It's been a strange week for me so far. A lot of losses, some good wins but overall I'm roughly level. It's been stop / start with both the weather and my P/L, tough to get a rhythm going and tough to read the play. My trading and my brain have been in a bit of a muddle because of this I've been struggling to get things in order.
One part of this is down to the sheer number of matches going on. I'm a fairly experienced trader these days, but I still get into a mess when there's so many matches to look at. It's a case of being distracted too much... I might just be able to trade 2 matches at the same time.. but 3 or 4 is too many and I end up taking a position and not managing it correctly. Which is actually what's going wrong when I'm trading one match at a time anyway.
There's been a lot of momentum changes in the matches so far. It's been tricky getting used to 5 set matches instead of 3, there's a lot of conserving of energy going on with the players and I think it's important to decifer when a player is putting in maximum effort and when he isn't.
A good example was Moya's game yesterday where he was very slack in the 4th (restarting the match 0-4 down in the 4th set overnight) against Seppi... he came out in the 5th, several gears higher and Seppi couldn't cope, great game strategy though and one that's used a lot by various players. You can do well opposing someone who's winning a set a bit too easily just before the start of the next. Their odds are often way out of line.
The main area where I think I'm going wrong is getting on at the wrong odds in a whole match context. What I mean is, the bets I'm placing might be fine, but I'm not allowing for what might happen and I'm certainly not getting some of the best odds available on a player during the course of an entire match. I tend to be just getting on and leaving it, which is not a good idea, given the number of twists and turns we're seeing. A consequence of this is that the intra-match / set upside and downside is not being weighed up the way it should.
As I say, the bets themselves are fine, but by no means the juiciest margin on a player in each match. I have to work on weighing up where the biggest edge is likely to be for various scenarios and wait until this occurs, rather than getting on at the wrong time and thus treading water.
A few reactions and judgements of form so far.. Serena is not playing that well, doesn't seem to be timing it that well, but you have to think she will find it against good opponents. She'll need to, because so far she's no match for Henin or Jankovic etc.
Vaidisova has come back from a wrist injury, but appeared to hold it worryingly in her first match of the tournament, she's still mentally weak too - the racquet was thrown and the coach given a look after just 1 1/2 games! It did make me chuckle. Some growing up needs to happen soon.
Sharapova is looking more like Bambi on ice on the clay, an opponent that can keep the ball in play whilst moving her around will see her off comfortably.
Federer looks good, I quietly fancy him to take it this year. Nadal is just being Nadal.. Hewitt had a battle with Gaudio earlier, Gaudio should have won it, but it came down to mental strength in the end, both were making like walls, Hewitt just made like a wall for longer, or at least, that's what Gaudio felt. Importantly though, Hewitt's shots did not seem to have enough power to get through Gaudio, definitely a concern for him going forward, and the stumbling block for him v Nadal.
Baghdatis is looking transformed after indifferent form over the past few months. I think he's lost some weight, he looks faster and he's hitting it harder whilst being patient. I hear he's changed coach...
Back to trading.
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