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...

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...

Stop playing tournaments in Russia - it's that simple. No respect for authority and importantly, no prosecutable laws for sporting corruption. The latest fix, which was actually a spoof manoeuvre, designed purely to gain better odds for the syndicate pulling all the strings. Tursunov was never going to lose this one but he's obviously been approached to tank the first set so the syndicate could get far better odds on the victory... From Tennisform again: 26 October 2010 17:14 Tursunov has been heavily opposed on Betfair from 1.23 to 1.9 (345K matched). 19:25 Tursunov came through in three sets against Michal Przysiezny in what appeared to be yet another predetermined outcome. The Russian rolled over for the first set before Przysiezny stopped trying in sets two and three. Tursunov won 82% of his service points but the stats are totally irrelevant. The Russian drifted hugely just prior to the off, to suggest that he wasn't going to win the first set, before the ...

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...

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.

Make up your own mind on this one. Note this picture is the Inverse Axis graph, one showing % chance of winning. Betfair have delayed settlement of this match, pending an investigation and discussion with the ATP I assume. Antonio Veic, a player I had honestly never heard of before, started this match at a price of around 5.5 (18% winning chance). Guillermo Canas, a player nearing the end of his career and with two previous suspensions for taking banned substances was the heavy favourite, around 1.2. Now from the graph, you'd think Veic won in straight sets. He didn't, he actually lost the first set, yet kept on shortening in price (increasing in percentage chance of winning). Expect this one to be in the papers and dragging tennis back into the gutter again. Without seeing the match, it's hard to hang the bloke. He may have rolled an ankle and battled hard to win the first set despite really struggling. But any betting forum will tell you this one looks mighty fishy. UPDAT...

Impressive start to the season by Andy Murray in Abu Dhabi. Wins over Blake, Federer and Nadal just a fortnight before the Australian Open is a great sign for the season ahead. He's definitely good enough to win in Melbourne, and the Aus Open has a history of throwing up first-time winners, or first-time Grand Slam finalists. The Aus media has been full of articles this week about players ready for a big season - Tsonga, Baghdatis, Gasquet, Ivanovic, Dellacqua, Hantuchova etc. Also the Nick Bollettieri blog has details of players training with him over the off-season as well. Proper ATP and WTA action starts tomorrow. I'll be following the circuit closer this season than I have for years, so stay tuned for a few tips. But be warned, I am quite selective. I'm more likely to have four bets a week than four for the day.

Oh good grief, the ATP really are clueless.... The ATP men's tennis tour may ban 15 professional gamblers from attending tournaments after finding they were placing bets on site to exploit a 20-second delay in scores being received by bookmakers, a tournament director said. Full article here 20 second delay? Even Eurosport's not that bad. The delay on SkySports is 4-5 seconds at most, and fairly standard with most networks. Free-to-air TV is significantly faster, particularly on an analogue signal. Any bookmaker with a clue tests the latency of broadcast pictures, it's pretty obvious when you are 10 seconds or more behind because punters only want to back the same thing.

Oh dear, the ATP have decided to use a sledgehammer to smash a peanut yet again because another Italian tennis player has placed legal bets with legal and licensed bookmakers on tennis matches. A $35k fine and a 100 day suspension on a player who has done sweet FA for a long time.... and the point of this is?? Betting on matches is naughty, and especially if their own match is involved. And these bets stopped back in 2006. Obviously Italian culture involves a lot of betting, particularly on tennis - that's three of them now. But if the ATP can't dig up any evidence to convict the likes of Davydenko or Kafelnikov, then this stinks of a smokescreen and nothing more. Galimberti won THREE matches last year, all at challenger or futures level. His career is over. What a lot of chest-beating about nothing. Official ATP release