Play Tennis Betting Tips
Experience has shown us that the most efficient way to narrow down your options and find a site that will treat you well is to begin with a set of “must have” traits that are vital whether you are a complete beginner or a seasoned handicapper. This drastically narrows down the list of options and cuts through a lot of the noise you encounter when you go hunting for a safe betting site.
Must-have traits that we believe punters of all types should look for include:
- Is an established business that we can research (didn’t just pop up one day under mysterious ownership)
- Licensed by a legitimate regulatory body
- A successful, financially stable business
- Pays winners quickly
- Wide variety of tennis betting options
- Markets for big and small tennis tournaments alike
- Has a positive reputation among current and former customers
This list is just a starting point, but it works very well as a filter. At least 90% of the tennis betting sites you send through this filter will be eliminated, which leaves us with a much more manageable number of options.
The filter method has always served us well because it is so demanding. The fact is the vast majority of tennis betting sites never make it through the filter to even meet our minimum required standards. Fortunately for all of us, there are so many bookmakers out there that some do ultimately make it through the filter.
Betting sites that do not make it through the filter are discarded and put out of mind. What this means is we do not review, rank or recommend betting sites that cannot. If we even review a site, you can know that it has already made it through the filter and is – at a minimum – a safe place to bet online.
Choosing a Tennis Betting Site
Once we have whittled down the number of options to a manageable number, we can begin looking at more specific traits such as the types of bets on offer, number of markets offered each day, how the odds compare across various bookmakers and so on.
This helps us further refine our list of recommended betting sites by looking at them with a critical eye from the point of view of a tennis punter. Does the site cover tennis in great depth? Are the live events run on time so that you can watch tennis on TV and still bet in real time? Does the site offer frequent promotions? Is the interface easy to use?
Our list of additional questions goes on and on. In short, we want to be as demanding and as thorough as possible when reviewing betting sites. The sites that ultimately make the top of the list are those that make it through the entire process with the highest marks.
Admittedly, there is a degree of subjectivity once we get past the initial filter. Every betting site has its strong points, weak points and unique quirks. Your favourite tennis bookmaker isn’t always going to be the same pick as our favourite. That is to be expected. We do our best to make our lists as objective as possible, but there is always going to be some room for personal preference.
The most important thing from our point of view is to first point you only to betting sites that can be trusted. That way, the worst case scenario is you decide you’re not a fan and have no problems withdrawing your money to try a different site. We are confident in our picks, but we also understand that personal preferences are bound to vary.
Here are some of the other things we look at when ranking tennis betting sites.
One of the nice things about tennis betting is the wide variety in types of wagers you can place. Tennis betting is not just limited to picking the winner of a match or tournament. You can also bet on set totals, game totals, the set exact score and much more. This is advantageous because it isn’t just more fun to have options, but it provides you with more potential places to find an advantage.
The best tennis betting sites should at a minimum allow you to bet on the winner of a match, winner of a tournament, the set and game total, set score, choose between moneylines and spread bets, place accumulators and each-way bets, place double-result bets and props. The more variety in types of bets offered, the better.
A wide breadth of bet types is a good thing to see, but it’s even better if that variety extends beyond major tennis tournaments. You can count on every bookmaker offering a variety of bet types during the Grand Slams and other major tennis events, but the best betting sites for tennis provide a variety of markets on smaller tournaments at the ATP 250, WTA International and ITF-level competitions.
Carrying on from that last point is the number of betting markets offered each day. Again, you want to find a bookmaker that covers more than just the biggest tournament events. Covering all levels of ATP and WTA play is a good start. Ideally, the bookmaker also hosts markets for ITF events for both men’s and women’s tennis.
Bookmaker margin (a.k.a. “vig”) is how all bookmakers make their money. We won’t go into too much detail right now, but the main thing to know is the margin is baked into the odds you see posted for every wager. The higher the margin, the less generous the odds. The lower the margin, the more generous the odds. Less margin equals more money in your pocket over the long term.
One of your goals as a punter should be to always get the best odds for every bet you place. In a perfect world, it would be possible to keep an account open with every safe betting site on the planet and make every wager at the best possible odds every time. Managing your money, however, would be nearly impossible.
Instead, you can keep an account open with just a 2 or 3 bookmakers that are known for offering generous odds on average. Doing so allows you to compare the odds across a smaller number of bookmakers and be fairly confident that you’re not missing out on too much value elsewhere.
One of our ranking factors for tennis betting sites is how generous their odds are on average. Let’s work through an example to show how we figure this:
Decimal odds are the easiest format for calculating the margin, so we’ll stick with those for now. There are ways to calculate the margin for American and fractional odds as well, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
To calculate the margin, you divide 1 by the odds offered for each possible outcome. This gives you the implied winning percentage. Then, you add all percentages up and anything above 100% is the bookmaker’s margin. It sounds complicated, but it’s easy.
