1. Tennis Betting Strategy
2. Best Tennis Bets

The main thing is to understand tennis and how players create a gameplan. It's not unusual for a player to take a set off and go 6-0,2-6,6-4, 6-0 so be ready. If you don't have a large bankroll, stick to the 4. When learning how to bet on tennis, it's important to understand that favorites are almost always represented with a minus sign (-), and underdogs are typically represented with a plus sign (+).

When Americans think about betting on sports, our first thoughts usually turn to football and horse racing. Over in England and Europe, the sports to bet on are soccer and tennis. To explain how betting works in tennis, I called on Luke Rees, a British sports fan and writer. Here’s what he wrote:

When placing a bet on a tennis match, it can often be quite confusing to interpret the various odds available. There are numerous markets to pick from, and also many different options for those looking to boost their profits, meaning punters often decide to stay clear of the tennis game.

This article will outline the basics of reading the odds, and provide advice for tennis spectators who want to make the game a little bit more interesting.

Betting On the Money Line

Money line bets are the most basic and popular market in tennis (and the majority of sports for that matter, including horse racing). Essentially, the bookies provide the odds on the outright winner of a match, and you simply pick your favorite for the win. The favorite in a match is given a negative (-) money line, and the underdog is indicated with positive (+) money line.

Here’s an example:

• Andy Murray -190 (favorite)
• Vasek Pospisil +300 (underdog)
• Negative money line: this indicates the amount of money needed to bet in order to win $100 in profit. So, in the example above, it would require a $190 wager on Andy Murray to win $100 in profit, for a total pay-out of $290.
• Positive money line: this indicates the amount of money that would be won from a $100 wager. In the example above, a $100 bet on Vasek Pospisil would result in a $300 profit if he wins the match, for a total pay-out of $400.

The first step to take when making a bet is to look at the money line and decide if it is worth taking out a bet. For instance, you may decide that betting on Pospisil is not worth it at 4/1 odds ($400 return for $100 bet) because Murray is currently the strong favorite. But say the money line on Pospisil was 8/1 or +800: you might have a different opinion if you stood to make a $900 return.

The money line is used not only for individual games, but also for betting on a player to win the tournament outright. This is commonly referred to as Outright Winner betting: you can see some Wimbledon outright winner predictions at Bookmakers, for example.

Betting ‘Each Way’ means you place two bets, one on the player to win the tournament and one on them to finish in the top 2 places (i.e. to reach the final).

The Handicap Market

The handicap (or HCAP) market is another popular market. This is because rather than predicting the outright winner, you are instead betting on how a certain player performs. A handicap market simply means that one of the players is given an advantage at the beginning – usually by adding a certain amount of games to their overall score.

Let’s take the same tennis example. This is how it might look:

Andy Murray -7.5 -190 vs. Pospisil +7.5 -190

The money line is even on this bet, what has changes is the handicap. In both cases, a wager of $190 would bring back a $100 win if the right player is chosen. The pay-out is even, because the spread has balanced out the competition between the two players.

Imagine that this is the result from the match: 6-3 6-4 6-4

Totals Games Won – Murray 18 vs. Pospisil 11

As you can see, despite losing the match in straight sets, a bet on Pospisil would have actually been the winner in this case. The handicap of +7.5 games for Pospisil gets added to his 11 games won to give him 18.5 total. That is a half-game ahead of Murray in this case, and so a bet on Pospisil would be paid out.

Betting on Accumulators

Tennis Betting Strategy

One final interesting way to bet – if you’re feeling especially confident and want to boost your profits throughout a tournament – is to place multiple bets on a series of matches. These are known as Doubles, Trebles, and Accumulators. For the bet to come through, you have to get each result correct, otherwise there is no pay-out.

Imagine a $30 single bet on Novak Djokovic to beat Andy Murray at odds of -250 (or 2/5) returns just a $10 profit. This may not be particularly appealing, so to make it more worthwhile you could put down a treble on three different games. If all of them pay out around -250, your $25 stake will make you $50 profit. After each correctly predicted match outcome, your profits go up exponentially.

