With thousands of mens and womens’ matches year round, there’s no shortage of opportunity to bet on tennis. But volume peaks with fan engagement during the four majors – the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open – and sportsbooks expand their menus throughout these tournaments to include various props and derivatives.
Smaller markets are difficult for sportsbooks to price accurately, making them prime targets for savvy bettors. With Wimbledon under way, here are some tips to help plan your attack.
Editor’s note: This story was written by Isaac Rose-Berman, a professional tennis bettor and writer. You can follow him on Twitter at @roundrobin42, or read his work at HowGamblingWorks.com.
Know Your Market Types
Broadly speaking, tennis markets can be divided into three tiers. From most to least liquid, they are the moneyline, spreads and totals, and props/derivatives/futures.
As with most markets, less liquidity means lower limits, higher vig, and more inefficiencies.
Tier 1: Moneylines
Moneylines (which player will win the match) are the most common way to bet on tennis. Every book offers these bets, limits are high, and the vig is relatively small. However, with that liquidity comes greater efficiency.
At market-making sportsbooks like Pinnacle and BetCRIS the moneyline is tough to beat, especially close to game time. These books constantly update odds in response to sharp action.
Softer sportsbooks like Draftkings or MGM don’t accept sharp wagers, and tend to copy lines from market makers and then add in even more vig. This means that when lines are stable, soft books are often harder to beat on the moneyline, because they’ll always offer worse prices.
When odds jump around it’s a different story. Soft books sometimes don’t update their lines fast enough, making top-down betting an effective strategy for betting the moneyline in tennis.
In addition to identifying off-market prices, tennis bettors can use sharp sportsbooks to help inform their bets in other markets. For example, a bettor looking to identify the true odds of a specific score needs to know the likelihood either player wins overall before pricing alternate scores. Instead of modeling the match from the ground up, they can use the moneyline odds from a sharp sportsbook to get an accurate idea of what the odds of either player winning really is.
Tier 2: First Set Moneyline, Game/Set Spread, Game/Set Total
While Tier 2 markets are less liquid than the moneyline, they’re available at most sharp sportsbooks, all soft sportsbooks, and have decently high limits. The vig is usually higher, and prices are derived from the moneyline.
Tier 2 markets are the sweet spot for many bettors, as they’re easier to find edges in than the moneyline but raise less suspicion among sportsbooks than Tier 3 bets.
First set moneyline: The odds a player wins the opening set. These will generally be similar to the moneyline but lower for underdogs, as it’s more likely they win the first set than win the entire match. For example, a player might be +400 on the moneyline, but only +250 to win the first set.
Game/set spread: The game spread applies to the total number of games played, while the set spread focuses on the outcome of individual sets. While highly correlated, it is possible for the results to deviate. In best-of-three matches the set spread will always be 1.5, while the game spread for relatively evenly matched players will fall between 0.5 and 3.5.
For example, if Novak Djokovic is playing Grigor Dimitrov in a best-of-three set match, the game spread might be Djokovic -3.5 while the set spread would be Djokovic -1.5.
If Djokovic wins 7-6, 6-4, he’ll cover the set spread (he won by two sets), but he won’t cover the game spread (he won by three games). Dimitrov, meanwhile, will cover the game spread but not the set spread.
Scoring in tennis is discontinuous, meaning the score in one set does not impact the score in the next. This can make the game spread tricky. In the NFL, if an underdog wins they necessarily cover the spread. But in tennis, an underdog can win the match but still not cover the game spread.
Using the above example, if Dimitrov wins 7-6, 0-6, 7-6, he’ll win the moneyline and the set spread but still lose the game spread, because he lost by four games overall.
Game/set total: The game and set total refer to how many games or sets are played. All women’s matches and most men’s matches are best two out of three sets, meaning the only options for set totals is Over or Under 2.5 sets. Most best-of-three matches will have game totals between 21.5 and 23.5 unless one player is a big favorite, in which case the total will be lower, anticipating a blowout.
When betting on the total, it’s important to remember that 2-0 (straight set) wins are much more common than 2-1 (three set) wins, even when players are evenly matched.
This can be counterintuitive: in theory, if both players have a 50% percent chance of winning a match they should have an equal chance of winning each set. This would mean the loser of the first set wins the second half the time, and matches would go to three sets 50 percent of the time.
