Minor Tennis Bets - January 28th

Fiona Ferro v Jasmine Paolini
ITF $50k Burnie

Advice: Back Fiona Ferro at 1.76 (Pinnacle) - 3/10

16-year old Fiona Ferro had a very impressive win over sixth seed, Erika Sema, in the first round, dropping just three games. She cruised through qualifying, dropping just eight games in her three matches, to back up some good recent results in the juniors. She reached the last-16 of the Australian Open juniors, following on from a good run to the final in Traralgon, where she lost in three sets to the junior #2, Varvara Flink.

Her opponent, Jasmine Paolini, lost in the final round of qualifying to Jessica Moore, but found herself in the main draw as a lucky loser. She made the most of her luck by beating Hiroko Kuwata in the first round, but should face a much tougher test against the young French player. This is Paolini's first senior event on hard courts and there is not a huge amount in her junior record to suggest that she likes hard court events.

This is a match between two talented young players, but the French girl seems to have more about her, particularly on hard courts and she will be full of confidence after demolishing Erika Sema today. I am more than happy to back her at these odds.

Jared Donaldson v Chase Buchanan
Chitre Challenger

Advice: Back Jared Donaldson at 2.08 (Unibet) - 1/10

Jared Donaldson has enjoyed some decent results over the past few weeks. He came through qualifying to reach his first challenger main draw last week in Maui and has backed that up with a second here. He has been serving very well, not facing a break point in his 14 service games in qualifying and clearly enjoys playing on this surface.

Chase Buchanan is a far more experienced player, but he tends to play most of his tournaments on clay courts. He has only once progressed past the first round of a hard court challenger, which was in Japan last year where he played a local wildcard in the first round.. Indeed, he has passed the second round in one ITF hard court event in the past 12 months.

Donaldson is the promising young player, while Buchanan will look to use his greater experience to beat his countryman. I have backed Donaldson before recently and will have a small bet on him again today.

Eduardo Struvay v Ivan Endara
Chitre Challenger

Advice: Back Ivan Endara at 2.05 (Unibet) - 2/10

Eduardo Struvay is ranked at #498 and is very much a clay court player. He has played just a handful of tournaments on hard courts in the last 12 months and has no particularly impressive victories on his record. Admittedly, he does have one hard court ITF title to his name, but that was back in 2011 in Venezuela, and he has not done anything since then to suggest that he will thrive in this match.

Ivan Endara is ranked over 100 places above his opponent at #382. While he does play most of his stuff on clay, he does have some solid hard court results to his name, having won an ITF event in Venezuela last year, as well as reaching a final and semi-final. He also beat a number of top-300 players on hard courts in 2013.

While neither of these players are entirely at home on hard courts, Endara does appear to have the edge, both in terms of his hard court results and his overall ranking. I am surprised to see him as the outside, so am happy to back him here.

Juan-Carlos Spir v Walter Trusendi
Chitre Challenger

Advice: Back Juan-Carlos Spir at 1.83 (Bet365) - 4/10

Juan-Carlos Spir enjoyed some good results last year on his first proper year on tour after college. He lifted his first ITF title on the hard courts in Bogota and also reached a final in Veracruz and a semi-final in Popoyan on hard courts. His time at Georgia Tech will also have given him plenty of experience on hard courts and he had an excellent win last year over Alex Domijan, who was ranked the #1 college player at the time. He also has a straight sets victory over Jarmere Jenkins to his name, who has started to make an impression on the challenger circuit.

Walter Trusendi is the very definition of a clay courter. In an 11-year career, this is just the fourth time that he has played a challenger event on hard courts and has just one victory to his name. He played just the one match on outdoor hard courts in 2013 and the same number the year before. Basically, he just doesn't play on this surface.

Trusendi has never won an ITF on a hard court, he shows no interest in playing on hard courts, while Spir has the college experience, plus an ITF title from last year. All this points toward a Spir victory, so at the current odds, I am more than happy to back him.

