If you’re not sure who will win the match you can wait until one of the players breaks their opponent’s serve and then back them. You then have the option of waiting for them to hold their own serve and greening up or you can wait until they win the first set for a slightly bigger profit.

Pros and cons of this strategy?

Well, if you have a favourite with a strong serve who you expect to hold their service games then this can work well. The downside is that because you are backing them AFTER the break of serve their price has already dropped significantly from where it was at the start of the match.

Use only on ATP matches

Traders and gamblers often talk about getting “value” for their trades/bets. Clearly, backing a player at half the price that they started at isn’t getting the best value. For trading in my opinion we aren’t always looking for value in the same sense as a straight punter is. We are sometimes looking for a situation where the price is going to move enough for us to profit from it.

However, if you choose a match where the players are a little more even at the start ( the favourite above, say, 1.60 ) then even after a break of serve you will be able to enter the market at around 1.30 .
There are no guarantees that the player will then go on to hold their own service, especially if playing on clay courts so you need to know what to do if the trade doesn’t go how you expect. Check out the section on “What to do when it goes wrong”.

Video demonstrating the strategy.