In practice, best-of-three matches between equal players only go to three sets about 40 percent of the time. This is due to a combination of revealed information and motivation.
Often the player who wins the first set is performing at a higher level, which is likely to continue into the second set and give them a better chance of winning.
Other times the act of winning the first set may itself propel them to play better in the second set and close out the match, similar to how a runner might speed up near the finish line to close out a race.
Best of five: During major tournaments like Wimbledon, men’s matches are played best-of-five sets instead of best of three. Longer matches mean favorites usually perform better, as the larger sample size decreases variance and gives stronger players a greater chance at realizing their edge.
This is the same reason better teams are more likely to advance in the NBA playoffs than the NFL playoffs, with the best-of-seven format instead of a single game.
Best-of-five sets also changes things for the spread and total. While the only set spread available for best-of-three matches is +1.5/-1.5, men’s grand slam matches also have a +2.5/-2.5 option.
If you bet a men’s favorite -1.5 sets in a grand slam they need to win 3-0 or 3-1, while if you bet them -2.5 sets they need to win 3-0.
For the total, best of five means more variance. Game totals cluster around the high 30s or low 40s, but frequently end below 30 or above 50. Instead of two or three sets, matches have either three, four, or five sets.
The longer format means it’s less likely either player wins in straight sets, which is why “both players to win a set” or “Over 3.5 sets” (the same thing) is one of the most popular wagers during men’s grand slams. While the odds usually aren’t high – roughly 50 percent of men’s grand slam matches go over 3.5 sets, more when you exclude heavy favorites – bettors can get a larger payout by opting for Over 4.5 sets, which occurs in about a fifth of all matches.
In addition to increasing the number of Tier 2 bets, the best-of-five format is generally accompanied by a wide variety of Tier 3 bets at softer sportsbooks. They’re often the most fun, and can be the easiest to beat.
“People should never be put off by big vig. Big vig is just fear… one thing that is uniform throughout twenty years of me and bookmaking is that the places where there is the biggest vig are the places where there’s actually still too little vig.” –– Matthew Trenhaile, former Pinnacle trader.
Unlike the moneyline or Tier 2 markets, Tier 3 markets are usually only offered at soft sportsbooks. Limits are lower and the house edge is higher. But because sportsbooks aren’t able to copy the odds from a market maker they can sometimes be riddled with errors.
Today’s sportsbooks offer dozens of these markets, especially during major tournaments. While some are basic derivatives, such as first set total games, others are more creative.
Bets like “will either player win their first two service games without losing a point” or “will Novak Djokovic have more or less than 14.5 double faults all tournament” are now commonplace, and increasing as sportsbooks offer new wagers to entice users to gamble at their site.
Tier 3 markets are tough to price, and even tougher to keep up to date. While most spreads and totals move directionally with the moneyline, sportsbooks don’t have a perfect formula for how to change the odds in a market they just started offering a week ago.
Imagine Novak Djokovic had four double faults in the first round, when he was expected to have just two. Should the line be adjusted up because he’s double faulting more? Or should it be adjusted down because he’s playing badly, and is likely to lose in an early round and play fewer matches overall?
No one really knows. These markets don’t have an efficient price discovery process, meaning it’s often your guess against the trader or software which created the odds. That might sound daunting, especially when they get to add a big vig. But it’s easier to beat the book head-on in Tier 3 markets than it is to beat them in Tier 1 and 2 markets, where thousands of sharp bettors have acted as their consultants and hammered the line into place.
Comparing Bets and Prices
“You’ve probably heard of line shopping. ‘Figure out what you want to bet and then go find the sportsbook that has the best price.’ But, honestly, that advice is really kind of backwards. Better advice in most cases would look like, ‘Find games where you can create zero hold synthetic markets between sportsbooks and using related markets. Once you find games like that, figure out which side you like better and bet that at the best price.’
This is not how most people think about sports betting. For most people, the hunch about the game comes first, and the price shopping comes second. Most people don’t think, ‘Well let me go look at every sportsbook’s lines and try to find the ones where the world is cutting me a break and focus on betting just those.’ Most people also lose.”
– Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow, The Logic of Sports Betting
As with all markets, it’s crucial to get the best price. Edges are small and the vig isn’t. Line shopping can be the difference between an edge winning, but not by enough to beat the vig.
