People love betting on the favourite in any sport. It is
only natural – the favourite is the most likely selection to win. However,
simply backing the favourites blindly is not necessary a profitable strategy –
in fact, it will rarely be a profitable strategy.
The idea of favourite bias has been much discussed. Favouritism
bias is where gamblers tend to overvalue outsiders and undervalue favourites.
In other words, they value outsiders more than expected, given how often they
actually win, and they value the favourites less than expected, given how often
they actually win. This might suggest that there could be some worth in looking
to back favourites.
In tennis, different players react in different ways to
being the favourite. As the favourite, we should expect the player to win, usually
they will be the better player or will prefer the surface – hence the
favouritism. However, we find that there are a number of players that struggle
under the tag of favourite. Similarly, other players enjoy being the fancied
player and are very efficient at getting the job done when they should.
Silvia Soler-Espinosa proved a surprising effective favourite for punters |
Another aspect to take into consideration is that certain
players are very popular with the gambling public. If a certain player is
popular, we often find that the odds on them winning are shorter than they
should be. People drive the price down on the exchanges simply because they
like that player, misrepresenting their true price. We shall look at several
examples of this later on.
For those that know a bit about gambling, this section can
be skipped. However, as a brief explanation, in each match, odds are available
on both players, represented as a decimal. This decimal can be converted into a
percentage that represents the implied chance of each player winning the match.
For example, in the Australian Open final between Victoria Azarenka and Li Na,
the odds on Azarenka were 1.71 and the odds on Li were 2.313. Taking the reciprocal
of these, we get the implied percentages – Azarenka has a 58.5% chance of
winning the match, while Li has a 43.2% chance of winning. The immediate thing
to note is that the two percentages do not add up to 100%, rather to 101.7%.
The additional percentage is the overround that the bookmakers add on top to
make their profits. Placing a £10 bet on Azarenka at 1.71 would return £17.10,
meaning profits of £7.10. Similarly, the same £10 on Li Na would return £23.13,
a profit of £13.13.
Looking at the returns on stakes that each player would
return over a period of time gives us an idea of how they perform as a
favourite, or at least, whether they are overrated or underrated as a favourite
by the bookmakers. The odds for each match were taken as the closing Pinnacle
odds.
We find that over the past 12 months, the most profitable
favourite in the WTA top 100 is the Spaniard, Silvia Soler-Espinosa. If you had
been betting on her blindly as the favourite in every match over the past year,
you would have seen a return of 40.8% on your stakes. To put this in context,
she played 21 matches as a favourite during this period. If you had placed £10
on her in all of those matches, you would have staked a total of £210. You
would have seen a profit of £85.68 on those bets. Certainly not a bad return.
She is followed by the world number 29, Elena Vesnina. The
Russian would have returned a very impressive 29.0% on total stakes. Having
started 26 matches as favourite during this period, £10 on every match would have
seen a total stake of £260 and profits of £75.40.
The table below shows the top 10 most profitable players in
the top 100 by percentage returns on stake:
Player
|
World
Ranking
|
Percentage
Return
|
Total
Matches as Favourite
|
Total
Profit on £10 stakes
|
Silvia Soler-Espinosa
|
64
|
40.8%
|
21
|
£85.68
|
Elena Vesnina
|
29
|
29.0%
|
26
|
£75.40
|
Venus Williams
|
22
|
27.4%
|
31
|
£84.94
|
Kirsten Flipkens
|
23
|
26.6%
|
38
|
£101.08
|
Ayumi Morita
|
43
|
22.5%
|
29
|
£65.25
|
Kaia Kanepi
|
37
|
21.0%
|
19
|
£39.90
|
Aleksandra Wozniak
|
66
|
19.5%
|
20
|
£39.00
|
Maria-Teresa Torro-Flor
|
84
|
19.4%
|
42
|
£81.48
|
Alize Cornet
|
33
|
14.5%
|
35
|
£50.75
|
Mallory Burdette
|
89
|
14.3%
|
32
|
£45.76
|
Between them, these ten players played 293 matches as the
favourite in the past 12 months. Had you placed £10 on every single one of
those matches, you would have staked £2,930. However, you would have seen
profits of £669.24. In others words, you would have received a 22.8% return on
your initial investment. Far better than you would get in the bank.