Here are the actual odds that were offered by two different bookmakers on a recent tennis match between Grigor Dimitrov and Nick Kyrgios:
Bookmaker A
- Grigor Dimitrov: 2.40
- Nick Kyrgios: 1.60
Bookmaker B
- Grigor Dimitrov: 2.30
- Nick Kyrgios: 1.61
Let’s start with Bookmaker A.
The odds offered on Grigor Dimitrov are 2.40. Divide 1 by 2.40 and we end up with an implied probability of 41.67%.
Now do the same thing for Nick Kyrgios. His odds are 1.60 so we divide 1 by 1.60 to end up with an implied probability of 62.5%.
Add them up and you get 104.17%.
This bet at Bookmaker A has a margin of 4.17%. If the bookmaker has priced the event correctly and attracts punters on both sides of the bet, it means this bookmaker will have a little more than 4% left over after paying off the winners with the losers. What’s left over is the bookmaker’s profit for this bet.
Now, let’s look at Bookmaker B.
Grigor Dimitrov is priced at 2.30, which works out to an implied probability of 43.48%.
Nick Kyrgios is priced at 1.61, which works out to an implied probability of 62.11%
Add them up and you get 105.59%.
This same bet at Bookmaker B has a margin of 5.59%.
Bookmaker A has the most generous odds for this bet overall.
Note: If you were betting on Kyrgios, you would still want to book that bet at Bookmaker B for the biggest payout. The point here is to look at the margin on average across many bets so that we can narrow down the list to a few bookmakers that tend to have lower-than-average margins.
Now, this is just for one bet out of thousands that are available at each bookmaker, so we wouldn’t rush to a conclusion based on this one example. However, we can keep margins in mind at all times and compare them across many bets until we get a general sense of how generous various bookmakers are compared to one another. Generous odds result in bigger payouts on average.
A strong in-play betting platform ranks fairly high for us as a ranking factor due to the nature of tennis at the professional level. Pre-market favourites tend to be priced so low that it is barely even worth betting on them due to the returns being so low compared to what you must risk.
Looking back at past results of major tennis tournaments, the one thing that jumps out is how dominant a small handful of players have been over the years. For example, if we look at 15 years’ worth of French Open singles champions, we see a total of five champions: Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Stan Wawrinka, Roger Federer, Gaston Gaudio and Juan Carlos Ferrero.
In-play betting provides us with more opportunities to find bets that are both shorter in nature and more evenly-matched. If you still want to bet on the favourite but he loses the first set, you can drop a quick bet on him to win the second set or even the next point at odds that will be more attractive.
In other words, in-play tennis betting provides you with more options and opportunities. These additional options give you more chances to find bets that are priced more in line with what you’re willing to risk relative to what you stand to win.
What we want to see from an in-play betting platform is widespread coverage of live tennis matches extending beyond just the big events. Within individual matches, we want to see many different markets such as set exact score, up-to-date match handicaps, set exact score, next game winner, next point winner and more.
A strong live streaming offering pairs nicely with in-play betting for obvious reasons. Whether you’re cable cutter and no longer have cable or a specific event isn’t shown on TV in your area, live streaming allows you to watch tennis matches in real time as they happen. The best tennis betting sites let you watch tennis matches for free even if you don’t bet on them as long as you have a funded account.
Live streaming is most useful when you want to bet on an event in real time but are unable to watch it on TV for whatever reason. It is possible to bet on events live without watching TV (live scoring updates are offered by all major bookmakers), but it is much easier to get a sense of the momentum when you can actually watch the players perform in real time.
When it comes to live streaming, we look for several things. First, we want streams that are as high quality as possible. Your internet connection will play some role in this, but it is ultimately up to the bookmaker to provide fast, reliable streams.
Second, we look for bookmakers that offer a wide range of live streaming events. The more matches they cover in real time, the better. We don’t just want to be able to watch Grand Slam events live; we want as many events as we can get.
Third, live streams should not be super delayed. All live streams are going to be delayed by a few seconds just to ensure the bookmaker can update the odds and prevent customers from placing bets before the bookmaker has even seen what happened, but overly long delays are no good.
Understanding the benefit of using data when assessing value bets in tennis is naturally, very useful, for successful betting.
While tennis punters tend to either be in one of two camps – ones who trust their eyes, and the others who use stats and data, even the former genre will almost always consider data in some way, shape or form.
Having established a website which supplies extensive tennis data, I thought I’d run through some of the various considerations when developing a tennis betting strategy and attempting to assess whether either player represents a value betting proposition.
