Montecarlo - round of 16 - thursday

Things worked for the most part of the day, yesterday. But I can't be happy.
Again, just one trade going wrong and the day was nearly fucked up.

The one going wrong was Almagro - Melzer, and that was stupid as I thought Almagro price was too short. And in fact I was on Melzer. But then Almagro didn't look so tired, and he played a good opening game of second set, and so I thought Melzer was done (his game was very risky, many serve and volleys...), I backed Almagro when an all green was possible as well.... later Melzer took the break and instead of reducing the loss, as usual, I took more of it. Melzer won and all the profits from the morning were almost erased.
Before this moment of madness I:

• had an all green in Berdych - Granollers, Berdych had a slow start but took the set, after Granollers also failed to serve the set out. 
• had a nice profit from Nieminen - Raonic. Watching this match wasn't planned but due to the all green in Berdych/Granollers I switched on this just at the beginning of the third set. Nieminen was playing really well his movements and speed were outstanding and he was returning almost everything, even though it's not easy to break Raonic serve. The Finnish won in the tiebreak.
• Backed Fognini but didn't watch the match, so the bet was left running.

Gulbis/Monaco luckily was a dramatic match and I made a good profit of it.

Today only morning matches for me, so one/one and half trade.

I find both Berdych/Fognini and Tsonga/Melzer interesting.

The first one possibly will have the same development of yesterday; Berdych having a slow start; moreover Fognini seems in a decent shape and on clay can be a tough one for Berdych.

Both Melzer and Tsonga play aggressive tennis, and anything can happen. Clay is the worst surface for the frenchmen and 1.22 is a bit short.

USO - Day 4

Nicolas Almagro - Philipp Petzschner: pick Petzschner @5.00 2 units
I fear here is the fan who's speaking.
Two tennis-style facing here: the all-around and vintage tennis of the german, and the baseline top-spinned of the spaniard.
In common there's a solid serve also here for different reason.
The battle will develop on the backhand cross and Almagro's one-handed one could suffer on the long run to lift up Petz's slices. This can affect Almagro in two ways: he'll shift on his left to play the forehand, opening the court so that Petz can play winner with his killer forehand; Almagro can't push his backhand down the line (his best solution)  against the weightless balls he'll receive.
Almagro will play almost from the stands so Picasso needs to be mind-plugged to avoid errors above all if he'll be very high on the court risking to find himself too close to the bounce.

Sofia Arvidsson - Ana Ivanovic: pick Arvidsson @4.00 2 units
Too much high this odd, Ana can't be such a favourite against anyone reacently.
Head to head says 4-1 in Ana's favour but most belong to her best period.
Most of my fear goes to Sofia's service, she has the highest ball lift and windy days affect her, there was a bit of wind in this days.

Yaroslava Shvedova - Roberta Vinci: Shvedova @2.25 2 units
Although it was a bit of friendly match between Shvedova and King (they're double partner), Slava showed a great shape.
She got many point on King's second hitting winning returns (77% points won on King's 2nd serve), King and Vinci second serve are not much different.
Also in the rally she showed skills: preferring to lead with deep groundstrokes from still position on the baseline, she also could play on the run.
Sometimes she couldn't find the right distances from the ball and sticked.
Against Vinci could be tricky for her with the italian old-fashioned tennis that could not to give her the pace she need, though I think on the long run the power and fit of Slava could do the difference as her service is harder to break.

Dominika Cibulkova - Bojana Jovanovski: pick Jovanovski @3.75 1 unit
Great come back in the first round for the young serbian against a Barthel that was said was suffering the hot temperature.
She's improving her ranking and also finding spot in the Fed Cup over player like Jankovic and Ivanovic.
She prefers fast surfaces were her heavy balls can give a bad day to many players.
Cibulkova is one of the best returner in the WTA, since her serve can't be fast enough being very short.
Cibu's matches usually are very nervy, she can insult her opponent for the whole match, but Bojana doesn't look to me one of those drama-player, she's regular and doesn't change her plans at the first difficulty.

Vera Dushevina - Sara Errani: pick Dushevina @5.50 1 unit
Errani could lost to anyone who's little motivated and focused to hit an offensive return yet on the first serve.
Just dropping a set against the young spanish girl Muguruza in the first round is an indication of how she's far from her clay performances.