Sometimes the relationship between markets is complex, and varies based on the players or matchup. Other times it’s fairly simple. For example, the odds a match ends over 2.5 sets is the same as the odds that either player wins 2-1. Before betting over 2.5 sets, check to see if you could get a better price by betting both players to win 2-1. Similarly, if you want to bet a player -1.5 sets, also look at the odds of them winning 2-0; it’s the same bet.
Effectively comparing odds requires basic numerical literacy. Fortunately, there are simple tools which can do the math for you. The first is a hold calculator, for standard and multi-way markets, where the overall vig is tough to see.
Second is a no-vig fair odds calculator, which takes the listed price and spits out the “true” odds according to the sportsbook’s model. No-vig calculations are especially useful when one sportsbook is sharper than others. You can use their true odds to pick off softer sportsbooks with different prices.
If Carlos Alcaraz is +325 to win Wimbledon, Djokovic is +600 and you want to bet them both, should you bet them individually or bet “Alcaraz or Djokovic” to win at +175? What about +160?
If you think Alcaraz has a 23 percent chance of winning and Djokovic has a 15 percent chance of winning, which of the above bets should you place? If you’re not sure, an odds combiner calculator can help.
Match Factors
There are dozens of factors which impact the odds of a tennis match, and most of them are accounted for. Simply knowing them isn’t enough to make you a winning bettor, but not knowing them is a surefire way to lose.
Here are a few to keep in mind:
Service and return quality: Understanding how good players are both while serving and returning is crucial. Both the men’s and women’s tour have useful data and rankings on players’ serve and return stats, and bettors can filter by recent matches to gauge current form. For a combined metric which estimates players’ overall strength, you can refer to Elo ratings.
Surface: Court specifics vary by tournament and the weather. Clay courts are typically slower than hard courts which are slower than grass courts. Slower courts usually mean fewer aces, longer rallies, and a lower percentage of service games won.
Head-to-head: Many players on tour have faced off dozens of times throughout their careers. Past data doesn’t necessarily predict the future, but you should get familiar with the results of past matchups.
Fitness/age/rest: As tournaments progress fitness becomes more of an issue. This is especially true in best-of-five matches. It’s also a factor when weather or other delays result in abnormally short rest for one or both players.
How to Bet Wimbledon and Other Tennis Tournaments With an Edge
Understanding how markets and odds work is important. But to find strong edges you usually have to discover what isn’t already priced in.
It’s easier to find these spots in Tier 2 and 3 markets at open. Or you can apply a top-down approach to see where soft books lag behind their sharper counterparts.
But sometimes edges can persist across matches. To find them, your best bet is to look for instances where new or unusual things are happening, and books are using a flawed model. You also need to be able to quantify the significance of those occurrences.
“This player’s serve has been really good recently” doesn’t mean much. “This player is averaging 50 percent more aces since he changed his service motion” might be the key to an edge, especially if a book offers bets on the total number of aces and hasn’t changed their projections since the beginning of the season.
Though by no means exhaustive, here are four angles tennis bettors have used to beat the books.
1.) Correlated Parlays
In the past, some sportsbooks allowed users to parlay the game spread and game total, assuming they were independent events.
They are not.
Particularly in matches where one player is heavily favored, the favorite covering the spread is highly correlated with the Under, and the underdog covering the spread is highly correlated with the Over.
This is because if the favorite covers it’s likely to be a blowout. Matches where the underdog covers are usually competitive and long.
2.) New Surface, New Odds
Earlier this month the weather forced a Challenger tournament in Blois, France, indoors. Instead of a slow clay court, they played on a fast hard court. Books that didn’t react quickly to the change in conditions were vulnerable. Some bettors got great prices on players better suited to the different surface.
3.) Big Servers, More Games
In basketball, fast-paced teams generate more overall possessions which means more total points. In tennis, players with strong serves and weak returns generate fewer breaks which means more tiebreaks and total games.
(Sets most frequently reach 6-6 and extend to tiebreakers when neither player is able to “break” serve. That is, win a game when their opponent is serving.)
John Isner epitomized this style of play. At 6 feet, 10 inches he had one of the best serves in tennis, but one of the weakest returns. The average Top 100 player wins about 80 percent of their service games and 20 percent of their return games. Isner won 90 percent of his service games and just 10 percent of his return games.