Australian Open Junior Boys Preview

The top seed and tournament favourite is the German, Alexander Zverev. The younger brother of former world number 44, Mischa Zverev, he won the title in Traralgon last week, so comes into this tournament in good form. He reached the final at Roland Garros last year and the semi-final at the US Open, so with the likes of Nick Kyrgios, Borna Coric and Christian Garin moving up to the senior tour, he will fancy his chances of winning his first junior title. One worry is that the Traralgon champion has rarely completed the double by lifting the Australian Open title, although fatigue should have been kept to a minimum as he won all six matches there in straight sets.

His fiercest challenger is likely to be the American, Stefan Kozlov. The junior #4 suffered a surprise early defeat in Traralgon, but will fancy his chances of a good run this week. He has an excellent 3-0 H2H record against Zverev were they to meet in the final, particularly having dropped just two games in their previous encounter on a hard court. He came through an epic battle against the Australian, Blake Mott, in the first round when the home player was forced to retire at 6-5 down in the deciding set with a nasty looking ankle injury. The only worry is that he has yet to perform on the big stage, having never progressed beyond the quarter-final of a Grand Slam, but this will be his best chance.

Stefan Kozlov has a great chance to win his first Grand Slam title

The third and fourth seeds, Johan Sebastien Tatlot and Roman Safiullin, both crashed out in the first round losing to Martin Blasko and Alex Molcan respectively.

With the exit of Tatlot, the second quarter has opened up nicely for the 16-year old American, Michael Mmoh. This is his first Grand Slam, but he lifted a Grade A title in Osaka last year and warmed up with a quarter-final in Traralgon last week before losing to Lucas Miedler. Whether he can cope with the pressure of being one of the favourites in his first ever Grand Slam remains to be seen, but he should reach the semi-final if he lives up to his seeding.

The sixth seed, Filippo Baldi, was another shock first round exit, but the seventh seed, Quentin Halys, came through comfortably and will be eyeing a good run here. A couple of matches in Traralgon will have warmed up him nicely and he will have been encouraged by his run to the quarter-final at the US Open at the end of last year. He has also enjoyed some decent results in senior futures tournaments, so will certainly be one to watch.

However, he finds himself in a tough quarter. The 15-year old, Duck Hee Lee, reached the quarter-final in Traralgon last week, and would be a potential third round opponent, while he will likely face either Lucas Miedler, who was a semi-finalist in Traralgon last week, or the 16-year old Australian, Omar Jasika, who came from nowhere to reach the final in Traralgon.

Omar Jasika might be Australia's best chance of a good run in this tournament

The other player to keep a close watch on is the eleventh seed, Hyeon Chung. He came closest to taking a set off Zverev last week and has proven his quality having enjoyed a wonderful run to the Wimbledon final last year, beating the likes of Nick Kyrgios and Borna Coric. He showed plenty of potential in that run and it would be no surprise to see him going well here.

Predicted 1/4 Finals

Alex Zverev v Hyeon Chung

Bradley Mousley v Michael Mmoh

Quentin Halys v Lucas Miedler

Jaume Antoni Munar Clar v Stefan Kozlov

Predicted 1/2 Final

Alex Zverev v Michael Mmoh

Quentin Halys v Stefan Kozlov

Predicted Final

Alex Zverev v Stefan Kozlov

Champion

Stefan Kozlov

The Courtsiding Issue

With the current media obsession on gambling and fixing, the latest story to hit the headlines is that of Daniel Dobson, a British man that was arrested at the Australian Open for ‘courtsiding’. As often seems to be the case with the issue of betting on sport, the media’s perception of the issue has been regularly misleading, and often factually incorrect.

The Victoria Police released a statement on Wednesday afternoon stating that “police have arrested and charged a man at the Australian Open for ‘courtsiding’, a form of court side betting that involves placing bets on point outcomes throughout a match. He was charged with one count of engaging in conduct that would corrupt a betting outcome.”

There are a number of problems with this initial police statement. Firstly, ‘courtsiding’ does not involve placing bets on point outcomes. This is because bookmakers do not allow betting on the current point, or even the next point, because they know about the potential advantage that people at the event may have. While a number of bookmakers do allow point betting, it is only for the point after the next point (i.e. if the players are currently playing the 2^nd point of the game, bookmakers will only allow you to bet on the 4^th point of the game). The man arrested was also not actually placing bets himself, rather he was transmitting information back to someone else.

