Sport is made for betting

Daniel Koellerer, widely regarded as the biggest @£%& in professional tennis, has received his just desserts today with a life ban from professional tennis and a fine of $100k. The Tennis Integrity Unit works under a shroud of secrecy so there are no official details of which matches were bent (although you could probably from a substantial list from Koellerer's schedule). From the press release : Mr Koellerer was found guilty of three charges under Article D of the 2010 Uniform Tennis Anti-Corruption Program, namely: • Contriving or attempting to contrive the outcome of an Event; • Soliciting or facilitating a Player not to use his or her best efforts in an Event; and; • Soliciting, offering or providing money, benefit or Consideration to any other covered person with the intention of negatively influencing a Player’s best efforts in any Event So the Tennis Integrity Unit has found a spine, that's great news for the game. Although, let's be honest, Dan...

I've been writing betting previews of the Grand Slam tennis tournaments for over a decade now, the latest instalment can be found at PuntingAce , men's and women's articles on the same page. My fee from the articles has been donated to the Qld Floods Appeal.

Courtesy of Tennisform A betting racket has rocked the ongoing Chennai Open tennis tournament in the city reports the Deccan Chronicle. The event organisers unearthed the scam after an interrogation of four foreign nationals — two Germans, an Italian and a Russian, who were caught betting live from the stadium through their gadgets. All of them belong to the international betting syndicate and have come all the way to Chennai only for online gambling. Fernando Soler, the tournament director, confirmed the betting incident. “They were caught but let off with a warning,” he said. However, a Tamil Nadu Tennis Association official added that the city police officials visited their hotels and interrogated them. “The ATP has taken photos of the accused and noted down their passport details, which will be circulated to tournaments across the world to curb the betting,” informed the senior official. With a time difference of 15 seconds between the live match and online scoring system, tennis...

There's nothing like an end-of-season ATP event to bring out the crooked betting patterns. Throw in an Argentinian facing an eastern European and you have a recipe for disaster... or a perfect set-up, depending on which side of legality you are cheering for. From the highly valuable subscription service, Tennisform Zeballos came through in a highly suspicious 3 sets against Janko Tipsarevic, who judging by the pre match and in play betting on Betfair had no intention of winning. Tipsarevic drifted markedly in the Betfair market in the hour before the match started eventually going off the underdog and despite winning the opening set and appearing to be the better player in the second set he was still odds against with Zeballos trading at 1.25 prior to the start of the final set. Some bookies have reportedly voided the match. Tipsarevic said afterwards that he felt a pain in his back in yesterday’s doubles match and today things only worsened. "My opponent was trying to mak...

It hasn't been a great week for the betting industry and sporting integrity. On top of the Pakistan cricket spot-fixing scandal and today's Hereford racing farce, there have been a couple of other sports raising eyebrows. At the US Open last night, Alexandr Dolgopolov was a huge late drifter from 3.5 out to 7 (losing 0-3 backed into 1.1) and consequently lost in straight sets to David Ferrer, a player he was very competitive against just a few weeks ago. After the match, his poor performance was put down to feeling unwell. Perhaps that's all it was, but it seems as if every man and his dog knew about it and bet accordingly. This kid has far too much talent to waste, but it's not the first match with suspicious betting patterns he has been involved in. The big story in Australian sport has been in the NRL. Rugby league in Australia has had a few suspicious betting stories over the years, now it sounds like the authorities have finally got their act together and might...

You always have to wonder where the liquidity for the other exchanges comes from, there's such a big gap between Betfair and the others. Here's a prime example today that the chasing pack just link it all to Betfair via bots and bowler (beard) accounts. Women's US Open market, as shown on Oddschecker. Someone has taken the bigger prices on Li Na, crunching her down to 3.55, showing no depth in the market behind the 55-70 odds taken. Amazingly, Betdaq and WBX can only offer such a ridiculous price as well..... what a coincidence!

ATP Bastad - Pere Riba leads 5-2 in the third set, and trades at 1.01. Peter Luczak fights back and leads 6-2 in the breaker. Riba fights back and wins 4/6 6/2 7/6 (8) Images captured at 6-5 in the tiebreak... Did I lay both players at very short odds? No, but did lay them at 1.52 and 1.11 respectively for a nice profit anyway.

As I discussed in the previous post about the Levy Board and too many racing fixtures in the UK, when too much of a sport is on offer, the quality suffers. And when the quality suffers, often so does the integrity. This week we have the ATP event in Newport, a really poor standard tournament, the only one on grass after Wimbledon and it clashes with Davis Cup as well, so few decent players bother and most European challengers would have better R1 matches. So far this week, we've had Richard Bloomfield, a British qualifier ranked outside the top 500, with a 1-10 record in ATP events backed off the map yesterday against Christophe Rochus, a veteran who has been losing R1 of Challenger level events lately. (Forum extract) "Rochus topping up the pension fund yet again. Bloomfield odds plummeted from evens to 1.25 before the match. $1.4 million matched on betfair, and nearly every bookie pulled the market. Was funny inplay, Bloomfield was something like 1.20 to win 2-0 even while i...

