Looing for a strategy to read tennis betting odds?

Question

I am struggling with tennis betting odds, as I am unable to read them. Can you help me know, what are the most effective strategies to read tennis betting odds?

Answer 1

Tennis odds are shown as moneyline odds which are really simple to read and the same as other popular sports such as hockey, baseball and basketball. In tennis you will find that the odds are really spread out for the most part in the smaller events. The odds will also be fairly spread out for the Grand Slam tournaments until the last few rounds when the best players are left.

Generally you’ll want to stick away from any of the games that have close to even odds because you just don’t know who will win. You also need to be careful of favourites who have odds of -200 – -350. A lot of the time you will find favourites losing matches in the smaller tournaments and with such high juice you definitely don’t want to be on the wrong side of this bet.

You’re going to be able to make the most consistent money from betting on the heavy favorites in tennis. Often you can find 1-2 games every day in the summer months with two 99% locks. Nothing is a guarantee, but 99% of the time a heavy favorite isn’t going to lose. You will often need to pay juice that is anywhere from -400 – -800, but this isn’t that bad if you think about the long-term. It would cost you lets say $400 to win $100. This means you need to win at least 4 out of every 5 of your bets. This is only a 80% winning percentage which when betting on heavy favourites is fairly easy to achieve.

If you’ve never seen tennis odds posted in the past then we’re going to take a look at a quick example so you have an idea how to read the odds.

Roger Federer -450 vs. Andy Roddick +275

In the above example Roger Federer is the favorite against Andy Roddick and you can determine this by looking for the (-) and (+) sign. The (-) always means the favorite whereas the (+) always signifies the underdog. You would need to bet $450 to win $100 on Roger and you would need to bet $100 to win $275 on Andy. As you can see the odds are really simple to read once you get the hang of it.

You will also find that some sportsbook will use a different style to display the odds for certain wagers. For instance, when wagering on future bets in tennis you will find the odds to be displayed like below most of the time.

Roger Federer to win US Open – 3/1
Andy Roddick to win US Open – 10/1
Rafael Nadal to win US Open – 5/1

In the above example we’re showing you the odds for three of the players in the US Open. You can wager on who you think is going to win the event before it starts. If you do this you will make more money then just betting normal bets. In the above example if you bet on Roger and he won you’d be paid out $300 on a $100 bet. If you bet on Andy and he won you’d win $1000 for every $100 and if you bet on Nadal and he won you’d win $500 for every $100 you bet.