This meant that Isner’s matches had fewer service breaks and more tiebreaks. During the 2010s, just under 20 percent first sets on the ATP tour ended in a tiebreak, and roughly 44.5 percent of matches ended with more than 22.5 games.
For Isner, it was 43 percent and 67 percent, respectively.
Sportsbooks sometimes failed to account for this. They would set the game total for Isner’s matches the same as matches without him. Game total Overs and and first set game total Overs were a goldmine when that happened.
4.)Rules Changes
For both men’s and women’s matches, if a set reaches 6-6 they play a tiebreaker. This counts as a game for the game total, meaning the most games a set could have is 13 (7-6).
Historically, this was the case for all sets, except the deciding set in Grand Slams.
There, sets had to be won by two games. There was no tiebreaker to cut them short. In the late 2010s this began to change, in response to matches like John Isner’s 2010 Wimbledon marathon against Nicolas Mahut, which ended 70-68. The match took more than 11 hours over three days to complete, and was a scheduling nightmare.
In 2022 the Grand Slam Board announced that all four majors would conclude with a tiebreak in the final set. (Although it would be first to 10 points instead of seven). But that rule change wasn’t immediate or universal.
In 2019 the four majors had three different scoring systems. The U.S. and Australian opens played a tiebreaker at 6-6 in the final set. Wimbledon played a tiebreaker at 12-12 in the final set. And the French Open was still win-by-two. (Leave it to the French.)
The variation was confusing to players, fans, and sometimes sportsbooks. Between 2019 and 2021, many sportsbooks either didn’t account for these differences or their models did a poor job.
Savvy gamblers recognized this and acted accordingly when matches reached the fifth set. They bet the total games Under at the the U.S. and Australian opens. At the French Open and Wimbledon they bet the Over.
Putting it All Together
Tennis is an individual sport. There are no team dynamics or substitutions: every point is up to a single player. This can make it easier, as a fan and bettor, to create simplistic narratives about what will happen.
Sometimes these narratives are accurate, and lead to profitable bets. Understanding player tendencies is an important part of predicting how they’ll perform in the future. If you watch enough matches you’ll likely stumble across a bettable edge.
More often than not, however, they’re flawed. For example, one commonly held belief among tennis fans is that a player who saves a breakpoint and holds serve is more likely to break their opponent’s serve in the next game.
But when you look at the data, it just isn’t true. When investigating this phenomena Jeff Sackmann, founder of tennis data aggregator website Tennis Abstract, said:
“Momentum, the basis for so many of the beliefs that make up tennis’s conventional wisdom, is surely a factor in the game, but my research has shown, over and over again, that it isn’t nearly as influential as fans and pundits tend to think. Once we hear a claim like this one, we tend to notice when events confirm it, reinforcing our mostly-baseless belief.
When we see something that doesn’t match the belief, we’re surprised, often leading to a discussion that takes for granted the truth of the original claim. Our brains are wired to understand and tell stories, not to recognize the difference between something that happens 77 percent of the time and 79 percent of the time.”
Although Sackmann wasn’t talking about betting, his research highlights a crucial lesson for gamblers: relying on perceived patterns rather than objective data can lead to costly misconceptions.
Don’t let the flashy serves or promoted parlays fool you. Tennis betting is a numbers game.
Summary
Know your markets and how they play. Moneyline match bets for example will have the least amount of vig and will be available everywhere. They may be most profitable at open. As it nears close, softer books may be even harder to beat than sharp books. This is because they’ve copied sharp lines, then added even more vig.
Line shop and use calculators to find optimal prices. Leave no stone unturned. Betting Over 2.5 sets or betting each player to win at least one set are effectively the same outcome. Sometimes you may find different odds on each bet, however.
Know what factors into a match like service game and playing surface. These are likely priced in, but not knowing how they impact a match will make your life much more difficult.
Learn which outcomes are correlated. The favorite and Over may be correlated in the NFL, but in tennis, you’re more likely to see the favorite and game/set Under.
This site is strictly for educational and informational purposes only and does not involve any real-money betting. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help, call 1-800-GAMBLER. This service is intended for adults aged 18 and over only.
