Tennis is probably the most popular individual sport: whilst individual boxing and UFC bouts may attract a far larger audience, tennis players compete almost every day. This sport is considered elite, almost aristocratic, yet it is characterised by a significant element of unpredictability, which is why fans from all over the world love it so much. If you’re confident in your favourite’s success or want to experience more excitement while watching a tennis match, place a bet on Betwinner – if you win, you’ll receive not only the satisfaction of victory but also a financial payout!
Tennis betting
Features of tennis betting on the Betwinner website
Even if you’ve placed sports bets on numerous occasions in the past but have no experience of betting on tennis, you can be considered a novice, as tennis predictions differ radically from those for team sports. Just in case, the Betwinner team has put together a short guide on what to look out for if you’re planning to bet on tennis.
First and foremost, tennis is an individual sport, not a team one. Any player can get injured, catch a cold, be out of shape, or simply be off their game due to temporary psychological issues, yet tennis does not allow for substitutions, even in doubles tournaments. This means that a major upset in tennis is possible on any given day, but it is difficult to predict in advance when an underdog will beat the favourite.
Although tennis is a single sport, matches can be played on different surfaces. Hard courts, clay and grass differ quite significantly: there are ‘faster’ courts, where players with a strong serve and the ability to position themselves correctly in defence have the advantage, and there are ‘slower’ ones, where accuracy when hitting the ball right on the line is far more important. Although top professionals pose a threat to their opponents on any surface, most tennis players have a ‘favourite’ surface on which they perform to their full potential, whereas on other types of courts, the underdog has more options.
The concept of the tennis season is by no means the same for every player: in essence, each athlete follows a unique schedule of tournaments, depending on their form and ranking. For a top-level tennis player, preparation often boils down to getting into peak condition and delivering unrivalled results at Grand Slam tournaments; competitions on the ATP and WTA tours (particularly the 1000 and 500 events) are also significant, whereas at Challenger events and WTA 125 tournaments, players often use these to recover from injuries – it is acceptable to lose there, as the loss of ranking points and prize money is not so significant; for rising stars, on the other hand, this is where they have the greatest motivation to show their best side and knock out a high-profile opponent. Moreover, because tennis tournaments are played on a knockout basis, players compete in varying numbers of matches; thus, a player who has just won the title at the previous tournament may withdraw from the next one altogether, or appear lacklustre even in the opening match, where the opponent, seemingly not of such high standing, but who is well-rested after an early exit last week.
Finally, it is worth bearing in mind that there are no draws in tennis: someone is bound to win the match. No lead, however, is a guarantee that the match is already won: the underdog, trailing far behind the leader, still retains a chance to save several match points, take the match into a third set and there finish off an opponent who has relaxed too soon.
Main types of tennis bets
The Betwinner team is committed to offering customers as many betting options as possible for tennis matches, so that you are not limited to simply predicting the winners of matches. Thanks to this approach, at our bookmaker you can expect a betting line-up that sometimes reaches 250 markets for top-level matches. That said, customers often prefer a relatively small number of available markets, and to ensure such bets are as effective as possible, it is important to ensure you fully understand their terms and conditions.
Victory in the match and in the sets
The most popular bet in any sport is predicting the winner of a match – even bettors who don’t bother analysing the pre-match odds get in on this, simply wanting to show their support for their favourite and ramp up the excitement at the same time. It’s all quite straightforward: whoever wins the match and progresses further in the tournament bracket is the winner. However, a bet on your tennis player is not considered a winner if their opponent withdraws from the tournament before the match even begins, or does so too early in the match – during the very first set; in such cases, the bet is refunded at odds of 1.0.
You can determine the winner not only in the context of the entire match, but also in relation to a single set. This approach makes sense when you know for certain that at least one of the players tends to start matches briskly but tires quickly, or, conversely, always takes a while to get into their stride but possesses plenty of stamina and can turn an unfavourable game around; this type of prediction works best when two opponents of opposite styles face each other in a single match.
Game and set handicaps
Sometimes predicting the outcome of a tennis match involves extremes: in one fixture, the result is a foregone conclusion, so the odds on the favourite are far too low and betting on the underdog seems like madness, whereas in another match, anyone could win, and any bet seems risky. In both cases, the best solution may be to bet on a game handicap.
The handicap for the favourite is indicated as a negative number: for example, a -9.5 handicap means that a close contest is not expected, as the winner will win by a substantial margin, beating the underdog by at least 10 games. You can determine the size of the handicap yourself: the riskier your prediction, the higher the odds; conversely, the lower the odds, the greater the chance that your prediction will be correct. Conversely, bets on the underdog are placed with a positive handicap to indicate that they will put up a fight: for example, a +4.5 handicap means that the difference in the number of games won will not exceed four.
Handicaps based on sets have become quite rare in recent years: in tournaments where matches are played over three sets, they make little sense, as they are effectively equivalent to predicting the exact score – 2-0 or 2-1. However, such a bet still makes sense in tournaments where five-set matches are still played: there, the margin between the winner and the loser can be one, two or three sets.
Totals: number of games and sets
Betting on the total is always a good option when it’s difficult to predict the winner, or conversely, when the winner is so obvious that the odds on them don’t look attractive. This market doesn’t concern the winner at all: you simply need to indicate whether there will be more or fewer games than a certain number. Your task is not to name the exact number, but rather to set a threshold, for example, by predicting that there will be more (or fewer) than 21.5 games. There is also another similar betting option in the form of an individual game total, which indicates how many games a specific tennis player will win – regardless of whether they win or lose the match.
With the total sets, the situation is the same as with set handicaps: in a three-set match, such a bet is no different from the market on the exact number of sets, because there can only be 2 or 3. There is slightly more merit in such a bet when it comes to a five-set match: by betting that there will be more than 3.5 sets, you are predicting that a straight-sets victory is unlikely.
In-play betting
Although you can watch your favourite tennis player in action practically every day, it’s not easy to predict exactly how he’ll be feeling today: he might have caught a cold, picked up a minor injury in training, or be feeling uncomfortable due to a change in court surface or the time difference between tournaments. For this reason, many punters prefer to bet on tennis not before the match, but whilst it is in progress, when it is clearer to see whether the serve is on target, whether the return is successful, and how your favourite’s mental game is holding up. You can even watch many matches via live video stream directly on our website or in the mobile app, completely free of charge! However, bear in mind that due to the high frequency of score changes in tennis, the odds for a match can also change in the blink of an eye.