Email: Tennistrades@gmail.com Skype: @TennisRatings SUBSCRIBE TO THE TENNISRATINGS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR THE LATEST TENNIS TRADING & TENNIS BETTING VIDEOS! At the Matchbook Traders Conference in October that I presented at, I was absolutely captivated by one presentation in particular. Rasmus Ankersen, director of football at analytics-driven Brentford FC, superbly discussed (amongst other things) finding under-valued football players and the benefits that this brings. This got me thinking in a Tennis context with the intention of finding a way of establishing which players may be under-valued by the markets and how we can use statistics to work out in advance which players fit into this bracket. One way that we can achieve this is to look at the 'Break Point Clutch Score' of a player. Available in the daily ATP/WTA spreadsheet, the Break Point Clutch Score shows how above or below expectation a player has performed over the last 12 months at break points. This information is incredibly useful as it shows which players have shown high or low levels at key points in matches in the last year. It's worth noting at this point that some players are able to sustain these rates (e.g. they are mentally strong or choke due to mental weakness) but with many others this is more related to variance or confidence. Particularly in the WTA, many players have a cyclical record where they perform well for relatively short bursts and then have bouts of very bad form (example Eugenie Bouchard, and there are many others). On that basis, WTA players are more unlikely than not to be able to sustain a positive or negative clutch score.  With this in mind, I looked at the individual clutch scores of WTA players from 2014 and then applied the information to matches in 2015. Players with a bad clutch score of -3 or less were included - by definition this means that the player has saved/taken 3% or worse below their expectation in 2014. A hypothetical £100 bet was applied to all these players matches in 2015 with Pinnacle closing prices used:-
From 756 matches a profit of £2,491 was achieved, which represents a solid return on investment of 3.29%. This is an excellent return from any scenario, let alone a blind-backed scenario. Only four of the 17 players which fitted into this criteria had a individual record of worse than -5% ROI (Puig, Goerges, Giorgi and Kvitova). Ten of the 17 players recorded positive return on investment with five players (Arruabarrena, Vandeweghe, Dulgheru, Tsurenko and Pennetta) showing double figure returns.  However, success was completely split between favourites and underdogs. Favourites recorded an ROI of -1.98% from 416 matches, whilst underdogs performed superbly, showing 9.75% from 340 matches. In particular this was shown in the SP 3.00-5.99 bracket, with a profit of £3,072 recorded from 121 matches. These figures illustrate that overall, players who have underperformed on key points are under-rated by the market. The -1.98% ROI on favourites is almost identical to bookmaker margin but it appears that players who underperform at key points in the previous year, when underdogs, represent solid value for a shock victory.  In addition, only two players - Svetlana Kuznetsova and Klara Koukalova - managed to worsen their already poor clutch scores, although incredibly both managed slightly positive year-long returns. That duo, along with Timea Babos, Coco Vandeweghe and Alexandra Krunic were the only five players of the 17 to be able to qualify for this criteria this season. This goes towards backing up the assertion that for the majority of players performance at break points is variance orientated as opposed to an inherent ability to over or under perform in these key situations in Tennis matches. | A Selection of TennisRatings Products Please visit the TennisRatings Products links for a full overview of our fantastic Tennis Trading tools, and the TennisRatings Subscription Packages link to see our great value range of discounted subscription packages! Please check out our testimonials page! The TennisRatings Daily Trading Spreadsheets have never been more popular! To find out more on how these can dramatically improve your Tennis Trading, check out the YouTube Video we made. The Challenger Daily Spreadsheets cover all ATP Challenger Events and include projected hold percentages (for traders) and model prices (for bettors and traders). Subscriptions are available for 3 months:- The Lead Loss/Recovery Data Spreadsheets have taken the Tennis Trading World by storm - discussed in detail in October 2015 at the Matchbook Traders Conference these incredible spreadsheets highlight lead loss & deficit recovery in individual sets, as well as how often a player loses/gains the first break of the second set based on whether they won or lost the first set! INCLUDES FREE REGULAR UPDATES - THIS IS A ONE-TIME PURCHASE! |