Who should you bet on at the U.S Open Women's Tennis tournament?

Aug 1st, 2011 - Posted by Andrew_Brocker in Tennis

bettingexpert blog editor. Always taking the alternative route to finding the value.

Where has the betting value been at the U.S Open tennis women's tournament in recent years? Adding to his analysis of the Mens tournament, Andrew has uncovered some recent trends you may want to consider as we lead up to the 2011 tournament.

Following on from my analysis of the U.S Open Mens tournament, I thought I would take a look at the women's side of the tournament.

And we'll ask the very same question: Where might we be able to find some value in 2011?

Just like we did with the mens analysis, we'll be taking a look back and seeing what recent tournaments can offer us in the way of a potential guide for how the tournament might shape this year. In particular, we will be looking back over the last Women's 4 tournaments, examining head to head odds trends as well as the number of games and sets we might expect to see over the course of tournament play.

The First 3 Rounds

If we examine the first 3 rounds of play over the last 4 women's tournaments at the U.S Open, we can see some distinct trends.

Similar to what we saw with the Mens tournament, short priced favourites have comfortably had the better of their opposition in the early stages. In fact, if we had bet at single unit 'even stakes' in the first 3 rounds over the last 4 tournaments, favourites of 1.60 or shorter have performed above standard bookmaker commission, with favourites between 1.21 and 1.35, managing to make a 3% profit.

We can also see that betting against favourites priced between 1.01 and 1.10 would have been catastrophic, leaving you with an 'even stakes' return loss of over 40%.

Similarly again to the mens analysis, we also see that betting against favourites priced between 1.61 and 1.91, would have given you a more than reasonable profitable return of almost 7% in the first 3 rounds of the tournament.

From the 4th Round all the way to The Final

The trend towards favourites only becomes even more stark once we hit the 4th round and beyond.

In fact, betting at 'even stakes' on all favourites from this stage of the tournament and onwards the last 4 years, would have given you a more than handsome return of just under 11% profit.

And the return was particularly attractive betting on favourites between 1.11 and 1.60, netting you a return of over 13% profit.

While betting against favourites was..........well, you can see for yourself. Disastrous.

Average Games

Now let's take a look at the number of games we can expect to see at the Open.

As we might expect, we see longer games played when there are upsets than when favourites win. We can see both the average number of games and the median number of games rise in each case, depending on both the odds of the competitors and the result.

Just as we did with the Mens analysis, we might want to keep these numbers in mind when considering betting a game 'both ways'. In others words, we might look to back the favourite to win, but also bet the Over on the number of games in the match, looking to hit both, but knowing that should the favourite lose, we could still well win the Over as underdogs typically win in extended matches.

Sets per Match

Lastly, we will take a look at the number of sets we might expect to see given the odds of the players involved and the outcome.

As we would expect, we see the probability of the match extending into a 3rd and deciding set increasing as both the odds rise towards even money, as well as when the match goes against the odds-makers expectation and the underdog wins.

The only anomaly is where favourites between 1.36 and 1.60 are defeated, where we see the historical likelihood of the match going to a 3rd set drop to just over 27%.

So what did we learn?

In conclusion, let's list some key points that the last 4 U.S Open Women's tournaments can offer us:

Strongly consider favourites from the 4th Round all the way to The Final.
Consider betting against favourites in the first 3 Rounds between odds of 1.61 and 1.91
Consider betting on favourites in the first 3 Rounds between odds of 1.60 and lower.
Recognise that matches are typically of longer duration when favourites lose in terms of both sets and games.

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