Preview of mine as posted by Betfair Australia... Wimbledon finals form

Has Twitter finally reached breaking point? The Twitter API has been down for hours... what are we supposed to do now? :) More importantly, how am I supposed to berate the posh prats on the BBC tennis coverage bemoaning the fact that British tennis is in such a poor state, while it's people like them, portraying a middle/upper class image from an era when the sport was nowhere near as tough or competitive, who are a key reason why kids don't want to play the game....

Like any Aussie, I'll be cheering loudly today for Samantha Stosur in the women's final. The fact I have a 50/1 ticket on her from several weeks ago is almost irrelevant :D In addition to my Punting Ace preview, I've also done some writing for Betfair Australia. Here's the final piece (byline at the very bottom).

Here's an article I wrote for betting.betfair Australia, previewing the Friday-Sunday schedule at the Australian Open, so it was written before the second men's semi. Exclusive expert Australian Open preview Still haven't decided what I'll do with my Federer position, let it ride or hedge it. Took 4 at Boyles, Murray now available at 2.5, should probably take my stake back as I do think Muzza can beat him. The other time they met in a Slam final, I stuck with Murray and did my dough...

Just eight players left now in each event, so I thought it's a nice time to give an update. Men Federer - the obvious favourite, and in awesome form. He just toyed with Hewitt and hasn't lost a set since R1. Best asset is he knows what to do at this end of a tournament. Davydenko - wobbled against Verdasco, led 2-0 and then had a mini-break in the fourth set breaker, before winning in five sets, having given his backers at 1.05 many grey hairs. Has beaten Federer in their last two clashes, after being 0-12 before November. But how will he go over the best of five sets, and with much more at stake? Djokovic - a bit wayward against Chiudinelli, but otherwise solid. Record is 2-4 v Tsonga, winning their first clash (AO final 08) and Miami last year. He hit a bit of a flat spot in between, the effects of an overloaded schedule and changing racquet brand - I think he is back close to his peak now. Tsonga - only scraped through against Almagro, almost throwing away a 2-0 lead. His ta...

The real betting action of the year starts Down Under on Monday, with the Australian Open in Melbourne. For the best part of a decade I have been writing betting previews for the Grand Slams, and in recent years, they've been published on PuntingAce. Click here for the men's tournament preview, and here for the women's event. And if you want to see a history of previous articles and tips - click here .

Wow, big shock here. Where have they been all year? Oh that's right, the big names are coming to town next week, time to drag them all through the mud... Ten more suspect matches At least 10 matches on the men's ATP tour are being investigated by the tennis anti-corruption unit, Sportsmail can today reveal. ... THE security unit at online betting exchange Betfair alone were so alarmed by gambling patterns on at least 10 occasions in 2009 that they referred the matches straight to the sport's authorities. Well the Mail says they can't name them, but I'm prepared to have a guess at the ten. No accusations of guilt here, just stating the fact that the betting patterns on these matches were in desperate need of further attention. Canas v Veic 2/2/09 Istomin v Kim 21/7/09 Crivoi v Istomin 13/7/09 Koellerer v Hernandez 15/6/09 any others to add to the list?

In case you haven't found the link from my Twitter updates, listed on the top right, here is where you can find my US Open previews from a betting perspective. More often that not, I'll post links to the previews there so keep an eye on those comments and links. From the PuntingAce site, you'll also be able to check my previews of the last few years and decide for yourself if they're any good or not :)

More on the Melzer - Odesnik 3-0 plunge yesterday. Personally I think it was just injury-related info and the fact that Odesnik really doesn't care about grass which started the plunge, and then the momentum traders kept forcing it lower and lower. Suspect betting probed at SW19 betfair also got involved - Betfair report unusual betting

A couple of good articles here, further to Monday's suspicious match in s'Hertogenbosch. How tennis failed to act Wimbledon on high alert

Host a really weak tournament on the tennis circuit's least-favoured surface the week before a Grand Slam, have players enter who have never won match on grass and what do you get? Oscar Hernandez is a decent claycourter rarely able to win on any other surface, Daniel Koellerer is a headcase who swears at his opponents, the umpire, line judges, spectators. Something is up here. This market movement has all happened in the past couple of hours. These two have a history - take a look at this clip and see how 'friendly' they are to each other! The ATP supervisor watched this match very closely. Koellerer made it look like he was trying early, had break points against the Spaniard's serve in the first set, got out to about 1.61 and then went according to the script, I mean went to water under the pressure....

Bloody hell, I go out for the day for my wedding anniversary and come back to find Nadal has been beaten! With him and Djokovic out, that really opens it up. Federer's quarter of the draw is quite straightforward, but I don't think that entitles him to be 2.26 to win the title. Fernando Gonzalez should not be double Andy Murray's price, he's a much better player on clay than any of his opponents so far, and their h2h is split 1-1, albeit a while back.