With Wimbledon next week, will you be trading it? Perhaps it is time to start

Straight betting on tennis can be an emotional roller-coaster. It can be tough to find any kind of value in the match odds as with only two players, the odds are usually quite efficient.

That’s not to say that there’s no way to make a tidy profit from tennis. Betting exchanges are full of profitable opportunities and tennis is no exception.

When Markets Overreact

The moment the first serve is dealt, tennis markets come alive. Human emotions take over the in-play market and cause odds to move much further than they should, creating value odds that we can take advantage of.

It all sounds quite far-fetched. How do “emotions” make any difference to the odds?

It’s quite simple really. Behind every move in the odds are thousands of punters, all looking to make a profit. What happens if they’re losing money? They panic. Here’s an example:

If someone has backed Andy Murray to win a match on the exchange, they are expecting his odds to fall so they can trade out for a profit or let the bet run and take the full profit. If Murray’s serve is broke, the backer is likely to panic and exit his position in an attempt to prevent a bigger loss.

Other traders are likely to see that people are “closing out” and start to exit themselves. They might even start placing new lay bets in the market, expecting the odds to drift out even further.

Murray may well go on to win the set and even the match, but the short term panic after the break in serve will have caused the odds to momentarily jump out of line. This is where the value is created. The odds will either be higher or lower than they “should be” and it gives us traders an opportunity to make profit.

Low Odds Tennis Trading

Betting exchanges give us the advantage of being able to place lay bets instead of just back bets. Tennis markets will frequently provide low odds betting opportunities where we can lay players for little risk but a bigger reward. For example, if we lay a player at odds of 1.10 in play, you can only lose 10 ticks of profit but the reward can be much greater.

Using low odds in combination with key factors such as breaks of serve, we can start to develop a profitable tennis trading strategy.

Want to know how to take full advantage of these value odds? Click here for a more in-depth look at tennis trading and working examples of how to best trade it.