As an aside, there is also an interesting trend at the top
of the rankings. The top 3 players often go off as very short favourites in the
majority of their matches. Many people are very wary of backing short priced
favourites, however their figures would suggest otherwise. Serena Williams
would have returned 7.3% as favourite over the past twelve months, while Maria
Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka would have returned 11.6% and 8.3% respectively.
However, while some players return solid profits as a
favourite, there are plenty of players that it is worth avoiding. Whether they
struggle under the burden of being the favourite, whether they regularly tank
matches, or whether they are simply overrated by the bookmakers and gambling
public, they tend to lose punters money as favourites.
The table below shows the players to avoid:
Player
|
World
Ranking
|
Percentage
Return
|
Total
Matches as Favourite
|
Total
Loss on £10 stakes
|
Daniela Hantuchova
|
75
|
-28.6%
|
28
|
-£80.08
|
Petra Martic
|
91
|
-27.8%
|
12
|
-£33.36
|
Sabine Lisicki
|
47
|
-26.4%
|
26
|
-£68.64
|
Coco Vandeweghe
|
94
|
-23.4%
|
21
|
-£49.14
|
Lucie Hradecka
|
58
|
-22.2%
|
19
|
-£42.18
|
Tamira Paszek
|
31
|
-20.5%
|
16
|
-£32.80
|
Andrea Hlavackova
|
76
|
-18.4%
|
26
|
-£47.84
|
Jie Zheng
|
49
|
-18.3%
|
22
|
-£40.26
|
Yaroslava Shvedova
|
38
|
-17.1%
|
26
|
-£44.46
|
Misaki Doi
|
88
|
-15.4%
|
29
|
-£44.66
|
Between them, these players played a total of 225 matches as
the favourite over the past twelve months. If you had put £10 on each of these
matches, you would have staked a total of £2,250. You would have lost £483.42,
which works out at 21.5% of your total stakes.
Other notable players that crop up fairly low down the list
are the likes of Mona Barthel (-15.1%), Yanina Wickmayer (-14.1%), Melanie
Oudin (-10.4%), Julia Goerges (-9.0%) and Laura Robson (-6.7%).
Coming back to our earlier mention of popular players, we
can see an interesting trend. The likes of Julia Goerges, Mona Barthel, Daniela
Hantuchova, Sabine Lisicki and Laura Robson are all players that are popular
with the punters. It is not uncommon to see these players shortening in the
betting ahead of their matches as gamblers start to stake their money on the
events.
Julia Goerges always proves popular with punters, but it is unwise to side with her as a favourite |
We also see two of the American hopefuls, Melanie Oudin and
Coco Vandeweghe, cropping up on this list. Both these players have been much
hyped over the past few years as the next big things in American tennis. It
would appear that this hype has caused punters to overrate their actual
abilities. As favourites at the given odds, both these players would have lost
you a reasonable amount of money.
A future article will look more closely at how these players
perform as an outsider, which should enable us to draw a few tentative
conclusions. It could be that certain players struggle as the favourite, but
thrive as the outsider. From this, we might be able to conclude that they
struggle with the pressure of being the favourite, while they enjoy the freedom
that comes with the lack of expectation as an outsider.
Conversely, we may discover that the same players show
strong negative returns as an outsider as well. If this turns out to be the
case, we might be able to conclude that their ability is misrepresented amongst
bookmakers and gamblers. They are perceived to be better players than their
true abilities suggest, in which case, their odds will be too short at all
levels, whether the favourite or the outsider.
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