Also included: Free Stats & Tennis Resources
Court Speed
When a match is listed on a website, or discussed on TV, it will be discussed as a generic surface, such as hard court, indoor hard court, clay court or grass court. These generic descriptions are often misleading, as the surface manufacturer, ball supplier and climatic conditions have a huge impact on the likely court speed.
One clay court can play considerably differently to another, for example. During the clay Masters season in the European spring, the event at Madrid (which is at some altitude) plays much quicker than the tournament in Monte Carlo.
With this in mind, non-clay courters who have a big serve are more likely to have success in Madrid than in Monte Carlo, which has conditions which suit return-orientated grinders.
Rafa Nadal loves slow conditions, and despite Madrid being in his home country, the quicker conditions haven’t been to his taste, recording a much worse record there than in those slower conditions in Monte Carlo.
Mathematically speaking, I am more concerned with the impact of the conditions than understanding the underlying reasons behind them. Looking at the aces per game mean, compared to the tour surface average, is useful, as is comparing service points won and service hold percentages with those tour mean numbers. Quicker condition venues will have higher figures for all three metrics.
Projected Hold Percentage
Neatly tying in with court speed is the projected hold percentage for a match-up. The reason why it neatly ties in, is due to the effect that court speed will have on these projected hold numbers.
Having understood the impact of court speed, modellers can use service/return points won percentages, or serve hold/break opponent figures to predict a projected hold percentage for both players, which can then be assessed to establish a model price for either player.
If these have a sizeable discrepancy from the available bookmaker prices, a bet can be considered, assuming there are no other external issues needing to be factored in.
Head To Head Data
In the media, a narrow h2h lead, such as 1-0, 2-0 or 2-1 is often mentioned as a positive for a given player. However, while it certainly cannot be a negative, tennis is a sport determined by very fine margins and having won one or two previous meetings isn’t a major issue at all – in fact, those media outlets pushing this as a valuable factor in pre-match assessment are often guilty of lazy journalism.
Previously, I discussed this with a former top ten player.
He had a disastrous head to head record against a particular opponent, yet he said that he felt that…
His h2h record had no bearing on his mental state prior to the matches.
He lost six consecutive deciding sets against that particular player (including numerous final set tiebreaks) and was in a dominant position in a number of these matches too. He said he felt very capable of beating that player and small margins determined his losses.
Understanding the context of head to head matches is key:
- Has the losing player lost a lot of tight matches in the series?
- Were they ranked much worse in those previous matches, before exhibiting current improvement?
- Did the leading player play matches on a surface which considerably favoured him?
All these factors need to be considered when using h2h data as part of any betting strategy, in addition to the player data from these previous match-ups.
In Play Tennis Betting Games
Injury & Fatigue Considerations
Many tennis match-ups have fitness concerns for one or both players.
These might be short-term injury (perhaps the player retired in a previous match) or long-term injury – we’ve seen that Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka, to give two recent examples, have had considerable difficulties even getting close to previous levels on their returns to tour.
Another concern here would be an arduous schedule, which could be from the current tournament (consecutive long matches, for example), or from previous weeks (perhaps consecutive runs to the latter stages in back-to-back events).
Travel considerations are also necessary to think about, particularly after Davis or Fed Cup weekends – frequently a player will have to fly halfway around the world and then have little time to acclimatise prior to their first-round match.
By building up a historical database of these situations it is possible to make a quantifiable judgement as to the effect of these various fitness concerns, which can then be used to make adjustments to basic model pricing.
Key Point Variance
The final point I would like to discuss is key point variance. In short, it is very rare for a player to be ‘clutch’ long-term, with the ability to convert and save break points usually rather variance-heavy.
For example, there are regularly players who have won 60% of their matches over a given time frame despite having won a 100% or fewer combined serve and return points won percentage. In the long run, this 100% figure should yield a 50% win rate, so that particular player is winning matches at a rate greater than their expectations, and in these spots, the player usually mean-reverts by losing some matches in the short or medium term.
Conversely, some players might look on the surface to be in a bad run of ‘form’, but statistics may indicate they are much better than these bare results.
Sam Querrey, on hard courts, is currently one. He’s winning more than 50% of competed points over the last 12 months but has lost more matches than he’s won – basically, he’s lost more than his fair share of key points. I’d suggest he should be able to turn that around in the not too distant future.
If you’re not taking these key data points into consideration when developing your betting strategies for Tennis then it’s likely you’re overlooking some of the most important data available to you.
Tennis Betting Resources
Free Stats Providers
Live Streaming / Scores
- Bet365 – bet & watch thousands of tennis matches live (access streams with £5 funded account *geo restrictions apply)
Bookmakers:
- Tennis Bookmakers Reviewed (by Cheeky Punter)