Discrepancies between Match and Outright Betting Markets

Betting on the outright markets in tennis can often prove a profitable source of income. While you are unlikely to hit regular winners, the bigger odds that come from putting your money into this market can prove very profitable in the long run.

In this article, rather than looking directly at how to find the winner in this market, we are going to look more closely at some discrepancies between the outright markets and the match winner markets. As we shall see, these discrepancies are clear indicators that there is value in one of the two markets – whether it is the match winner market or the outright market can be questioned, but in deciding which of the two markets is wrong is a first set to profitable betting.

The outright winner market is fairly simple. The price simply reflects the probability of each player winning the tournament, which in itself simply reflects the multiple of the player to win each round of the tournament. The number of rounds depends on the tournament and can range from just four, where the player is seeded in a minor tournament with a bye into the second round, up to seven in a Grand Slam tournament.

Logically, if two players are playing each other in a match, the player that is favourite to win the match should be shorter odds in the betting to win the tournament. There are very few situations where you can make the argument that a player is the outsider for the match, but is a shorter price to win the whole tournament.

As our first example, we will look at the match between Juan Monaco and Grigor Dimitrov in the Bastad quarter-final. The winner of the match would likely play either Nicolas Almagro or Fernando Verdasco in the semi-final and Tomas Berdych in the final.

As we can see, Juan Monaco is available at a general price of 1/2 with all the bookmakers currently offering the match with the exception of Paddy Power. Grigor Dimitrov is available at a range of prices between 5/4 and 13/8. In other words, Juan Monaco is a clear favourite for this match.

However, if we look at the outright market, there is an interesting difference here. Rather than Juan Monaco being a clear shorter price than Grigor Dimitrov, we can see that in most places he is only fractionally shorter than Dimitrov and, indeed, with Betfred, Dimitrov is a shorter price at 7/1 compared to the 15/2 for Juan Monaco.

Based on these prices, we can reasonably work forward to determine how they should be priced depending on who wins the match. Taking Juan Monaco’s general price of 7.0 for the tournament and 1.5 for the match, we can suggest that his price should he win this match should be around 4.67 to win the tournament. Similarly, taking Dimitrov’s price as 7.5 and 2.5, he should shorten to around 3.0 for the title.

Already here we can see a discrepancy. The fact that Juan Monaco is favourite for this match suggests that the market feels that Monaco is the better player. However, the outright prices seem to suggest that Dimitrov will shorten to a much shorter price than Monaco if he wins the match.

Unless we believe that Dimitrov is around 12% more likely to win the tournament from the semi-final stage than Monaco is, then either Monaco is too short for the match, Monaco is too big in the outright market or Dimitrov is far too short in the outright market.

If the prices in the outright market are correct, then Dimitrov would appear to be value in the match winner market. Similarly, if the match winner market is correct, then either Juan Monaco is too big in the outright winner, Grigor Dimitrov is too short, or a combination of the two.

The next example comes from the ATP tournament in Stuttgart. In the quarter-final match between Gael Monfils and Philipp Kohlschreiber, we can see that the market fancies the Frenchman. He is available at prices between 4/9 and 8/15 to win the match, while Philipp Kohlschreiber ranges from 11/8 up to 7/4. In other words, Gael Monfils is a pretty strong favourite for this match.

However, the outright seems to suggest something very different. Both Bet365 and Betfred have the two players at exactly the same price, while Paddy Power have Kohlschreiber at a shorter price than Monfils. Stan James is the only company where Monfils is a shorter price than Kohlschreiber. Even Betfair has the Frenchman at bigger odds.

Based on the match odds and the outright odds, we can say that if Kohlschreiber wins, he would shorten to around 2.10, while Gael Monfils would shorten to around 3.67. In other words, it suggests that Kohlschreiber would have a 20% greater chance of going on and winning the tournament than Monfils would.

Based on the fact that the market is suggesting that Monfils is a reasonably strong favourite to beat the German, it is tough to reconcile this with the fact that Kohlschreiber would be much shorter prices in his semi-final and final than Monfils would be.

Again, this either suggests that Monfils is either too short in the match winner market, too big in the outright market or that Kohlschreiber is too short in the outright market. Whichever of these that we feel is true, we can either back or lay our conclusions.

It is not just on the men’s side that we see these discrepancies. In this example, we can see another clear difference in the ladies tournament from Budapest. Here, we have a second round match between Danka Kovinic and Valeria Solovyeva. Despite a surprise win over the top seed, Lucie Safarova, in the first round, Valeria Solovyeva is still available at a best price of 7/4 to win this match with an average price of around 6/4. Similarly, Kovinic is available at prices ranging from 4/9 to 8/15. Again, Kovinic is clearly a strong favourite for this match.

Once again, the outright market does not reflect this. Valeria Solovyeva is available at between 66/1 at Coral up to 100/1 at various firms. Danka Kovinic is available at either 100/1 or 150/1. Admittedly, at these bigger prices there is often no value, given that the bookmakers usually have maximum odds that they will offer in this market, while the true price is often far higher, but this still does not make much sense.

Just looking at the Coral prices, they go 8/15 Kovinic and 11/8 Solovyeva to win the match, yet Solovyeva is just 66/1 for the title, while Kovinic is 100/1. Unless we expect Solovyeva to be a much shorter price in her later matches, which there is no reason to believe, particularly given that she is an outsider here, then these prices are simply not right.

Clearly, we cannot always take advantage of these discrepancies. We can only lay selections on Betfair and there is often not the liquidity on the smaller tournaments. However, it is clear that there are often selections in the outright market with the bookmakers that are far too big and provide good value.