However, just as importantly, there is no way that sending point information, or even betting courtside, could possibly be seen as ‘engaging in conduct that would corrupt a betting outcome’. Indeed, early reports wrote about how it is a small step from ‘courtsiding’ to inducing players to fix matches, which is quite simply absurd.

The umpire himself is sending point data out to bookmakers and any clients of Enetpulse. Other companies will also often send a scout to tournaments to provide point streams to clients, whether they be bookmakers, syndicates or private individuals. Nobody has ever accused them of looking to corrupt betting outcomes. The arrested man was simply doing exactly what they also do.

Eurosport included a paragraph stating that “courtsiding invariably involves a syndicate, with a spectator using an electronic device to send a signal to another person at another location to place a bet on the outcome of a particular incident at a sporting event. The bet is placed before legitimate betting agencies are able to close off wagering on a specific event.”

As we have already seen, you cannot bet on specific outcomes like this, but we shall focus on the second sentence. It is quite simply not true that the bet can be placed before bookmakers can close off wagering on these events. Not only do bookmakers generally apply a delay to in-play bet placement to cover themselves against any potential delay, but they also have access to point streams.

Enetpulse, as mentioned earlier, provide point streams direct from the umpire’s chair to bookmakers, allowing bookmakers to record points and suspend any relevant markets almost immediately. The National Post in America ‘informs’ its readers that “he was exploiting the seconds-long delay between the on-court action and “live” television broadcast to defraud bookmakers.”

The idea that bookmakers simply watch matches on TV with a 7-8 second broadcast delay is simply absurd. Believe it or not, bookmakers are sophisticated businesses and they use services such as Enetpulse to get point data direct from the umpire’s chair, so there is no delay for this supposed ‘criminal’ to exploit.

The National Post continue to explain that “police alleged that he was part of a gambling syndicate and flew into the city especially for the Australian Open.” Finally, they have got something correct. He was indeed part of a gambling syndicate and he did indeed fly into the city especially for the Australian Open.

However, the media have this impression that gambling syndicates are evil groups, whose sole purpose is to fix sporting events for their own profit. Again, this is simply not true. The majority of gambling syndicates are not that dissimilar to hedge funds, in that they use sophisticated mathematical algorithms to look to beat the market. The idea that their employees sneak around fixing matches, then being stupid enough to sit courtside, is more nonsense spouted by an ignorant media.

Syndicates are generally organisations using complex techniques to analyse data. Their employees are often highly qualified programmers, statisticians and analysts that work hard to develop advanced models to earn profit for the business. This could just as easily describe a hedge fund or large investment bank investing, or ‘gambling’, on the stock market or currency markets. The image of syndicates that is portrayed by the media in their poorly-researched, ignorant dystopia is just plain wrong.

Indeed, in high-frequency stock trading, speed of access to data is critical, to the point where firms move their servers physically closer to data centres to minimise the split second that the data takes to get into their models. The idea that this practice, known as collocation, should be illegal is ridiculous, but in reality, there is little difference between this and providing point data from courtside.

With the advancement in technology, the opportunity for syndicates and intelligent gamblers to use sophisticated models and instantaneous data to create an advantage over the ‘everyday punter’ is greater. In trying to make ‘courtsiding’ illegal shows a gross misunderstanding from authorities as to how the gambling industry really works and simply acts to dissuade advancement.

Returning to the situation of Daniel Dobson, it is ludicrous that he has even been arrested. He has done nothing wrong under the new Victoria laws. Rather, it is a concerning lack of understanding from the authorities that are responsible for implementing them. I would be amazed and appalled if he were found guilty of any charges of corruption and I can’t help but feel that the Victoria Police and the media are going to look very foolish in the near future.

Gambling is often portrayed in a negative light by the media, often backed up with misleading opinions presented as facts and a clear lack of knowledge, understanding or willingness to learn from journalists. While I am perfectly willing to accept that some people do not approve of gambling, the way that the issues, particularly surrounding fixing and corruption, have been presented in the media are nothing short of disgraceful.