Lightning Strikes Twice?

1.28.

It’s quite possible that this sum means nothing to Richard Bloomfield, the 552-ranked British number 12 tennis player. But, for the twenty-seven year-old’s first ATP match of the season, these were his odds as he commenced play yesterday in Newport, Rhode Island. Maybe it was his recent stunning victory in Spain against world number 1468 Adbullah Magdas of Kuwait that swayed the odds? The Betfair forum thought otherwise.

His opponent was the 160-ranked Belgian Christophe Rochus, and the forum backed it’s opinion that the game was dodgy with plenty of cash, lots of it on a 2-0 scoreline to Bloomfield. Bloomfield won 7-6, 6-3. In the Twitter age, it’s likely that info got out that Rochus was in no form or fitness to win a match. But, frankly, it should be an embarrassment to the ATP that a middle ranked player is allowed on court if he’s incapable of beating a player ranked 552. It just leaves the sport wide open to accusations of match fixing.

So it must have been a unique situation for the lowly Bloomfield? Er, no. At Wimbledon in 2006, the markets went into meltdown before his first round match against Carlos Berlocq, the considerably higher-ranked Argentinian. Win and 3-0 set markets had absurdly large sums placed. Bloomfield won 6-1, 6-2, 6-2.

Unfortunately for Bloomfield, it’s hard to make a career on expectations of your opponents throwing in the towel before the game starts. His other ATP wins are best described as ‘infrequent’. On a brighter note, he’s always got the chance of being drawn against Daniel Koellerer or Denis Istomin.

I was interested in the 1.28. In a couple of ‘dodgy’ matches last year, starting odds settled around the 1.20 mark. So 1.2 – 1.3 is obviously the mathematical zone where punters will take on the price, even in the knowledge that the result may well be predetermined. The price is also held up by any counter-belief that the rumours could simply be conspiracies to skew the market. In most of these games, the price tends to remain constant as the match goes in play, regardless of the scoreline, until there is clear evidence that the rumour-mill is wrong, at which point all hell breaks out in the market. I blogged last year on the Kim v Istomin match in Indianapolis. I lost heavily that night, as plenty of others did.

I followed my own advice last night, and stayed well away.