Tennis is not systematically nor institutionally corrupt. There is no evidence of a link to the Mafia.

7 Responses to Tennis is not systematically nor institutionally corrupt. There is no evidence of a link to the Mafia.

1. Jason Ruspini says:

   May 22, 2008 at 7:11 PM

   Yes, but keep in mind that tennis is vulnerable to fixing relative to team sports because only one player need be compromised.  With in-running markets, it’s not even necessary to throw a match.  If there’s a pretty large disparity in skill, it’s possible that a better player might ease up for a few games to “shave” his odds (while conserving energy).
    

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2. Chris F. Masse says:

   May 23, 2008 at 2:57 AM

   @Jason Ruspini: Yes, that is the conventional wisdom of the conspiracy theorists. But would all that be undetected by the investigators I cite in the post above?

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3. Jason Ruspini says:

   May 23, 2008 at 7:09 AM

   I wasn’t making any comment on how pervasive that sort of thing actually is.  I haven’t seen anyone write about the in-running easing, but I haven’t really read anything on tennis betting, and you know how we are in the US: “Betfair?, delete..”

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4. Ed Murray says:

   May 23, 2008 at 9:51 AM

   There are hundreds of thousands of tennis matches played, right from the Wimbledon final down to knock-ups in the local park.  I would estimate that on average about a hundred matches a week are offered on betting exchanges/bookmakers (once you get down to the quarter finals of a tournament, there are only 7 matches left in that tournament, and in a grand slam, these would be spread out across the final 5 days of the competition).
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   Say there are a hundred matches a week available to bet on on average (a figure which may be too high, I don’t know, it might be as low as 70 a week across the yearly cycle).  That’s 5,200 matches a year.
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   I would not be surprised if most of those 45 are in late 2007.  The 45 quoted are only the ones that have been detected/highlighted by the Gunn-Rees report as well, the real figure may be higher or lower. 
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   If you have 30 suspicious matches in the 2nd half of 2007, and 2,600 matches being bet on, that’s more than 1% of all matches being suspicious, according to this report. If you bet on say 10 of them, attracted by the ever more generous prices on one of the two players, with 4% of your bank on each one, thats ten lots of 4% of your betting bank lost in the space of six months. Bearing in mind thata number of snooker and reality tv markets have both shown the same ‘suspicious’ betting patterns, then suddenly using ‘skill’ (backing when a price is too high, laying when too low) is actually quite a dangerous thing to do, as a ‘professional’ gambler. Add together 10 tennis matches, a few snooker matches, some reality tv markets, all of which you take the value price on, and suddenly you’ve lost 25 lots of 4% of your bank, which is quite a high rate of attrition over just six months. If you use Kelly staking, you’ll be betting more than 4% as well, as it is on these matches where the most generous odds seem to be being offered.
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   The comparison I would make is with the spread of HIV/Aids.  At first one person has it, then gradually two, four, eight, 16 etcetera.  It takes quite a long time t get from 1 to 16, and the same length of time to get from 16 to 256.  Its an exponential growth rate, not an arithmetic one. 
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   Clearly the timing of these matches is important – if they are growing in number at an exponential rate, then clearly it is much more disturbing, than if they had taken place at a steady rate over the last five years.   To be completely fair and honest, I suspect most of these matches were in the second half of 2007, whereas the only one I can remember this year that might be in those 45, is Hernandez v Brezezicki, April 15th 2008. 

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5. Medemi says:

   May 23, 2008 at 11:57 AM

   and you know how we are in the US: “Betfair?, delete..”

   I must have a lot of friends then.

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6. Medemi says:

   May 23, 2008 at 12:00 PM

   …is actually quite a dangerous thing to do, as a ‘professional’ gambler
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   Professional gamblers are dead meat. Bring on the mugs…
   Actually, professional gamblers never existed (every gambler is a loser) and they never will (with the current policies in place).
   You see… self fulfilling prophecy. Works every time. 

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7. Chris F. Masse says:

   May 23, 2008 at 12:08 PM

   @Medemi: and you know how we are in the US: “Betfair?, delete..”
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   Jason’s slam was for me. He thinks I blog too much about BetFair.

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