Galina Voskoboeva - Andrea Hlavackova: pick Hlavackova @1.80 2 units
Nearly even odds for them but season results shows an horrible shape for Voskoboeva, an 11/17 score for her.
Hlavacoka, on the contrary, has found some continuty also as single player, not a relevant result as she starts from the qualies in major tournaments, but anyway some good runs like the one on Cincinnati where she lost 6-4 7-6 from an on-fire Kerber on round of 16 (Andrea played the qualies).

OlymPICKs III and half

The 'half' stands for the third part had to be posted yesterday: I made my picks and started writing my piece when something stopped me, I don't even remember what, and in the whole day I haven't got back on.

Here's yesterday's:

Richard Gasquet - Marcos Baghdatis: Bagh to win @3.32 1 unit

Marin Cilic - Lleyton Hewitt: Hewitt to win @3.75 1 unit

But let's go on.

Roger Federer - Denis Istomin: pick Istomin @21.00 1 unit

Yeah, it's the King facing Istomin, but even Istomin doesn't worth this. 

I don't like him, I've watched few match of him in Wimby, where he had a great run, passing through an on-fire Seppi, Andreev, Federer's nightmare Falla and losing at the R16 7-5 in the fifth against Youzhny wasting some match point.

He's nothing special in technique, apart from a decent serve, he is slow on movement and doesn't hit that hard from both side, but he play on safety, with the ball well above the net, not giving pace to his opponent, and I can neatly see the Fed make lots of unforced on these weightless balls.

John Isner - Janko Tipsarevic: pick Isner @2.25 2 units

Yet two days ago I was against Tipso, I'll try again, this time facing Isner.

Maybe it's true that the real grass-court now are only in Newport, while all the others are going nearer to all other surface, Wimbledon's groundsmen admit that bounce are higher nowadays.

But Isner is always very tricky , and above all when playing for US: some months ago he beated Federer on clay in Switzerland and reapated against France in Davis Cup. 

David Ferrer - Kei Nishikori: pick Nishikori @5.33 1 unit

Can someone stop Ferru? He's succesfully playing since Auckland in genuary. Well he do this every season, building his ranking upon lower tournament, but seeing him doing great results also on grass well... it's weird that's all.

The young US-nippon talent has played about the half of Ferrer's matches, and his style is not even that energy wasteful, he's not an hard hitter and his movements are very gently, like the bally-dancer Davydenko, who he defeated in the previous round.

This is going to be a long baseline marathon match and even though the spirit Ferrer puts in every match I think he's going to have more difficultes than the odds shows, he should try more variation than he's used to, in order to pass through this gum-wall that will hit back everything.

Steve Darcis - Nicolas Almagro: pick Darcis @3.54 1 unit

I know this is going insane but this will be the last one.

Next round the winner among the two of them will play Murray.

So even losing to Darcis will be ok, no?

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga - Feliciano Lopez: pick Lopez @3.37 2 units

Jo comes from a 25-23 in the third against Raonic, a 4 hours match.

I can imagine the rallies hadn't go beyond the 3 hits, but it's hard the same. 

Jo won't be 100% fit, and Feliciano can be thougn on grass: leftie, great service, sliced backhand and great experience.

My odds on Lopez won't have gone over @2.50

Sabine Lisicki - Maria Sharapova: pick Lisicki @3.95 2 units

Well close to 4.00... just couple of weeks ago it was a 6-4 6-3 win for Sabine.

Maybe she's not going to replicate but again I'd made much lower odds

Close to hit the target with Sabine, I reckon that Sharapova playing in the same way in every situation, her not suffering lowering of focus.
Great delusion by F.Lopez, Almagro hate me, Roger (I read) not playing well and also got a rain suspension, Ferru finally stopped by Nishi, good work by Isner in the tie-break. Saved my day.
+0,83

ATP - 17/07

I don't know if it's universally known but there's this statistical rule, one of those unwritten rules that often happen in sports; It's called "Regola di Tommasi" (Tommasi's rules, translated), it's something like this: players who played in a final (winner or runner-up doesn't matter) very often lose the first round in the very next tournament. It's because those players have played a full week, and there's a great amount of mental energy involved, and after the final they relax a bit and lose focus.
Todays picks will follow this:

F Cipolla - M Cilic: pick Cipolla @6.97 1 unit
Huge odds here for Cipolla that has already defeated Cilic once.

N Almagro - T Kamke: pick Kamke @4.79 2 units
Odds may differe since I made the pick yesterday.
Almagro was also complaining about some kind of shoulder injury.
Also Kamke to win the first set will be ok.
Anyway I don't think he will complete the first set, should be something to bet on "one ball" books, which I don't have.

-3 Not worked here