With the tennis season well underway, and the U.S Open just around the corner, now’s the time to get down to the bookies with your new betting know-how. But always remember, never bet what you can’t afford!

Luke Rees is a sports writer and enthusiast from London, UK, who likes to cover tennis, cycling, and football (or soccer to y’all). His most memorable sports experience was watching Federer and Roddick in the Wimbledon final in 2009 – he was rooting for Roddick, but Federer absolutely smashed it!

Bet on Tennis Meets – How to Do It

Tennis bets have gained serious popularity – this can see by the increasing statistics of players betting online on the sport. For example, only at some bookmakers, on women tournaments, you can see overall bets for millions of pounds, most of them usually on live meets. And that’s not even counting star tournaments from the big four – Nadal, Federer, Murray and Djokovic.

How to bet on tennis using a variety of bets

The plus side for this type of bet is that there are only two outcomes – a meet does not end in a draw like in football. Of course, the odds are smaller because of this. But bookmakers (such as Bet365, Efbet, Sportingbet and Betfair) also make mistakes and sometimes you can find odds close to 1 for a tennis player and an even bigger one in another place. Even so, this remains a serious bet if you’re after a sure win with a lot of money.

Here the odds are more profitable but are also harder to guess. In a 3-set match you have four possible outcomes – player 1 to win 2:0, win 2:1, lose 0:2 or 1:2. This way, with good knowledge of the tournament and faith, for example, that Federer will beat Dimitrov in two sets, you can bring yourself a bigger profit from a bet on a win for the master. It’s good if you’re a beginner, to the first start with forecasts for a win and then consider how you will do in these more precise forecasts.

Most online bookmakers offer options for an exact result for the first set and separately for the second one. However, here you must be a professional. Of course, you can also bet live on this option, believing in a turning point or using your impression of the game of a particular tennis player.

Here you have to guess who will win only the first set, not caring what happens later on in the game. You have to be clear as to which tennis player is known as a clever contestant and then this bet can turn into something more secure.

Of course, there is always the chance to bet on a winner of the tournament. That is very profitable if you believe in a new title for Rafael Nadal, Roland Garros or the domination of Serena Williams in yet another women’s tournament.

Best Tennis Bets

If we must touch on live bets again then we must mention that there are many profitable strategies.

There are also other bets. Usually, bookmakers offer more than 20 markets for single matches. They include options such as the winner of the second set, handicap, one tennis player receives a certain number of games advantage against bigger odds for the other if there will be a tie-break in the meet and so on. There is plenty of variety. The question is to be able to choose the right forecast. For this, you need to have studied the rivals and carefully evaluate the odds.

For example, one of them is the prolonged game on advances. You can choose a match, usually with women or mixed couples, in which to chase after an advance in each subsequent game. With a tournament outside of the Top 50 of the rankings usually, both contestants are not that stable at the serve, and there are plenty of advances. The strategy played with one bet from the first game which gets doubled if your forecast isn’t successful. The good thing is that here you can find odds for an advance in each game sometimes from 4 or more. In reality, with a 1 euro bet you can lose three times before hitting the advance with 8 euro from the 4th time and win 32 euro. With such a success you begin again with a 1 euro bet.

Betting strategy

Other similar strategies can be found in our section “strategies” and more accurately a strategy for bets on serves. The important thing is to familiarise yourself with the game of tennis, to do your homework, to play for a while with small amounts before diving into the deep. You have to be clear as to why you’re playing – you’re looking for the thrill, or you believe that you know to win big. It’s important that you don’t get too greedy. Tennis offers fewer surprises, but there is still a chance for them. A win of 10-15 per cent from your long-term investment doesn’t sound so bad.

Unfortunately, lately, there have been several scandals about arranged matches from tennis tournaments on a very high level. So you should be careful when betting. Ask advice from a friend, if needed, follow forecasts of other professionals; it’s always good to get a second opinion.

Tennis is a fantastic sport and you can win from it!